Sunday, March 12, 2017. Of course it was a Sunday. Sundays have always been hard for me. (I was going to type “hard”… then I thought “‘difficult’ would be better” and I started to type “difficult” and then I went back to “hard” because sometimes you really don’t need more syllables to make the same point. Of course, this parenthetical aside aside, I’ve rendered such utility moot. But I’m not here just for Brevity’s sake. Brevity, that cold bastard… that stickler for “rules” above else, I slay Brevity with the blunt side of Occam’s razor… I introduce thee to “Stroh’s Bag o’ Rocks.”) Sundays, of course, are the origin of the “Sunday Scaries.” I’ve been getting the Sunday Scaries since before I knew what Sundays were. 

Ugh… Sundays. As a kid, we learn an Incontrovertible Truth: the weekend wasisandwillforeverbe sacred. Saturday and Sunday–48 hours of letmedowhatthehellIwanttime. (As I try to type this, the notifications in the lower left side of my Chromebook keep popping up, and I know that it’s just trying to be helpful, but if another one comes up, I might hurl the Chromebook through my window, which would really ruin the weekend for at least two people.) Friday night sit-coms with my sisters (soda, chips, pretzels, Wise Onion Rings [not Funyuns]), Saturday Morning Cartoons, rest, relaxation, fun, Saturday Night Live, and then… Sunday: SEVEN O’CLOCK MASS. Look—no disrespect to my Catholic friends. According to my mother, I will always be Catholic. I don’t feel Catholic, but she says so, and if I’m Catholic in her world but not in mine, that’s cool. But… and I say this with the utmost sensitivity and respect and the understanding that I assign no ill intent to my parents… if you want to make an empathic, sensitive kid with painfully advanced self-awareness (and I mean PAINFULLY; it’s not a humble brag) wish to join your cult religion, don’t wake him up at SIX O’CLOCK ON A SUNDAY MORNING AND FORCE HIM THROUGH THE SHOCK AND NAUSEA OF EARLYMORNINGANXIETY TO SIT ON A HARD WOODEN BENCH WHILE DRIFTING AWAY TO THE SOUNDS OF BLAH BLAH BLAH SINNERS BLAH BLAH BLAH BLOOD BLAH BLAH BLAH THEWORDSIHAVEBEENWAITINGFORNOWGOINPEACETOLOVEANDSERVETHELORD* and finally go back home to sleep, perchance to dream… Aye, there’s the rub, as dreams turn to nightmares of Monday eclipsing Sunday………

Then begins the countdown to the true dread. If you want to make an empathic, sensitive kid with painfully advanced self-awareness (and I mean PAINFULLY; it’s not a humble brag) wish to join your cult society, don’t rip him out of the comfort of a loving (dysfunctional, flawed, but trying their damned best with what they have) home to sit with a bunch of other lost souls navigating this capitalist hellscape and dealing with it in their own exothermic or endothermic ways. (I say exothermic or endothermic because I’ve had science on my mind as of late [another life-changing evolving story**]—because some kids, i.e., bullies, jocks, egomaniacs, took out their existential angst on the souls around them, while others, like me, absorbed it. It’s not that we were more sensitive; it’s that we were more endothermic: we held in all that angsty energy [Angstergy^TM?] because to hurt others would hurt us even more. The flip side is that we are much more forgiving today.) This made the endothermic kids chum in the water for the exothermic kids. And most of the adults watched and chuckled at how this is just the way of things. But us endotherms, we knew then as kids what we still know now as adults: It can be better. We want to change, to evolve. Exotherms want to stay the same. They’re conservative, reactionary. They’ll lash out at the world to keep their Precious!… Even the most sculpted jocks are emotional Gollums. 

So… Sunday, March 12, 2017 was the first day of what is today a 2,743-days-and-counting meditation streak. I had always wanted to meditate, and had tried on and off for so long… but that was the day it clicked. The key slid in, the tumblers tumbled, the lock turned. A door to the unconscious was unlocked and a certain contractual agreement between the Ego, the Conscious, and the Unconscious began. Seeds were planted, soils were tilled, tears did a a lot of watering, and the unpredictably lovingandcruel sun tested faith. But sprouts burst along the way.

On Sunday, March 12, 2017, I was around 250 lbs… mostly sedentary when not in my classroom teaching. I suffered depression and anxiety but denied and repressed most if not all of the trauma and recognition of root-causes. In the cruel nature of the neurodiverse brain, I lacked the executive function to execute mitigations for a condition I dismissed as a childish quirk… This diffulty struggle hellfight with executive function was why I was depressed and anxious… but I wouldn’t have that realization for another 2,363 days… and that would take a little input from the control variable—the Constant… Constant Catherine. (In this mind’s laboratory, control variable = wife.) Loving someone is seeing them, and being seen is being loved. Catherine saw something and in her gentle way, her gentle, kinder-than-any-other-human-being-I’ve-ever-known-other-than-and/or/equal-to-my-mother-or-my-grandma-Rosie-way, a way that would make any true teacher who believes in showing the student the door but letting the student open it proud, inspired this new chapter in a novel of self-discovery. It’s Eat (less), PrayMeditate, LOVE!

Looking back from this outcropping, the evolution that has transpired in the last 2,743 days is breathtaking. It is sublime. It is like looking out over a giant chasm knowing that while it is beautiful, it is terrifyingly powerful. It is the face of God. It is Frost’s LovelyDarkDeep Woods.

So, I am going to keep many promises. Most of them secretly in my heart of hearts. But it is a secret I share with you. All of my secrets, even the ones I tell, are really just the one secret we all share. I’d tell you, but you already know. I’ll tell you, but you don’t need to hear it. I told you, and you nodded in agreement.

Namaste.

*Other ways to not inculcate enthusiasm:

Me: Why are we going so early?

Mom (or Dad, or Mom and Dad in unison): Togetitoverwith.

This evolved to going on Saturdays at 5pm. Togetitoverwith. Then Saturdays at 5pm on my own when I was old enough to do so. Then “Saturdays at 5pm” when I would drop off the little tracking envelope they gave to our parents to make sure we were going… then “saturdaysatfivepm” when I didn’t go at all… Turns out if the only reason to do something is togetitoverwith, well… I’ve spoken to Jesus many times since then and, trust me, we good. The King and I^⇡ are dancing together in closer harmony than we ever were when I was sitting on a hard wooden bench wishing I was anywherebuthere.

^⇡Think about it. Yul crack up.

** Maybe a future post…