“Some days I really miss Legend of the Seeker.”

This is hands down one of the best texts I can ever get.

Every so often a friend of mine texts me this.  Sometimes the wording is slightly different, but the thought is always the same.  She is reminded of a show we both really enjoyed (I will say for myself “loved,” but I don’t necessarily want to say that for her), and that reminds her of me, so she reaches out to me.

It isn’t a deep conversation.  It isn’t a topic that encompasses the decade we have been friends.  It isn’t everything about the tragedies we’ve shared, the comfort we’ve given, the prayers we’ve said, or even the amazing time our senior year in college when she kicked over a hay bale at a school event because two freshman were obnoxiously making out on it.  (So funny, I think I peed my pants just a little.)

It’s just a sentence.  Just a sentence about something silly that we share.  And when one of us thinks of it, we think of the other.  It’s easy to get caught up in the seriousness of our relationships.  We sometimes talk ourselves out of reaching out because we don’t have the time for a lengthy catch-up over the phone, or we think the other person doesn’t.  We feel awkward because maybe a great deal of time has passed.  (Or in my case, because so much time has passed I can’t remember how many kids that person has now.)  We don’t want to “bother” someone with the trivialities of our daily life and think we should save communication for life-changing events.  Every so often I see on Facebook people who are strangers to me making idle chit-chat with a friend I haven’t been in contact with for a while, and I think “hey asshole, back off, that’s my friend!”  But the stranger-to-me is trying, I am not.

So, if I may make a suggestion.  If you don’t know what to do for Lent you could make a concerted effort to reach out to people in a simple way.  A text with a funny story.  I notecard you think will make them laugh.  An email with links to shoes you think they should buy when Lent is over.   You might feel like a goober, basically saying to someone, “I was thinking of you, I hope you’re well.”   But remember, that person already knows you’re a goober.  Show them you are a goober who still cares, even if it has been a while.

I think I should start making a list.

(3 Years, 4 Months, and 27 Days Sober)

My roommate is watching Season 3 of Luther.  I’m watching Season 2 of The Fall.

Clearly, one of us is going to murder the other.

Only kidding.

But winter is the time for grim murder mysteries.  And Netflix seems to have an endless supply.

The reason this raises possible concerns is the fact that we might be potential housebound for the immediate future.  Outside has begun what is predicted to be “significant snowfall” and, despite fears of Stephen King-esque violence, I hope that turns out to be accurate.

I’m going to be seriously pissed if I have to go to work tomorrow. Not because I am unprepared for work.  My lesson plans are done and I finished last weeks grading on Friday night.  After what felt like endless internet searching, I found the Lenten activities that I want to do with my class and I’m really excited about getting those started.  My desire to not go to work has nothing to do with work.

In fact, I have had one of the most productive weekends in recent memory.  Since I had a half-day on Friday, I had enough energy to finish up school work on Friday.  I had an appointment on Saturday, so I was already out of my apartment and therefore motivated to knock out the rest of my errands.  I knew it wouldn’t be about 20 degrees yesterday, so I knew I had to go to Mass on Saturday, and I did it, instead of telling myself I had to and then stressing about why I wasn’t.  Despite waking up late on Sunday, and a lengthy afternoon nap, I still managed to compile all my tax information, and as soon as I get one last form from work, the whole file will be ready to be sent to my accountant.  Today I finished a professional development book that I’ve been working on for weeks.

I have that deep sense of satisfaction that comes from accomplishment.  I don’t have this very often.  My “should have” is routinely much longer than “finished.”  I would love to be able to translate this feeling of ease and lightness into a day of coffee, knitting, and binge-watching Agent Carter.  Fifteen hours of steady snowfall should do the trick and get school canceled for tomorrow.  I won’t say I “deserve” an extra day in my already long weekend, but …

You see for the first year in my entire life, I am looking forward to Lent.  I want it to be Lent.  I have a concrete, tangible goal for my spiritual development that I desperately desire to achieve.  I have a plan; sacrifices to make and actions to take that I believe will give my heart the best chance to make a home for Christ at Easter.  And I know it is going to be terrible.  I know that I will hate almost every moment of it.  But that doesn’t make me any less determined.

Even so, or maybe therefore, I would love one last lazy day before Lent starts.  A last day to approach showering as optional and sitting as mandatory.

(3 Years, 4 Months, 26 Days Sober)

The cookies I just baked are so amazing, if I had a boyfriend, he would propose to me.

Seriously, my baking skills are wasted on being single.

I’m warm and cozy and alone in my apartment.  My roommate is at work.  The sky is pouring snow and because of the insanely high winds, it looks like those pictures of enormous schools of fish swimming in the ocean.  The coffee just finished brewing.  I’m immensely content.

I went to confession today.  The priest asked me to say a prayer from the sincerity of my heart, asking for God to provide me with what I need.  I had no idea what to say, or pray as it were.  What do I need?

I have ideas about what I want.  I want to live where it snows consistently.  I love the snow, despite the cold, and the muck, and the laundry, and the aches.  I want to have a house, with a fireplace and a wood-burning stove.  (Clearly, I just want to burn as many trees as possible.)  I want a huge, claw-foot bathtub.  I want to have projects to do, like walls to paint and furniture to refinish.  I want a whole drawer full of wool socks.  I want a dog.  I want a husband and children to share this home with me.

But what do I really need?  What do I need that I don’t have?

So that’s what I asked God.  I asked him to tell me what I need.

I’m interested in what he’ll have to say.  Maybe it will be something I didn’t expect.  Maybe it will be something so obvious I won’t be able to do anything but laugh.  Maybe it will be the opposite of all my desires.  Maybe it won’t.

But for Valentine’s Day God gave me snow, and safety, and sugar, so that’s more than enough for me.

(3 Years, 4 Months, and 24 Days Sober)

Kate and I are at a wedding reception.  I’m not sure who has gotten married.  It isn’t either of us.  The reception is outside, in a wood.  There are lights in the trees and a band playing somewhere.  We pass a cluster of tree stumps where a group of golden illuminated beers are set.  Kate picks up a beer.  She turns to me.

“Come on French, it won’t matter.  It’s just a beer.”

I grab one of the beers and waltz off, following Kate into the woods, laughing.  Why am I stressed about a beer anyway?  Haven’t I been good enough?

I stumble into another clearing.  There is no one there.  No lights, no music.  I’m dizzy and feel sick.  I bend at my waist, holding my hands cupped under my mouth.  Into my hands begins to fall shards of glass.  I want to stop and look at the glass.  I want to yell for help.  But the glass is falling out of my mouth faster and faster, bright pieces of light streaked in blood.  Suddenly, I am throwing up huge mouthfuls of glass.  It’s pouring out of me, tearing me apart from the inside.  My lips are gone and my arms are torn to ribbons.  I can’t stop vomiting glass.

I woke up in tears.

And needless to say, it’s been hard for me to sleep the last couple of days.

I dragged half my pillows to the opposite end of my bed.  It’s a copping mechanism that seems to happen without my thinking about it.  Usually for about a week in the winter, when anxiety is high, I end up sleeping with my head at the foot of my bed, on the opposite side from where I usually sleep.  Last week I knew that closing my eyes would mean seeing my hands bloodied and full of glass, so it has helped, somehow, to be at the opposite end of the bed.  I don’t pretend it makes sense.

I also don’t pretend that I am an ancient Israelite in service of the Pharaoh.  Dream interpretation isn’t my strong suit.  Now, I usually only have vivid, memorable dreams when I am intensely stressed out.  (Writing my senior thesis in college, I had a two week long series of dreams in which a friend tried to murder me and I escaped and he chased my through 1970s San Francisco.  I was writing about William Faulkner, so it didn’t even thematically fit.)  I hadn’t thought that I was particularly stressed; not any more than the usual work, family, weight, money, basic necessities of life crap.

Today I felt as though I had a belly full of glass, while waking.

One of my students had a really terrible day.  She cried and cried and I had to hold her and rock her until she calmed down.  She had had a disagreement with her friends, and she has been having some trouble controlling herself lately, so she just became overwrought.  She told me that she had wanted to tell me for a while that she was sad, but that every time she tried I acted like I didn’t have time for her and didn’t care how she felt.

It was awful.

I felt the same as I had in my dream: helpless, alone, trapped in reaction that I couldn’t control.  When I drank I threw up a lot.  I was rather talented at vomiting.  But it terrified me.  Sometimes I would throw up so much, and for so long, that I wouldn’t be able to breath.  I would feel as if my whole body was filling up; that what I wanted out of me so desperately was going to invade every space and cut off any chance I had of escape.

When it was alcohol, at least I knew what the immediate poison I wanted to expel was.  Now, I’m not sure exactly what is inside of me that has consumed me to the point I fear harm from inside, that I am distracted into indifference.   What have I taken into myself that needs to be taken out again?

My friend Mary drove me home after work.  She listened to me babble about how upset I was.  Before I got out of the car, she asked me, “What are you going to do now?”  I told her the truth, I don’t know.  I don’t know yet exactly what’s wrong, so I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know what I need to change.

I don’t know how to free myself without being sliced to pieces.

(3 Years, 4 Months, and 19 Days Sober)

Last week watching the Super Bowl, I was subjected to the Fifty Shades of Grey trailer for the first, and I hope only, time.  I couldn’t help laughing.  That was what people have been waiting for? Seriously? What crap. How can people not see how stupid this whole thing is? Three years ago I chose to forgo the whole craze.  For some silly reason, pornographic Twilight fan-fiction just didn’t appeal to me.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Twilight plenty.  Cheesy teen-romance with decently funny secondary characters?  I’ll take it.  I don’t think there is anything wrong with guilty pleasures.  No one advocates for a life of Shaker-like austerity, or at least, I don’t.  But on first reading about Fifty Shade of Grey I couldn’t help but think about my mother telling me about when Deep Throat was released.  She told me about how many people she knew bragged about seeing the popular pornographic film.  It was a way for middle class suburbanites to assert their sexual sophistication by participating in an activity that was previously the realm of dingy theaters and men in trench coats.  So the act of rebellion was … following the crowd.  All over again, people were desperate to show just how enlightened and experimental they were by doing just exactly what everyone else was doing.  No thanks.  I’m not worried about liberal women who write for The Atlantic calling me a prude.  My sense of self is not dependent on the high opinion of people I have never met. Honestly, I can’t wait for the reviews of this movie to come out this week.  I can’t wait for people to be shocked when this movie is BAD.  People are going to pretend to be surprised that the dialogue will be cliched and derivative, the acting wooden and campy, and that the plot will be well…the plot it has.  Through intense delusion, people have attempted to elevate masturbational material into literature worthy of cultural attention, and now they have to live with that decision.  It means making a lot of excuses for a terrible movie version of a terrible book.  It means continuing to lie to yourself about the value of something.  To be spared the embarrassment of admitting that they were conned into proclaiming their admiration for low-brow smut, people will have to double-down on their self-indulgent ignorance.  It will be amazing the moment someone says “the movie was bad because it wasn’t true to the book!” I am curious about what happens after.  Since I don’t live under a rock, I read when Charlie Hunam was originally cast as Christian Grey.  I was so sad for him.  I was so sad to see his career ruined.  This is it for Jamie Dornan.  There is no way for him to go back and not have been in this movie.  Same goes for Dakota Johnson.  She should read Ruth Wilson’s recent comments following season one of The Affair about the disparity of female and male orgasms in television and on film.  And, wait, this book is part of a series, so does that mean we are going to be subjected to two more of these shitty movies?  Do the rest of us, who don’t care, have to live with this for years to come? I’m happy to let those who advocate for abuse victims and who warn about the societal dangers of pornography to make the serious arguments against this movie.  I agree with them 100%.  A few weeks ago mass hysteria demanded that UVA be razed to the ground and all fraternity members be rounded up and summarily shot over a story that seems to have been invented whole cloth.  Now here we are with another massive media campaign on our hands, this time telling women that being manipulated and abused is what they really want and should be celebrated as a “lifestyle.” For women and men who buy the lies that physical pain is an expression of emotional devotion, that wealth and social position are an excuse for manipulation and abuse, and that pornography aids in fully formed sexual development, you have my deepest sympathies.  Fifty Shades of Grey, and its like, has painful and long-term consequences for those who don’t recognize it for the set of lies it is. But the first step is for people to admit just how asinine it it. (3 Years, 4 Months, and 18 Days Sober)