I wanted to be a nun

I wanted to be a nun.

I wasn't Catholic at the time, but I viewed this as a small obstacle.

I can tell your exactly what inspired this piety, and unlike the generation before me it was not Maria from The Sound of Music.

My inspiration was a line from Pat Conroy's The Great Santini where Ben is the odd boy out when he crosses himself on the basketball court before taking a shot.

It was Colleen McMurphy from China Beach. 

It was Winona Ryder in Mermaids.

I had a pre-Vatican II image of Catholicism. Mass in Latin, weekly confession. Cover your hair. Old school Catholic. And I loved every part of it. The idea that you were connected to this larger idea, that your life had a a routine, a schedule, a foundation, a touchstone that you could always return to. That your days, weeks, years were dictated by routines and that you always knew what to do. It seemed stable, and comforting, to always have this thing there. To be able to go anywhere in the world and attend Mass and know exactly what you were supposed to do.

To someone whose whole life was defined by precarity and instability, never feeling safe or on even, unmoving ground, it seemed lovely to have this consistent life line.

I carried a rosary and memorized the Hail Mary prayer years before I converted to Catholicism in college.

Once I was older, and after my conversion, which always seemed to surprise people (one Benedictine monk told me I strangest pious Catholic he'd ever met. Um, thanks? I didn't know what to do with that and still don't) I became interested more and more in religious communities, and how to deepen my contribution. There was a lot that appealed to me about monastic and religious life. As someone whose obsessive compulsions craved order and rules for everything, it seemed as good a fit as the military life I once thought would be perfect. As someone who never fit in the world for a variety of reasons, the idea of not living in the world also seemed perfect.

As I got older and read a lot of Jean Plaidy and especially Sharon Kay Penman (more my gateway to medievalism than Tolkien or D & D that others often name), the stories of older women who retired from the world to convents seemed like ideal stories.

One parish I was part of introduced me to oblates at the same time that I spent time at a Benedictine Abbey, and that seemed like a way for me to revisit, reclaim, some of what I wanted, now that I was past the age of being able to be a nun. There's a 35 year old cut off. There are also cut offs for student loan debt. When I turned 35 I was so sad. It was like letting go of something, a hope, a wish, that I did not know I was still holding onto. But when I spent time at the Abbey? Seeing that life of devotion and service? The Divine Office organizing your day. Starting it, ending it, framing every day. It was so lovely. 

When I was applying to college jobs I applied to quite a few that were Catholic, or near abbeys. While I have issues with many of the politics of hate of the Church, I knew that for me personally, constructing a life within these frameworks would provide me the support and connection I needed and wanted.

Despite my active role in Church, I have never been part of the community, the collective. I thought I had it once. I decorated the Church all year. I trained altar servers, I served myself for all the holidays or when kids didn't show up. I was a Lector. I made soup during Lent and joined Church groups. The parish was older so I was always the "kid" but I felt I was part of something. But then Mom died. And no one showed up for me the way I'd been showing up for them. Because it was an older parish we held a lot of funerals, we supported people in their time of grief. Yet when the one thing I needed was the thing my parish, my community was supposed to be good at, no one showed up. It crushed me. It left me feeling empty.

In many ways my life as a teacher reflects many of these ideals. I have always wanted to be part of a collective, a community, to serve, to be of use to others, to contribute. My mother used to (always in a negative way) accuse me of "playing the martyr" and perhaps she wasn't wrong. But I never understood why it was a negative. What was wrong with sacrificing for the greater good?

It's still how I do things, twenty years into my teaching career. I never offer a solution or bring up a problem if I'm not willing to do the work. I'm the first to volunteer, to offer to help. I just want to be part of something larger than myself, to be of service. Every day I read my daily readings. I put my rosary in my pants pocket, I cross myself and pray for strength. At night as I say my prayers I pray for strength. 

In higher education our lives as professors are divided into teaching, research, and service. Our service is supposed to be to our department, our school, our larger communities. I guess I always thought of it through the lens of being part of a religious community not knowing any better. I thought that the service would be a group of like minded people working together to achieve a common goal. Working for the betterment of all. A collective that recognized each other's gifts, paired them with jobs and contributions that would bring out the best in them, and contribute the best to the collective. 

This is not how it works. 

I think in part that it doesn't work this way because the capitalistic goals of higher education are at odds with what true service is. The goals do not match up. But oh man, what amazing things we could do for our students, our communities, if they did.

Every morning I walk. Since my hip, I don't walk as long or as far as I did a few months ago, but I'm getting there. I don't walk fast. I rarely run. I walk across the hospital parking lot, past the EMT station, over to the community college campus where I walk in circles around and around the outer road of the campus. Round and round. My Bear McCreary Pandora Station in my headphones blocking the background noise but surprisingly not blocking the birdsong. I watch squirrels run across the road like they're just done a heist and are evading the cops. I watch chubby birbs that look like a child drew two circles, one fat one for the body, one tiny one for the head, and then just stuck wings on them. I keep a wary eye on mean geese. I see ravens? crows? I can't tell them apart sit on power lines. I see nutras. The quiet, the circling, is comforting. The campus is on the edge of wetlands so often all that accompanies me is the mist and the trees.

In my walk over to the campus I tend to find my mind cluttered. Full of noise. All the weight of the world pressing down, often in hard to move ways. 

I find that as I walk the noise starts to quiet a bit, single words and phrases come to the forefront, repeating again and again like a mantra. This song plays in my head a lot. "Deals the cards as a meditation" feels like the phrase that fits this time the most.

As I walk in circles, I am reminded of the role walking, through paths, across deserts, on grounds, through spirals, have had throughout a variety of religious people, and religions through time. It appears in our media, our tv shows. The need, the understanding, that if we can clear our minds, embrace the quiet, dedicate the time to listening, that we can maybe find some of the answers we seek.

When I walk I am alone. Like, literally. I rarely see people on my walk, and even when I do, they are in the distant, disconnected from me, there, on campus, going about their own lives, in no way connected to me. I am an outside observer, in the background. Often this feeling of disconnectedness feels like a weight, pushing me down, as though it might push me all the way into the ground, disappearing, leaving no trace.

As I walk, as the noise seems to fade, as I seem to let go of weight, concerns, things, with each step I often think of two images. I think of the old story of two monks. One monk carries a well to do woman over a puddle, and miles down the road his monk companion is still upset the woman did not thank them or seem grateful. The monk says "I set the woman down hours ago, why are you still carrying her?" I think I carry a lot of things longer and further than I need to. I try on these morning walks not to. 

The other image I have is of Andy Dufresne from The Shawshank Redemption. Him walking in the yard and shaking out the pebbles of his wall into the yard. Bit by bit. It's not a project done all at once. He has to do it a little bit at a time and trust that the larger goal he's working to will bear fruit.

And the truth is when I am gone I won't leave any trace. I have no one to leave anything to. I will be survived by no one. I leave nothing behind. I think too that this is part of the reason why I so wish I was part of a community, a collective. Because even IF I left nothing behind, no mark, no trace, the work I had contributed to would continue. Anonymous work, no name attached, but work. Good work. Work that helps.

The other day as I walked, in the quiet and the cold, I realized that I'm forty-five and I still don't fit anywhere. I have spent my entire life wanting to be a part of a collective, a community, to contribute, and have never found it, never found a place where I fit.

I thought I would fit in theatre. 

I thought I would fit in teaching.

I thought I would fit in grad school. Three different programs and never once did I fit. Other book nerds did not want me.

I am tired. I've been thinking a lot about how the older we get the heavier the weight feels. I feel like I'm carrying not just that day's weight but the weight of my entire adult life. That the cumulative weight of all the years, the issues, the voices in my head, the rejections, just press harder and harder down.

In When Harry Met Sally Meg Ryan has a line that it wasn't that he didn't want to get married, it was that he didn't want to marry her.

For a while in college every guy I dated broke up with me then promptly started dating someone else and married them.

I have never had anyone choose me, in my personal or professional life.

I have never had anyone want me to be part of their collective, their community.

While I'm a big fan of reinvention, and the ability to start over, at forty five I'm tired of starting over. I'm tired of not fitting. I'm tired of always feeling like the ground is unstable under my feet, that I never feel secure, like I can put down roots and be a part of something. 

Maybe I just have too much of my mother in me.

Maybe there is something in the center of me that just is not built for stability.

Maybe after a lifetime of constantly moving, uprooting, packing up, packing it in, I don't know how to fit.

Maybe I'm not meant to.

Maybe it does not matter where I go or where I am.

Maybe I'm the asshole.