Spirituality – The Reprobate's Guide to Pancakes

Swimming Without Shores

I don’t watch movies. They bore me. I rarely watch TV. It irritates me. I can’t be scared anymore. I don’t get butterflies in my stomach or feel ignorantly hopeful about anything. I make no assumptions that my time on Earth will be OK. I’m never surprised when things go poorly. I assume the worst of strangers, the best of no one and consider all of my words will be used against me. I clean when I’m anxious, cry when I’m out of ideas and when I’m both, I sit very quietly and allow it to crush me from all sides. I pray and then pray that I will know what to pray, the perfect sequence to unlock the will of God. Friends are few and at a distance, family is inside but not beyond my guard tower. Everyone is subject to removal. They call this Fear.

I read books. They fuel me. I write stories. They cleanse me. I am amazed by the power of my own mind and the places it takes me. I am electrified by the formation of a thought I’ve never had before and giddy when it flows effortlessly like warm butter. I am always surprised when people prove me wrong. I forgive the worst of strangers, expect the best of no one but myself and consider that if I am willing to say it, I better be willing to stand by it. I sleep when I’m content, share with everyone when I’m creative and the two make a magical pairing. I forget God in the midst of my mess and kick myself for relying on my own understanding. The friends who remain love me more than I deserve, family, beyond all cause, and only because they choose. Everyone is necessary. They call this Love.

I had more ‘friends’ in addiction than I do today. Indiscriminate, I had a home in my sick heart for all. Today, I live in world, I’ve found, that very few may enter. It’s healthy, it’s lonely and it’s what I must do to survive.

There’s a kind of shock that comes when you wake up from a nightmare. When you wake up and realize that, beyond all belief, the nightmare was real, the shock settles in for good and becomes a part of your arsenal. Christ tells me to fight this fear with faith, experience tells me to respect it by instinct. The two war daily within me. I am forgiving and condemning. I am love and hate. I am surrendered, I am my own God. I am patient, I am incensed. I am given over to emotion and a controlled demolition. Every day I put my feet on the floor, fail, cry and take a step.

Tonight I saw an acquaintance in line at the grocer. I don’t know which I bowed to in that moment, Christ, fear or both in concession. He was/is in very poor condition with tremendously swollen legs and cracked soles and no, I don’t know the exact cause. Were I to give an educated guess, I would say a heart infection brought on by drug abuse. I may be off base. Either way, I turned and left without speaking to him, leaving him to walk home on his injury. I don’t feel bad and I would hope that my relationship with God is so that I would know unequivocally if I had erred. I am a brother in Christ but also a mother in Christ and thus I feel a responsibility to stay far removed from people in these situations. This is the tightrope I walk between love and safety.

I will pray for him and truthfully, there I am most powerful. I don’t know how to function well between these two places without erring. It may be impossible. I am only sure that it isn’t my job to save, only to obey. I’ll leave the saving to Christ, he’s far better at it than I.

1 John 3:1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

When Gifts are Gutters

I’ve never been very good at isolating what I want in life. I know what I want in food, in friends and fun, but the big picture is an obscure galaxy of possibilities. I have always had the sense that I exist somewhere outside of my body, somewhere outside the laws of physics. My true self is always just a little beyond my reach. When I was young, I would lay very still in my bed and suddenly I could feel the separation between my spirit and my body; two independent entities working together. My spirit felt trapped within the burdensome confines of my body. If you’ve ever cooked pasta al dente, that was how I perceived the experience. My spirit was hard, structured and tangible like the core of a noodle and my body was soft, vulnerable and incasing, like the exterior of the noodle. There was a definite separation between the two, though they were formed to fit one another. It feels strange to describe it today, but I can still visualize and remember the feeling to it’s most intricate detail. I would try to force my spirit free of my body with no success. I have always been trapped in this foreign prison.

It’s not that I hate my body. I just don’t identify with it. I am lithe, agile and ever expanding, soaring in all directions, dimensions and caving inward just as quickly. I am electric, reaching out into every space and engaging. Every thought, feeling, idea or desire is within my reach. Every pain is mine and yours and shared and there are no barriers between. My body, however, is a sloth. It separates me from all other things, defines my space and attributes, eliminates possibilities and engages only in within the limits of some laws I can’t understand. It tells me no, slows me down, forces pauses and structure and consumes too much of my time with it’s demands for nurturing.

When I was young I thought everyone felt this way. I think we all assume the rest of the world thinks as we do. I was wrong. My friends liked it here on Earth. They had Whitney Houston, dance recitals, Keds and fudge pops. They thought about things they could feel and touch and never felt the kick of their spirit as it slammed against their kidneys. So, where does a ten year old go when they have no one to identify with? My friends were too simple, adults too preoccupied.

I went from wanting to be a doctor to wanting to know why I was here. Many nights I prayed that Jesus would appear before my bed and just tell me what to do. Simple request. I’m glad he didn’t though, because telling a ten year old they will become a heroin addict probably won’t lend to their journey. And why even try? I was heading there all on my own.

I dove into books on history, poetry, philosophy, religion, mystical practices, psychology and anything that might explain what the hell I was supposed to be doing. I should have had my Master’s Degree by the age of twelve. I knew I had a job but no one was telling me what it was. I scrawled quotes into the undercarriage of my bunkbed, wrote poems, songs and stories. And when that wasn’t enough I fell into a depression.

The summer that I turned twelve, I fell into a deep hole. I can recall laying on our couch and crying into the cushions. I knew. Somehow I just knew my life was about to change forever and there was nothing I could do about it. I knew that my time as a child was over. I knew that there would be pain, long-suffering and consequences. I knew I wouldn’t run in the woods or steal gum from the soda shop. I knew I wouldn’t get a pass. I knew that I wouldn’t dance to The Bodyguard or play king of the hill. I knew it was coming and it came like a freight train, mowing down the life I had known. It was a terrible summer and I’ve never been the same person since.

Most of society has such a weak perception of drug addiction. All you have to do is read the ignorant comments on a news article to find out that most people are small-minded and inexperienced on the subject. They want them all thrown in jail, they think they are all horrible people, they call them scum, low-lifes or wish they would die. Those are easy conclusions to come to from their cozy suburban homes. The truth is, junkies are more complex, more feeling, more intuitive, sensitive and intelligent than your average newspaper subscriber.

I didn’t stumble upon drug addiction. I went there naturally. I was born into a world that didn’t respect feelings, spirituality, existentialism or originality. I was told I should fit into a specific set of socially admirable criteria and if I didn’t, I was a failure. I was told to like crap music, care about clothes more than people, want money more than freedom, regurgitate facts and be the best fleshy little robot I could be. And when I couldn’t do that, drugs got me there. Drugs allowed me to stop thinking and start operating on a low-level. Drugs eliminated my desire to know God, to know my path or to reach beyond my body and grasp the things that can’t be seen. The first time I snorted an oxycontin, I heard angel’s sing through the sound of my own vomiting. I thought I had found an exit from my pain, but instead I had entered hell on a straw.

There is a part of every junkie that was snuffed out with their first hit and usually it was the best part of them. Usually, it was the part of them God created especially to bring joy, love and beauty to this world.

Today, I’ve come to an agreement with my body. Sobriety doesn’t relieve every struggle. We aren’t exactly friends, but I make it work for me. I let it exist in the world I’ve chosen to create, like an annoying guest that I’m willing to tolerate for a time, because I know one day it will die and with it, my prison. And at night, I fly.

In Every Stock Photo Lies a Killer

If you play the air drums professionally, talk to office equipment or ask for hot dog money from the mayor, we’ve already begun a friendship.

Look at this ridiculous stock photo. The photographer never thought “This will be the photo that makes National Geographic!” No, he thought, “This new iPhone is amazing! I can zoom so far I see my career!” I like it though, because somewhere far below the range of the shot there is a hidden culture of creatures, diverse and distinct, devouring each other, fighting for space, food and survival. Our world is just like this. We wear pants and keep our elbows below the table but behind all of the pretense, we are no different. If you have ever spent time in a Walmart parking lot, you’ve witnessed this reality.

Ocean Stock Photo

I used to believe that some people had it all figured out. They wore watches with fancy little numbers and dials, changed their oil on the recommended date, avoided nitrates and instilled a love for the classic writers in the hearts of orphans. Only someone on dope could believe such nonsense. All it took was a few weeks of sobriety for me to realize that everyone is fucked up in their own unique way. Some people smell bad and that way is never going to land on my list of acceptable oddities. Others hide their issues behind iron gates and decorative corbels —equally offensive. Some of us play our sickness out in a parking lot or jail cell. Pick your poison, you’re spilled milk like the rest of us and I love you for it.

I’ve always preferred those who offer up their demons like business cards. If you play the air drums professionally, talk to office equipment or ask for hot dog money from the mayor, we’ve already begun a friendship. If you say you’ve just been released from the mental institution and you are selling hand-carved soap to support your dope habit, I’ll happily give your eulogy. Most people in society look down on these folks, but they are far more respectable than your garden variety politician or housewife. You don’t have to worry whether they will betray you. Of course they will! And doesn’t it feel good to know where you stand?

Three of the best weeks of my life were spent in a psychiatric facility. During that time, I met a respectable housewife who suddenly believed she was talking to God. I also met a respectable furniture craftsman who thought he WAS God. They had been placed in the ER together, divided only by a curtain and their families were lucky enough to hear them talk to one another, God and his child. Both had experienced some sort of mental breakdown which resulted in unmatched comedy. After they both exited their delirium, we found out they worked across the street from each other but had never met! I felt like the luckiest witness on the planet. What kind of good dope junkie must I have been to have stepped into this mess? I will never forget them and the hope they gave me. Anyone can be bat-shit crazy—-anyone. There was hope for me yet.

I feel sure that both of them went back to their suburban lives without testimony to others. They returned to their dinner parties, business meetings, manicured lawns and never spoke a word of it, not even to their most liberal friends. Maybe they saw someone slipping, maybe they saw an acquaintance with that look, the look that begs for help but holds the mouth hostage, but the impulse for honesty was buried deep. They are you and I and everyone in-between. But I know, and now you do too.

None of us are exempt. I’m a mother of two with a felony drug conviction and a vault of stories that would make most men cringe. I’m not dumb, I’m human, we all are, and for that I am forever thankful. Without mistakes, this life would be bland, boring and utterly devoid of killer stock photos.