Opening 1

 At some point, every child becomes angry and resents their mother for whispering horrible lies in their ears to calm them at night. You are loved. You are strong. You are wise. The world is a beautiful place, full of opportunities. When you leave my arms, you will do, and see, and be such great things...

They're not lies so much. Most of these things are true or will come true. They just don't seem like it when you're in the world. Mothers try to fill you with the good before the world fills you with the bad. Some of it takes hold, and some of it doesn't.  

My mother never knew I would shut myself out of the world, but she could see it coming. When she tried to talk about it, I cut her off. When she died, I was already in the cave where I would live for many years, moving a stone to bar the door. I held her hand, and we spoke, but we didn't speak of that. She died knowing I was in trouble, and it was getting worse. I never spoke about it with her. Maybe I should now. 

Walking At Graduation

I don't transition well.  I hate it.  Being at one destination or another is great; getting there fills me with anxiety.

I mention this because, after discussing it with my family, I'm making a checklist of the things I need to accomplish in my escape plan from St. Catherine's back into Jackson.  That's how I get larger tasks done.  I break it into lists of much smaller tasks and then start knocking them out one by one.  Dealing with smaller tasks keeps me moving toward the larger goal without having to think about "am I getting any closer?"  I'm eating the elephant, one bite at a time.

When I graduated from Millsaps, I was so intimidated by the prospect that it was really beginning to annoy me.  I announced that I wasn't going to walk at graduation.  My father was entirely nonchalant about it, even though I would be shaking his hand after shaking Dr. Harmon's hand after getting my degree.  His name would be on it!  Daddy was like that.  He could be completely non-sentimental about some things and then get dewy-eyed about some really simple things like going to the Mayflower or Old Tyme or driving to Bethel.  

My mother was annoyed and quite vocal about it.  Mother and I often didn't see eye-to-eye on things.  She thought I was cold-hearted and overly judgemental about some things.  She was probably right.  She also felt like I should be more submissive to her opinion on things.  I'm not sure where I stand on that.  While it's entirely her devotion that created a path where I could overcome my learning disabilities, as life went on, there were times when I felt like she was holding me back.  

Determined to have my own way, it was ultimately Jane Alexander who convinced me to make an about-face and do things my mother's way.  Janie's had my number since I was about ten.  I don't think I've ever been able to refute her--so I walked at graduation.  I transitioned from student to citizen, which came with its own challenges, but I'm glad I did it.

Graduating from St. Catherine's is not that different from graduating from Millsaps.  It brings me several large steps closer to some of my goals in life, but it comes with some pretty big challenges and responsibilities too.  I'm to be a citizen again after quite a while of avoiding just that.  

I don't have any delusions.  The next twenty years is my swan song, my last opportunity in this world.  There are things I want to take, and there are things I want to give, and this is the last go-round.  When I exercise, I like to make that last repetition, that last push, that last effort, extra intense.  I have to earn my rest, or it will annoy me all day.   I'm making a list for my last repetition here in Madison.  One big push, and I'm crossing the rubicon into another world.  It's time.

Midnight Agnosticism

Waking up at midnight is becoming part of my life.  There's no baby to feed, no cat to let out, there's no wife that's mad at me, and there's no drugs I need to take.  I just wake up at midnight and remain restless for an hour.  There might actually be a wife that's mad at me, but we don't talk much anymore, so I'd never know.  

I did a bit of lying today.  I told people I was returning to a religious life.  That's not entirely true.  I'm creating an entirely new entity from scraps of the old.  That's not returning.  That's creating.

I'm not a superstitious person, so I'm a bit resistant to admitting that I like to look for signs in life.  I look for signs because, for whatever face I put forward, I have all the confidence in life that usually comes from a stuttering child with ADHD, which is to say, almost none.  I hide it, though, because it's generally my conviction that fear spreads, and if I act afraid, then that might make other people wonder what makes me afraid and should they be afraid too, and so it begins to spread, whether there's actually anything to be afraid of or not.

I'm starting this new religious life being terribly honest with everyone that I am, always was, and probably always will be, agnostic.  I'm not afraid to admit this.  Some of the greatest Christian apologists I know of spent some time as an agnostic.  C.S. Lewis famously questioned his faith deeply after the death of Joy, his wife.  There's even a play about it.  I was in it, at Galloway, with Brent Lefavor.  Charles Darwin, one of the world's most influential atheists, was actually a believer most of his life and used his theory of evolution as proof of God, but there came a time, after a period of considerable loss and grief, that Darwin too became an agnostic.  

The key here seems to be that these men became agnostic after periods where they were hit with tremendous loss and grief, often the death of a spouse, a child, or both.  Everyone is hit with periods of loss and grief.  It's a consequence of being emotionally open to the world.  If you allow yourself to love, then you make yourself vulnerable to the loss of love, and sometimes the loss of love can come in a sequence with other events that break even the strongest of us.

You wouldn't know it to look at me, but God's been very generous to me.  Perception, he gave me and empathy, and these I've rolled and baked into something I call art, both my ability to create art with words or images and my ability to appreciate art, words, images, sounds, tastes, all of it.  Being empathetic and perceptive and open to loving can be very dangerous to me because, on this level of existence, nothing you love can last; sometimes, born and dying in the same day.  Being open to the world like this means that sometimes periods of loss and grief come at me like waves on a California beach.  I lie and tell people it broke me only once, but in truth, it's broken me again and again, and although this last time I stayed out of the water for a very long time, I'm always going to return to the beachhead.  I'm back now, picking the spot on the horizon I want to swim for.

I started the day not really looking for signs at all.  Today was going to be an experiment.  But signs I found.  The signs were that I went to Sunday School not knowing what to expect and found two of the smartest guys I ever knew from my experience at Millsaps and three of the most Christian.  That's probably a very good sign.  

The pastor's sermon today was about an issue I've been thinking of and worried about for some time now.  When he finished, the people, the church, MY church, applauded him, even though you could tell he was a bit nervous about how we would respond.  That's a sign that I have allies in places I didn't expect.  That's a very good sign.  

The best sign today was that I had lunch with a girl who I love more than I love most of you combined.  When she was very small, I hid myself in a cave and rolled a great stone in the door.  That was to be the end of me.  As a result, I missed most of her growing up.  That's one of my greatest regrets.  

Today at lunch, she wore an aquamarine drop that I recognized.  "Is that the drop your grandmother made?"  I asked her.  It was, she said.  "I wear it all the time."

"Do you remember her at all?" I asked.  

Collins was quite young when Mother died.  As small as she was, she ended up getting a three-for-one deal that year.  Jimmy died, then Mother died, then after my divorce followed those, I hid away from the world enough to make it almost like I died too.    She told me the things she remembered about Mother, things a child would remember.  Images mostly, places, feelings.   Though I didn't ask, it seemed that if she could remember my mother, then she might also remember me, and although I missed so many years, I might be able to connect the thread between the love I had for the child and the love I have for the woman she became and a calm spot appears in the great ocean of loss and grief that was my entire life while she grew.

I announced to my family my intention to become a professional writer and to do it in the pretty near future.  Being professional, to me, means I make enough money to live off of it.  I don't care about the money that much, although who doesn't like money?  at least enough to pay for lunch anyway, but I'd like to be able to say that I did this legitimately, and I did it with no help at all from my father or any benefit of my bloodline.  If I can do this, if I can actually get published, actually get paid for scribbling words into a machine, then that will be something uniquely my own.  Everything else I've ever tried to do, somebody will say, "Oh, I remember when your momma did this, or I remember when your daddy won an award for that, or your Uncle Boyd went to Washington because he did this:" but not writing.  That will be my own.  That will prove my value to the universe besides being just another third-generation heir because, quite frankly, third-generation heirs have a pretty horrible reputation, and unless I do this, I won't have done much to improve it.

I'm very likely going to write much more about agnosticism and faith and life and art and Galloway and Millsaps and Jackson.  The signs are there for me to do it.  Maybe I'll be able to do it in the daylight hours, so I don't have to spend what time I have left on this globe awake alone at midnight tap-tap-tapping away while everyone around me sleeps.

Goodbye Delilah

There are so many people, even some of my oldest friends, who have never known me as fully healed as I am now. You wouldn't think it to look at my physical frame; it's still a mess in some spots, but, on the inside, in my heart, I haven't been this strong since before some of you were born.

I don't know what to credit this recovery with. I suspect a great deal of it is due to my sister's love. A fair share also lies with my father and mother, who, although they died years before, planted the seeds that, though they lay fallow for many years, would somehow, against all odds, sprout in my darkest of days.

Maybe that was the secret. Maybe it was the months of laying in bed, barely able to move, that made this creature sleeping inside me decide that if he was ever to come back out, now is the time.  Maybe Doctor Joseph Campbell was right.  Maybe, I had to spend my time in the belly of the whale before I could continue my hero's journey.

When it first happened, when I first began to emerge emotionally whole again, my family and my doctors were a bit worried that I might be on the upcycle of a manic episode and wanted to make sure I didn't need some medication to keep from swinging the other way. Then they wanted me to make sure I had "someone to talk to" in case this strange recovery was fragile.  I don't think it is fragile.  I've taken some pretty big hits since last May and managed to stand right back up.  

So far, this doesn't seem to be an illusion. So far, I've been able to face the reality of my situation and the challenges ahead without flinching, and have chosen to do it all in a very public way. Allowing everyone to see my scars, no matter how bad they are, may also be a key element here. I think, maybe, it's the hiding of them for so many years that caused the biggest part of the problem.

For many years, hiding the fact that I wasn't the strongest person in the room became quite a burden.  I think maybe it began to break me. Like my father, I believed Mississippi had so many things working against it that it needed a hero, a real hero, and if I couldn't be that, then what good am I? He struggled with that as well. I could only see it a little then, but I see it constantly now. Daddy often strained to break as I did.  I think that's part of what killed him.  Again and again, I put myself between the fire and something I loved, fully believing that if I couldn't, if I didn't, then what good am I?  If I couldn't be the hero, then I am nothing.

Recovering meant accepting that I am sometimes weak, I am sometimes inadequate, and I am sometimes wounded. Admitting that...accepting that... has allowed some of my true, god-touched strengths to come out. Samson had to lose his hair and his eyes for his true strength to come out. Maybe I had to do that too.  There was a Delilah in my life, several actually, and most weren't even human beings, but I allowed them to take my hair and my strength because I didn't know how to use it; things are different now.  

You're gonna get pretty tired of me.  A recovered me works pretty hard and can be relentless at attacking the objective.  My peers may be eyeing a comfortable place to rest after a lifetime of struggle, but I'm looking at places where I can go into the fire and spend my last days fighting.  Whatever I was meant to be all along is finally emerging.  I'm a late bloomer.  It's true, and I do apologize for that, but I think you're going to be impressed by what I can do when it's my turn to stand between the pillars of the temple.  That day is very nearly upon us.