stop being the strong one, sheesh!

The fan was humming a dominant over the stove as I boiled an egg in my new shiny little saucepan, – at least it was the dominant to the particular innocence mission song that was playing at the time.

Harmonies everywhere.

—

I look around at cozy brown piano, soft blue couch (a cast-off from Ms Spur), new TV (a cast-off from the ridiculously unnameable Orthodox guy) …

I am slowly making memories here.  I couldn’t, all summer.  It was by the far the busiest summer of my life.  I was wearing many hats and unlike most summers, I actually made almost enough money.  This bodes well for the future (though I don’t think I will play viola in the downtown gig again – that was too crazy a commute, and every other night, and for not enough money).

But now that September has come with its relatively relaxed pace (until more students register and group classes start next week … ),  I have been able to do things like have friends over for dinner.

I am discovering that I love to make meals for people.  Especially if there is some challenge involved.  Orthodox fasting days force me to think creatively.  My dad came to a dinner I put on last Friday which was completely vegan, and afterwards, as he went on and on about how tasty it was, I said, "Did you notice it was a fasting day?"

This is where Fr M (who was also a guest on Friday) would hasten to say that menus are not, but definitely NOT the point of fasting.  Still, I think it’s true to say that for me, Music Shivers, being forced to think about food *is* a spiritual struggle.

—

I’m avoiding writing what I had the urge to write about.

—

Orthodoxy is like a fairy tale.  A really complex, long, drawn-out fairy tale …

On Sunday Fr M was driving me home after a small group had gone to see Twelfth Night at Bard on the Beach.  The last stretch of the journey was just him and me.  And Mahler’s 4th symphony, which I had lent to him ("Who is this Mahler you keep talking about? I guess I need to hear his stuff" – "Start with this one, it’s not his best but it’s more accessible").  He put it on and said "See?  I’ve been listening.  I don’t know what it’s about but I can see it’s about something.  Why is it that you’re drawn to him particularly?"

I thought for a moment and said, "I like what he’s concerned about because I’m concerned about it too.  He wrote on the manuscript of his 3rd symphony, ‘Father, look upon my wounds.  Let no creature be lost.’"

Fr M nodded.

We were listening to the last movement of the 4th – the child’s view of heaven.

I realized, and said, "I haven’t properly listened to Mahler in about two years.  Since I graduated.  I haven’t been able to."

—

Just before we got to my apartment, something I said prompted Fr M to say in a completely different tone: "You spend a lot of your life looking after men, did you realize that?"

I felt myself constrict.  "Ye-e-es," I said warily …

We parked in front of my building and talked a while.

I felt myself unravelling, slowly, painfully, with relief, while we talked.

I think I mentioned in this diary once how I had gone to a counsellour for a while.  (About a year ago now.)  That had been intensely cathartic and scary.  The main value of it, I think now, was that someone actually listened to me and believed me, and assured me that I wasn’t crazy: Yes, I had gone through horrific things.  But that was sort of where it got left (who knows? maybe if I’d kept going, we’d have gone somewhere else more constructive).

Since becoming a catechumen, occasionally I’ve had talks with Fr M that are even more probing and scary than the counselling, but the context is totally different.  I’m not a client paying a professional to assess me.  He’s my father.  More and more I’m learning what this word means.  Anyway, somehow the most awful things are discussed and I am left with something other than the awful things.  Sometimes I have a clear sense of what to do next.  Other times I simply feel absolutely resolved, like the D major chord in the middle of Verklarte Nacht.

So on Sunday, the end of our talk was about letting myself be rescued by someone strong.  Everything in me reacts against that notion.  But Fr M said for me, it was going to be part of how I was going to be saved in general.  He talked about being vulnerable and being real and letting myself be loved.  I don’t even know how to begin.  Fr M prayed for a strong man to come into my life; but afterward he said, "Now don’t wait for that, but start right now with Mr. God; let Him teach you how to be loved."  And earlier in that conversation he had also said that perhaps the strong person I would be vulnerable with would be an abbess or someone like that, so it’s not as if Fr M is thinking that it has to be a romantic relationship that will save me.

I said to him, "What you’re saying – about being rescued – it’s probably my most secret and desperate desire, but I also feel like it’s just plain wrong."

—

Memory:

2003.  The summer everything went crazy.  (The "thing I won’t write about.")  There was a day when suddenly my whole body went nuts; I hyperventilated and started to cry uncontrollably.  Then I rushed to the toilet and vomited until there was nothing left in me to vomit, but I kept wretching anyway.  My mother sat with me on the floor and held me when things calmed down a bit, and I said miserably to her, "I stopped telling the Friar things because I could see it scared him.  But he also really wanted to be there for me, and I wouldn’t let him be.  I’m proud.  I don’t accept help even when I want it badly.  I think I’ve driven him away … "

—

It was somehow fitting that when we finished our talk, Fr M walked me right to the door of my apartment, as if it were Exercise No. 1 in the How to be Cared for by a Man course.

—

But I’m devastated.  This isn’t something about myself that I seem able to change.  I guess that’s where letting go of my own control comes in …