Grace Period

The Blessed Mother was my first deity. I was groomed to tuck my chin and bow my head, and along with my seven other siblings, we said the rosary several times a week.

The rosary, a long, repetitive prayer, seemed to flow on and on into eternity. For a squirrely kid with ADHD, it was nothing short of hell.

Still, I acquired a girl crush for this blessed Mary. She stands in the corner of our church. This rare spot of beauty where I rest my eyes when staring at the bloody naked man hanging from a cross gets to be too much.

But I hate that her pray is so long, and what’s the point? Asking her over and over again to pray for us sinners, pray for us sinners, pray for us sinners.

Have you ever had a friend that makes you feel like shit? A friend who is highly invested in telling you how you've missed the mark? That was my relationship with the Catholic church, and this is my relationship with Denise, who is impressive, authoritative, and, most of the time, slightly angry at me. But I am not always sure why. Like my standing in the Catholic church, it’s fickle.

I've left the Catholic church. I know how to leave things. But I stayed with Denise. Because she intimidates me and I want to be a good person in her eyes. This will never work.

But when my family began to fall apart, and my son is diagnosed with Schizophrenia, I go missing. She does not come to find me. She takes my absence as a ghosting, and I can't find the words to explain that I have not left. I've been high-jacked. I am still here, but I just got caught in a snow globe of confusion.

She reaches out to tell me that I don't care about her. She is so convinced of this that it makes me question myself. I take a look at our relationship. When she has no place to live during the pandemic, I offer her a room in my home. And I try not to think of covid when she coughs over my toast.

When she has something to say, I give her my pulpit.

When she leads a retreat, I gather a caravan of women to support her. She has an operation, and I drive her to the hospital. I take her for pancakes at her favorite spot, get her meds, and ensure she has all she needs to heal and recover.

It looks to me like I care for her. But her conviction causes me to doubt myself. Maybe I don’t care, maybe I am just trying not to be a sinner.

I know that I treat her better than I treat my own kids because this is how I was raised. This is what you do when someone is your friend. Your kids take the back seat, and your friends sit side saddle.

I think about pointing out the ways that I have cared, but I feel like I am defending something, and I don’t have a defense budget. I wait and watch the awkward space that lives between us grow, and I am willing not to have to name it, or mend it. I just let it unravel. This is new for me.

Denise is a good teacher for me. She makes it easy for me to see my people pleasing.

I begin to question her like I questioned the church. And I feel myself making peace with leaving again. A part of me wants to hang in the threshold and explain myself to her, but another part of me knows that no explanation will suffice. And I want, no, I deserve relationships that need no defense and no explanation. I am a work in progress learning to be kind to myself.

So I have to go. I surrender this friendship, this sticky rubrics cube, I accept that I can’t figure it out. I've graduated, I can’t stay. I can’t care for her, at the cost of me.

The blessed mother, she says, let it be, and my ego says that is complacency.

~~~~~~

My son sits in my kitchen and stares into nothingness. I wonder if I will ever get him back.

We are all fighting a thousand silent battles. We carry a lot. We all need a Grace period. I think about Mary. And that long-ass prayer, the story of the girl and the manger and that baby, and how she ended up having to bury her son.

I wonder if she ever screamed FUCK YOU, GOD, at the kitchen ceiling?

Did she ever get drunk and wet the bed? Did she ever struggle with her place in the world?

I wonder if she actually was filled with Grace, I want it to be true, but I have no real reference point for it.

I give up the illusion that Grace always looks graceful,

Maybe sometimes it's torn up and trampled and worn and weary,

Maybe sometimes Grace is just being willing to wait.

Prompt:

These are the Lyrics from Alanis Morissette’s That Particular Time.

At that particular time, Love encouraged me to leave.

At that particular moment, I knew staying with you meant deserting me.

That particular month was harder than you'd believe, but I still left at that particular time.

Write about a time when you had to leave.

Put on a timer for ten minutes and write about leaving the relationship,

the church, the career, the burning building.

Those who hold the pen hold power.