Soul Mosaic

Unglued

In 1984, I was walking every night, trying not to kill myself. I had to start life all over again.
In 2008, I was afraid to get off the couch, and having an emotional breakdown. And again, I was having to start life over.

Both times, I was at the end of my rope, hanging by a thread, not wanting to be dead, but wondering what else there was in life, and if I had any value.

I was consumed by a level of anxiety I’d never experienced before. It was so bad, I was afraid to get out of bed in the morning — dreaded starting another day of pain. But I was too afraid to stay in bed. Yet I couldn’t wait for the day to be over so I could get back in bed, and when I did, I only felt safe on my stomach, propped up on elbows, watching the same video over and over again on a small portable player while Ed watched TV.

Almost every night for months, it was the Pixar movie, “A Bug’s Life.” It was safe, all the ants worked together, and there was nothing scary or provocative. And the best part, the part I wanted to be in, was the big sleeping chamber where all the ants rested, sleeping safely and comfortably in their little hammocks. It was snuggly, all of them there together, safe from any threats. Just the security of being there together with all of their friends. I so wished I could live with them.

“She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

Flannery O’Connor, story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

He woulda been a good man if…

It was that same book I was given by one of my elementary school nuns from her college English course. The one that opened my mind to the wide new world of literature. The one I drank up like it was water, and I was dying of thirst.

There was that one story in the book, though, by Flannery O’Connor, called “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” I was both repelled by it because of its violence and unwillingly, but powerfully drawn to it. I could never let it go. All my life, it gnawed at me, but I never knew why.

Priorities, “triage,” and setting up the “base camp”

For any successful team to operate, there must be an agreed-upon set of rules and priorities. And Ed and I were a team. So, during this “adult” phase, we had five priorities:

The new place

7/16/82

“As you can see, I’ve been remiss in my journal writing – 21 months. That last retreat (Nov 80) really did me in, and I just wanted to tune it all out for a long time. But since then I finally got up the guts to go to another retreat…a FEW of them actually. One-day retreats at a new place — The Cenacle in Middletown…”

Looking back, what a difference a place makes…though, maybe it was a difference in the person going to the new place that mattered, too? At the very least, the fact that I sought out a new retreat center in spite of how the previous one triggered me, implies that I was willing to trying again…fertile soil just waiting for the right seeds to be planted?

Either way…this became the turning point of my life. More on this, shortly…

College.

My hoped-for ticket out of “trapped.”

My path to a future…whatever that might be, even as I didn’t yet know.

The expectation that somehow by the end of it, I would be independent, on my own, somehow no longer being abused, and just living a peaceful, “normal” life.

What else could I want?

Yes…..

My own world

The University of Connecticut, Torrington Branch, may have been only a mile away from our new home at “the Lot,” but in another way, at least for me, then, it was a world away. It was a place I could go and “stay all day” and into the evening if I wanted. Classes were not the solid schedule of high school and strict rules, but were on a schedule you set. And you were your own boss. You failed or succeeded on your own, and no one interfered with your right to that. As long as you paid your tuition.

Most of the friends I had in high school had gone away to college. But a few of my friends continued on here and there were new people from the local towns, all of us in the same boat — able to go to college only because this local branch gave us low tuition. We bonded over our mutual situations.