I am fairly unfamiliar with some of the more formal aspects of Catholicism.

And I am an (almost) 30-year-old cradle Catholic.

When I was growing up, being Catholic was interwoven into how we understood ourselves  and the world around us.  It was the foundation of our views, ethics and attitudes.  But, it wasn’t necessarily how we spent our time.  We didn’t pray the Rosary as a family (and in fact, I am just now learning all the steps in praying the Rosary), we didn’t go to Adoration or Benediction, and the structure (parish priest, order priest, bishops, cardinals) totally escaped me.  Again, Catholicism was at the root of our lives, but the devotional practices were not.  I was even at slightly more of a disadvantage, because I never went to Catholic school, until I went to college, unlike most of my siblings.

My friend Margaret does a holy hour on Friday afternoons, and she asked if I’d like to join her.  After asking her to explain what that meant (see above concerning Catholic ignorance) I decided it might be helpful (a bit utilitarian of me, but that’s how I roll) and started joining her.

So there I was last Friday, sitting in the chapel in front of the Sacrament, thinking/praying about sin, my sin, like you do.  I happened to be thinking about a particular sin (or maybe set of sins) that has been recurrent in my life for a couple years now, despite a concerted effort on my part to change.  And then it hit me:

I’m really bored.

Not with praying, but rather in my own life.

I don’t mean this as in “every single second of my life is dull and miserable and I don’t enjoy anything ever.”  I do lots of fun things.  I have friends I enjoy spending time with, family I look forward to talking with, the occasional public outing that ALWAYS results in a stranger making strange comments to me.  I read, watch TV, clean, work, complain about work.  I have a nice, comfortable, semi-busy life.  But given all this, I discovered in the quiet chapel an underlying current of boredom.  Boredom in the sense that my heart is unattached to any particular aspect of my life.

I lack Chesterton’s ability to be enchanted with every small aspect of life that I come across.  I tend to go in phases, immersing myself completely in something for a time and once I have found out all the pleasures possible (or once it becomes difficult) I move on to my next conquest.  I’m like a little butterfly, flitting from hobby to interest to activity to hobby.  While this might seem shallow (or dare I say flighty) to some, I don’t actually think of it as a problem.  It has in a way left me a Jack-of-All-Trades-Master-of-None, but mastery has never been the point for me.  I have a deep to desire to be entirely captivated by something.  I love the feeling of being so enraptured that you cannot look away.  Something so engaging that it requires a full and total commitment from me is what I’ve always been looking for in the various pursuits throughout my life.

But for years my “hobby” was drinking and there wasn’t time for any interests outside the bottle.  And in the last 22 months my focus has been on sobriety, on correcting those faults within myself that lead me to seek comfort of the intoxicant variety.  I could say to myself “I miss making art, or learning about new historical times periods, or  arguing about books” but when I was an active alcoholic there was no will for anything like that, and so far as a recovering alcoholic there has been a sense of greater priorities.    I think that recognizing now a nagging boredom in the back of my heart might be a sign that I am progressing in my sobriety, that the dire immediacy of relapse may have passed and I should start to look at the broader possibilities for my life.  Please please don’t mistake this for a sense of complacency about sobriety.  I have to work every single day to stay sober and there is never going to be a moment when I get to say “I’m cured!”  But rather, not-drinking is a habit now, part of my regular life, and while difficult, is not an abstract concept that I need to grow comfortable with.

Sin lives in the space in our soul that is not filled by God or that which God gives us to love.  I have had for years now space in my soul where that which captivates me is supposed to be and hasn’t been.  It has been a long time since anything fully engaged my whole self; my intellect, my heart, my passion, my ethics, everything.  The root of sin is pride, but the ground it grows in is boredom.  With God’s grace, and a look at the community college roster of class for the fall, I can kill the soil.

(1 Year, 10 Months, 4 Days Sober)

It is supposed to be over 100 degrees here in suburban Maryland this afternoon.

I am not leaving my apartment.

Not that this is particularly different than the last couple of weeks.  I have gotten myself into a nice routine of sleeping until 11AM, reading the news and drinking coffee until 2PM, watching some TV until dinner, and then reading until about 3AM.  I’ve managed to squeeze in going to the gym and the grocery store and even the occasional shower, but mostly I’m a lazy lazy lazy person right now.

I was talking with my mom the other weekend, and I remarked about how I was just wallowing away all my free time.  I expected some kind of rebuke, that I shouldn’t just loll around on my couch for months, but she surprised me.

“I think it’s good darling, having some time where you aren’t responsible to anyone.”

I didn’t know what to say and we just kind of moved on.  It wasn’t a big deal, but it kind of stuck with me.  As things tend to do.

I consider myself a rather lazy person.  I will avoid chores like taking out the garbage or doing laundry until the moment when I can no longer avoid them (as in, the lid to the garbage can no longer closes, or I’m out of clean underwear).  I would happily spend the rest of my life in my pajamas and never have to wear non-elastic pants again.  When someone asks if I want to “get together and do something” I think they mean “sit on a porch and smoke and talk” which is the least doing capable of something.  If I open Pinterest the day is shot.

On the other hand I have this odd internal sense of responsibility, maybe even more like duty.  I always feel that I am being negligent of a task or a commitment.  That is even while I am fulfilling a different task or commitment.  I don’t know that I have ever refused a request from someone by saying “I don’t have time right now.”  I always feel behind; in planning, grading, cooking, cleaning, decorating, writing, reading, getting to know the city I live in, learning how to knead bread, EVERYTHING.  I have a constant sense of failure not because I actually fail at things (I don’t, things tend to turn out ok for me) but because I look at everything as what I could have done if I were more organized, more dedicated, more artistic, more generous, more fearless.

I’m not one of those people who is described as “driven.”  Those people are successful; they start companies right out of college, or run for office, or “change the way we all think about this new fangled pet political cause.”  People who are “driven” aren’t surrounded by the fire hazard of 3 months worth of paper recycling and wondering how to get the comprehension questions written for each reading book without actually having to write the comprehension questions.  No, I’m more what you would call “hounded.”  Continually pursued by a sense that I’m not living up to my potential and that in doing so I am neglecting that for which I’ve been entrusted.  Driven people have lofty goals they want to achieve; hounded people can’t seem to avoid the responsibilities they didn’t (necessarily) ask for.

It’s always made me seem old.  Not mature.  Old.  I’ve never felt young, and I’ve never seemed young.  I spent years trying to “act the way I was supposed to” and be “carefree” and “enjoy my life” but what I was was miserable and an alcoholic and a complete fuck-up.  Most of the mistakes I’ve made in my life have been conscious choices to do the opposite of what I knew was right.

And I think it makes my mom a little sad that I got old so quickly.  It makes me sad sometimes too.

Now, despite all I have said here, it is too fucking hot today to do anything but sit in my AC and watch TV.

(I Year, 9 Months and 27 Days Sober) 

I feel bad for my future (and at this point entirely imaginary) children.  Those poor bastards are going to be forced to play sports of some sort until they go to college or move out with a job.  I don’t care if they hate me for it.

Because breaking over a decade of fat-habits when you’re almost 30 is just fucking awful.

I’m going on a cruise with my mom, sister and my mom’s best friend in about 3 weeks.  We’re going to Alaska and I am ridiculously excited.  Since I am stoney-ass broke (as always) my mom offered to buy me some new clothes for our vacation.  I’m pretty sure she saw some of the pictures from London, where I am wearing the same combination of jean-t-shirt-Chucks everyday.  My mom, bless her, would really like me to dress like a grown-up.  I’m pretty comfy in my rut of Buffy T-shirts and Toms.  But, new clothes are new clothes.

The real problem is that I don’t actually want to shop for said new clothes.  I really like browsing.  I love going with friends to walk around shops and touch all the pretty things.  I love picking out clothes for other people and then convincing them that spending too much money is totally ok.  (That’s me, great influence on the rest of humanity.)  But I find shopping for myself utterly torturous.  I fluctuate between a 16 and an 18, but I’m just terribly shaped.  I’m what is politely referred to as “apple” shaped: I carry almost all my fat in my belly.  I have tiny (for my size) boobs, no hips whatsoever, fat but not frightening arms, well-shaped legs, and a surprisingly nice ass (which got even nicer when I was taking yoga).  Basically, nothing is made to fit me properly, aside from dresses with empire-waists, which I love, but get kind of boring after a while and aren’t always in fashion, so are sometimes hard to find.  Pants are a nightmare, shirts are not much better.  Shopping for clothes always seems like a frustrating, sweaty (I mean, for fucks sake, why are dressing rooms so damn hot!), humiliating experience.  The joy of online shopping has made all of this less public for me, but not really any less of the other stuff.

So, my mom made me this really generous offer and I didn’t want to do anything about it because going to the mall and admitting that I like donuts better than doing lunges just felt too daunting.  Why set myself up for something I know is going to make me miserable?  But I felt that I owed it to my mother to try.

Yesterday I went out to Montgomery Mall (yes, I’m a snob and Wheaton isn’t good enough for me) and it wasn’t the most awful thing ever.  With a store suggestion from my mom I found an amazingly cute dress that will totally function for work come the fall, a nice pair of pants that look not too bad, and a lovely light sweater that has an appropriate cruise-vibe without looking stupid (I think, shit, I hope).  A quick stop into Nordstroms garnered an interesting blouse and my first ever poor costumer service experience at that store.  (Note to others, just because I say I’m a teacher does not mean I am in favor of most or any “educational experiments” that leave children unable to read in English.  Actually, I tend to be against those.)

I was surprised.  I didn’t come home crying.  I actually liked the clothes I bought.  Later last evening, after I finished typing up the last of my spelling lessons for next school year (Thank Pete that shit is DONE!) the upswing of positive shopping convinced me to go to the gym.

I won’t say, “and it turned out to be a huge mistake!”  It wasn’t.  It was like every other time I got to the gym, dreading but determined, and then I remember that I don’t belong there.  When the school year ended it was on my to-do list to get myself in the habit of getting some physical activity every day.  But sleeping is so much more rewarding.  And busting my ass to get as much planning done as possible seems much more important (and quite frankly, for my sanity in the coming school year, it is).  So I’ve been lenient on myself when a whole week passes and I haven’t managed to do more than work up a sweat waiting for the bus in the blistering sun and unrelenting humidity.

I always go with the “something is better than nothing” when I walk into the gym.  It’s just so depressing, looking at the other residents of my apartment complex and trying not to watch them as the watch me try to find a treadmill that is only next to another on one side. Inevitably, as I’m plodding along at the slowest pace possible while still moving, some woman about my age wanders in like she’s lost, jumps on the the treadmill next to me, and just starts running like she sees Benedict Cumberbatch in the distance with an engagement ring.  It doesn’t matter how good I felt by the end last night (and I did feel really really good) or any other time; as a fat introvert public displays of exercise grate on the very essence of my soul.

I’ve been fat for almost as long as I can remember.  When I was young I was athletic.  I played basketball and swam during the summer.  But puberty and tragedy hit at the same time, so I gave up sports and devoted myself to comfort eating.  But once I was out of high school (where it is everyone’s job to make everyone feel as bad as possible about everything possible) no one I encountered really made me feel bad about being fat.  People would voice concerns occasionally, and periodic drops in my weight would be heartily congratulated, but all those horrid things you see in Rom-Coms about the skinny girl not letting the fat girl be a bridesmaid because it will ruin the “look” of the wedding didn’t happen to me.  Any feelings of recrimination or self-loathing or despair came from inside me, not from outside words or actions.  Last week at the 4th of July I was sitting back on the beach while a group of my friends was down at the water.  The sun was almost completely set so I could only see the outline of each person.  Without their particular characteristics they all looked the same: small and compact.  I on the other hand am large and expansive.  As I noted this all in my mind, I reflected what kind people they are, more concerned with character than appearance.  I didn’t hate myself, I just like them more.

Being fat is a comfort.  It’s an excuse to eat whatever I want, because hell, I’m fat already so what’s it going to do to me.  It’s an excuse for being single, since when you have skinny options (and there are always skinny options) most men aren’t naturally inclined to trod the trundling path.  It’s an excuse for lingering dissatisfaction with my life, because no matter how happy I am, my clothes are still fairly frumpy and everyone is way cuter than me.

But more than anything being fat is an excuse to be uncharitable towards others.  I assert my moral superiority as a fat person and therefore am suspicious of the motives of all other people.  I’m fat, you’re not, and I KNOW you think you’re better than me because you’re not fat, but that makes me better than you because you think you’re better than me for something as stupid as being skinny.

And this mindset, more than pre-mature death or cuter clothes or comfortable plane travel, is why I need to change.  Continually making poor choices and then wielding those choices as a cudgel against unsuspecting bystanders is the opposite of the way I want to live my live, antithetical to the call for love that I have.  I abhor victim-culture, but I’m realizing that I am participating in all the smug benefits even if I’m skipping over the oh-poor-me intro.

I guess that means the stupid treadmill and I have another stupid encounter to look forward to.  I might be willing to change, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to bitch about it.

(1 Year, 9 Months and 21 Days Sober)

I have a wicked ugly bruise on my hand and I cannot for the life of me figure out how I got it.  It’s along the thumb of my right hand, between the bottom knuckle and the wrist.  I almost think there is a fracture.

When I was drinking I would find bruises all the time.  On my legs, arms, waist, once on my neck.  I was really used to stumbling into the shower and seeing evidence of where I had stumbled into everything else the night before. I didn’t spend too much time wondering with who/what or where I had collided; since I didn’t care and probably wouldn’t have been able to dredge up the memory anyway.

Now that I’m sober I really, really, really want to know how I got this bruise!

I spent the last week or so hanging out with my friends.  My dear friend KP was visiting from Chicago.  KP is a friend from college, and she has been a huge support in my sobriety.  For a week there were dinners out, long nights on porches with cigarettes and conversation, movies, hours at the pool, BBQ, jet ski rides on the creek and fireworks seen from the beach.    There was a nocturnal schedule, one perfectly adapted to my no-school summer.  By Sunday I was sunburnt, migraine-ridden, and sick to my stomach.  It was perfect.  Somewhere along the way I picked up this bruise.

Occasionally I think my friends are kind of like bruises.  I don’t know where they came from, they remind me constantly of my interaction with the world, but they don’t insist upon me.  I should explain, because that sounds awful.  I don’t mean it that way.

Most of the people I know, aside from family, are people I met in college.  I don’t have very distinct memories when I met them though.  There were a few I had classes with as freshman, girls who lived in my dorm.  KP is one of the few people I have a vivid memory of when we became friends and what bonded us.  Mostly, over four years I just kind of got swept up in a group that I didn’t intend to join, and that I didn’t understand why they wanted me.  Now a huge part of that insecurity is just me; I don’t really do so well past one-on-one.  (Someone once told me I was a much better friend over the phone than I was in person.  She might have been onto something.)  Once there are more than two people involved in the conversation I just clam up and default to bitchiness.  (It’s not so cute.)  So being involved with a large group of people who are comfortable with each other and interact without hesitancy or awkwardness is simply overwhelming for me.  I’m often left with a “how did this happen?” feeling and that terrible need to rehash in my head everything I said.

It’s humbling to realize how much fear is in your life.  I’m ashamed to admit to myself that over and over again I wait for that moment when the “truth” is going to come out and the people that I try to (and mostly succeed in) trust(ing) have had it with me.  Sometimes I think I might be so unsure because I can’t remember where things started.  I like to trace thing back to beginnings, and without being able to do that I don’t know where to go.

Bruises are marks from a collision that wasn’t as gentle as it should have been.  I’m a total klutz and my skin is hyper-sensitive, so basically I can wake up with a bruise that I didn’t have when I went to bed.  Bruises are evidence that I live in space, in bodily relation to other objects, and that I am not always good at judging that relation.  The people I care about and who care about me in return do much the same thing.  I easily fall into a myopic mindset, thinking I’m the most important person and no one can possible understand that.  When that narcissism runs into other peoples’ needs, their good and bad days, their hopes and disappointments, their opinions, and their correction, it knocks around my selfish need to be self-pitying.  Little moments of bruised ego reminding me that I am not the only one, and I do not get to pretend that other people don’t matter.  A bruise on my leg tells me I need to watch more carefully where I’m walking.  “It’s been so long since we’ve talked” tells me that I’m not giving the care that I should be to the people who’ve earned it through patience, acceptance, love, and time.

But a bruise isn’t a break.  With a bruise you just have to notice it and be careful of it.  With a break you need to go to the doctor and rearrange your life.  I’ve been blessed with friends that don’t push.  I’m stubborn and childish, I don’t like to be told what to do, and I don’t at all like feeling like I’m being manipulated into doing something against my will.  This doesn’t mean that my friends don’t give me advice.  They just let me get there on my own.  They know the quickest way to get me to do the right thing is to let me think it’s my idea.  And they wait for me to invite them into what’s going on.  I’m doing much better now that I’m sober about letting people into what’s going on in my mind and my soul, but even so it’s still a struggle for me.  And they know that.  And so they don’t pry.  They’re just there when I’m ready.

I don’t think I’m ever going to know where I got this bruise on my hand.  It will fade in a few days and it will bug me for a couple weeks that I injured myself and can’t remember it.  I’ll probably never understand where my friends came from, and I don’t know that I’ll ever understand why they stay.  My job isn’t to understand.  It’s to accept.  And to accept without fear.

(1 Year, 9 Months, 19 Days Sober)