I, like most people, have a very old pair of Chuck Taylors that are falling to bits.  There are holes in the heel and ball of both soles.  The rubber along the sides has completely split.  I wouldn’t call them black so much as “formerly black.”

I love these shoes.  I’ve had them for years.  I can’t remember when I bought them, but I think I’ve had them since I lived in Texas, which was five and a half years ago.  If I’m correct (and while I can distinctly remember buying other colors of Chucks, I’m 99 precent sure I haven’t bought new black ones) then these little shoes have been through quite a time.  From Texas, to Maryland, to Oregon, (back) to Maryland.  From grad school drop out, to unemployed, to dead-end employed and finally to joyfully employed.  From backyard BBQs, to hipster dives, to seedy dive-dives, to AA meetings and Target dates.  These shoes have carried me to and from movies, museums, weddings, family vacations, holidays, hang-outs, errands, hospitals, doctor’s appointments, beaches, mountains, Stonehenge, Mount Vernon, Juneau, house parties, Church, and once, a courthouse.

But I can’t wear them anymore.

I started spiritual direction about a month ago (after the Epiphany incident).  It’s been slow going, but not in a bad way.  When I ask someone to take time out of their day to talk to me I suddenly become a total idiot who can’t sting two words together.  But Fr. seems to understand that I’m just frightened, so mostly we’re just getting in the habit of me showing up and answering a few questions about how I’m doing.  Two weeks ago (ish) he asked me to think about not holding on to my brokenness, the things that separate me from others and from God.  I immediately thought of my shoes.

I’ve known for over a year that I needed to replace my black Chucks.  I couldn’t wear them if it had rained within the last 24 hours, because there are too many holes for water to seep in.  Even if it were dry, all the holes have ruined a few pairs of socks.  Any outfit immediately went from “cutely-casual” to “wow, you gave up when you got to your feet.”  When my mother and sister visited for Thanksgiving, we went to Mount Vernon.  I accidentally stepped in a soggy patch of ground and got mud all on the inside of my shoe.  My sister was so sad that I was wearing hole-y shoes that she gave me a gift certificate for Christmas to Zappos in exactly the amount for a replacement pair.

I just couldn’t bring myself to order the replacement pair.  But when Fr. asked me to consider letting go of some of my brokenness, I knew it was time.  Not because he was in any way talking about an old pair of shoes.  He of course meant spiritual/emotional brokenness, not shoes.  But I like metaphors.  And in many ways, my outside is how I sort out my inside.  (The real broken thing on the inside isn’t something I’m ready to talk about publicly yet.)

I order new Chucks last week.  And when they arrived I put the whole box in the closet and refused to even open it.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been hounded by a parent who thinks her daughter needs more difficult math work.  Every time I try to explain that the student hasn’t mastered the assigned material, the mom tells me that her daughter doesn’t do the work correctly because it is too easy, and then we both end up semi-yelling.  Then she goes and complains to my Assistant Headmaster about me.  We’ve repeated this cycle almost weekly since mid-January.  I’m exhausted.  AHM is exhausted.  The only one with any energy left for this fight seems to be the mother.  I tried arguing my point.  I tried ignoring her.  I tried giving her what she told me she wanted.  Now we are at the point where what I gave wasn’t good enough, so she’s making new demands.  By the end of last week I had cried all my tears, had all my days of hiding in my apartment because I couldn’t face other human beings, all my hours of self-doubt and my nail were bitten down to bloody stumps.  I to AHM that I was simply going to stop checking my email.  Since he refused to accept that as a solution, he played therapist trying to figure out why this whole thing was upsetting me so much.  Finally he asked me:

“Well, how do you feel as a math teacher?”

“I’m ok.  It’s not my worst subject.  That’s religion. But math is just above that.”

“What would you say your strongest subject is?”

“Poetry.”

“Ah.  So, she’s hitting you in your weakness.”

I was so defeated by this conversation I went to sleep at 7 PM that night and woke up crying the next morning.  (Luckily it was a Saturday!)

You see, I was caught in a strange position.

I hate being weak.  I mean I hate it more than I hate almost anything.  But I’m proud of being broken.  I’m refuse to acknowledge my weaknesses until it is humiliating.  I shout my damage from the rooftops for anyone to hear.

Weakness seems to me to be the natural state I was born into; the least intelligent in my family, the most prone to emotionalism, the normal looking girls with an endless supply of very pretty friends, the one who “never lives up to her potential.”  I  react like a banshee when someone points out to me where I need to improve because I hear them piling on to a lifetime of “not good enough.”

Brokenness, on the other hand, is a perverse badge of honor.  Through choices and circumstances I’ve managed to cultivate some deep fissures in my soul, cracks that leave me alone in ways I don’t need to be.  But that brokenness is mine.  I made it.  No one gave it to me, and it’s a testament to what a good little fuck-up I can be.  I look pretty normal, and then I get to shock people by telling them secrets about just what a mess I’ve (at times) made my life, just what horrid things I’ve done to people, just what chaos I’ve left simply by being present.  And I get to do so with smile, daring them to call me out as a bad person.  It’s my favorite game in the world.  A game where I’m the only possible winner.

If I’m seeing my own situation clearly, it seems I can only have one.  I can be weak or I can be broken, but I have to choose.  If I choose to be broken I get to keep my twisted amusement, but I have to accept that my weakness will be permanent.  If I choose to be weak I have to be humble and honest, but there is the option that I can be better, with hard work and grace.

I took the new shoes out of the box and put them in the closet where the old ones were before.  I asked a few teachers around school if I can observe how they teach math and when my next paycheck comes I’m ordering a book titled “How to Be an Outstanding Math Teacher – Primary Grades.”

(2 Years, 4 Months and 23 Days Sober)