<p>I am struggling to internalize just what went wrong tonight.</p>
<p>Today was fine. We spent it mostly just dealing with lunch and then poking around for food at a supermarket in case we wanted to cook later. Snacks were also lacking at Kay’s so we grabbed a few.</p>
<p>From there, we headed to the percussion festival, which was a short bus trip away. The auditorium was a work of wood fabric panels set into a horn shape, panels all angled in slightly different directions for some acoustic reason that I could not figure out. A pretty, if chaotic structure.</p>
<p>Kay, as I remember from our time in school, brought along earplugs which she put in shortly before the concert started.</p>
<p>I think I struggled with that the most, in some way. I know that she did so to keep from getting overwhelmed, and I know that she did it with every concert, but with all of our conversations leading up to the night along with the fact that she did so well before the music started, it felt as thought I was being shut out. She put in her earplugs and focused on the music all night long, and it was as if, for her, only the music existed.</p>
<p>I am sure that it was some form of active listening on her part, if there is such a thing with music. Analytic listening? Something along those lines.</p>
<p>And yet it was so strange to go from making each other laugh to absolutely no contact with each other, other than the fact that we were sitting next to each other. I should be respectful of her style of engaging with music. I know that, of course. Just as I should be respectful of the concert and the performers there.</p>
<p>It was just so sudden. I ceased to exist, for her. I became a non-entity stuck in a place entirely out of my element.</p>
<p>The music appeared to be perfectly competent. There were rhythms that I could pick up on in the majority of the works, and occasionally a melody that I picked out that fit with my expectations for music.</p>
<p>This should not bother me. It shouldn’t bother me at all. She has shown me countless recordings of pieces as strange as the ones I heard tonight, and back when we were in school, I attended several concerts with her of varying quality. Even when my feelings about her began to build, I never really had a problem with our shared silences during performances (such as they are, during a shared video stream).</p>
<p>It never has bothered me, and so why did it tonight? Was it something we did before the concert started? Grocery shopping and lunch? What about that could lead to such a reaction? Was it the reminders of lunches from the past? I’m not sure of that, as we had lunch yesterday and there was no such attachment. Was it the domesticity of going to a grocery store together? Am I attaching meaning to something so mundane?</p>
<p>And even now, it’s not as though it was so sudden and surprising as I make it sound. Before the concert, we had to show our tickets, we had to file into the concert hall and find our seats. It was all so hushed, and slow. It was all as I remember it, really. And we did talk, too. She explained some of the pieces she recognized from the program, one of which she promises she had shown me before (though I didn’t remember it from the name and composer alone). Afterward, she talked plenty on the way home, and I listened to her gush about the music she enjoyed and complain about the music that she didn’t, and while I listened, some part of me was growing more and more frustrated, almost resentful.</p>
<p>Why am I like this?</p>
<p>I don’t know what to do with this information, and I think it bothers me <em>most</em> at one level of remove. I felt shut out, and that is irksome on its own, but what really bothers me is that I felt bothered in the first place. I felt so bothered that I bent memories when writing this, and only on rereading them did I realize that I was doing so. I’m bothered that I am apparently so fragile as to be set on edge by perfectly normal actions.</p>
<p>It’s things like this that set limerence in an egodystonic light. I hate it. I <em>hate</em> that I like her and then get envious of the fact that she is enjoying something without me, something that we don’t share.</p>
<p>Resentment! Envy! Over what? What do I not possess that I wish that I did but her? And how idiotic is that?</p>
<p>I hate that I feel this way, and then I hate myself for building up so much resentment at myself. No matter the layer of remove, I feel like I fucked up.</p>
<p>I almost wrote “I think I might go home early” but I really don’t think that I will. I am confronted with the fact that things will never live up to the ideal that limerence demands, and it has me frustrated, but not so much that I’m going to pull some overly dramatic nonsense like that.</p>
<p>I am up early again, and while I do feel better, I am also still feeling tender, and feeling cautious of that tenderness. I want to poke and prod at it. I want to explore its boundaries as one might find the limits of a bruise.</p>
<p>I know better.</p>
<p>At least, that’s what I tell myself. I know better than to keep poking at a sore spot, so to that end, I’m digging into the other topic that Jeremy has been nudging me to explore, that of my discernment and sudden veering off the pastoral track and over to wherever it is that I am now. It’s been years now, since I left, and although I may just be poking at a <em>different</em> sore spot, it is at least one that I know I have work to do around. There are memories there, might as well do the CBT thing and think back to what happened, and then back before that.</p>
<p>It’s weird the things that you remember, though. Just little things.</p>
<p>I remember blinking my eyes rapidly in the middle of that meeting, for some reason. It’s habit I now know that I have, and once I learned of it, I noticed just how often I do it. I found myself thinking back to all of the times that I had done in it in the past, and there are a few stand out examples that stick in the mind as particularly embarrassing.<supid="fnref:embarrassing"><aclass="footnote-ref"href="#fn:embarrassing">1</a></sup></p>
<p>I remember blinking rapidly there, in the middle of that meeting, yes, and I remember Rev. Dr. Borenson leaning forward, rested his arms on his desk, and fiddling with a pencil. “Mr. Kimana?”</p>
<p>“Sorry, Father.” I frowned down at my paws. Paws grown soft, that far away from home. Some part of my mind, the part always focused on making comparisons, realized how slender and small they were compared to my advisor’s big canine mitts, soft from a life of academia and ministry. “I think I was expecting a different reaction.”</p>
<p>The Saint Bernard shrugged. It was an informal, almost bashful gesture coming from him. “I’m just not surprised. This doesn’t feel like it’s coming out of nowhere.”</p>
<p>“I have no plans of leaving the Church.”</p>
<p>“Of course, Dee. I have no doubts as to your faith.”</p>
<p>“But…?”</p>
<p>Borenson sighed, set the pencil down. “Your studies are fine. Better than fine, I’m told. Your teachers speak highly of your writing. That’s only half of the program, though. You came here for an masters of divinity, and the end goal of that program is ministry. Your skills in scripture and apologetics, in books, are admirable, but would make for an incomplete priest. We’ve talked before about you heading for a masters of theology instead, but you balked at that.”</p>
<p>I canted my ears back, gritted my teeth, and masked his frustration as best I could. “With all due respect, Father, my concerns about a Th.M stand. Yes, I’m sure I’d be helping the world with research and writing, but I need something more immediate. I need to help people. I don’t think I can <em>not</em> do that. And there’s just too much…I don’t know, remove, I suppose, if all I’m doing is writing.”</p>
<p>There was a pause as Borenson seemed to manage some equal frustration before he spoke. “Mr. Kimana, an education such as this requires both flexibility and devotion. Both a Th.M and MDiv would require that. Now–” He held up his paws as if to forestall a rebuttal. “I am not accusing you of lacking in either department at least not to a level where I feel you are not a good degree candidate, but if the doubts in your head are strong enough that you feel you need to leave, I would only be doing your future vocation a disservice by trying to make you stay.”</p>
<p>I dropped my gaze once more. I spread my fingers, tracing with my eyes the subtle grain on the pads of my paws, the long-healed callouses. </p>
<p>This remains a constant in my life, this sort of discussion. I will research and research and research, come to a conclusion, and when I state what I have learned, the conversation would go sideways. Both me and my interlocutor will wind up frustrated and stressed with no discernable reason why.</p>
<p>But this hadn’t been a researched thing, had it? I remember it being something like three in the afternoon, and I’d started this train of thought the night before at, what, eleven? Sixteen hours was hardly the amount of time required to come to a conclusion about leaving behind a year and a half of study and however many thousands of dollars of scholarships that had involved.</p>
<p>I focused on ensuring that my mien expressed the sincerity I felt within. I was frustrated, yes, but also confused and more than a little disappointed in myself. “I’m sorry, Father Borenson. I understand. You’re right, too, I suppose, that I don’t quite have the amount of conviction I’d need for this.” The word ‘conviction’ stuck in my craw, I remember that.<supid="fnref:writing"><aclass="footnote-ref"href="#fn:writing">2</a></sup>“Not conviction, I guess. Something to do with ministry. I don’t do groups.”</p>
<p>“I mean it when I say I’m speaking from a place of kindness here, Mr. Kimana, but this doubt is mutual. You have a brilliant mind and faith enough, but by virtue of you doubting your vocation, we are all but obligated to doubt you in turn.”</p>
<p>I sighed and slouched in my chair.</p>
<p>“If you’re not comfortable switching to a Th.M, perhaps it’s time to consider switching focuses,” the dog said gently. “Perhaps Saint John’s just isn’t the best fit for you.”</p>
<p>“I get it,” I mumbled.</p>
<p>The Saint Bernard looked cautious, waited for me to continue.</p>
<p>“I mean, I get what you’re saying. I think…” I swallowed drily, straightened up in my chair. “I think I agree, too.”</p>
<p>There it was. There was the admission. I’d said it at last.</p>
<p>“I know I said so before, but I just want to make sure; you know that this is about my vocation, not my faith, right?”</p>
<p>Borenson barked a laugh, before his expression softened. “I’m sorry, Dee, I shouldn’t have laughed. I believe you. You are one of the most devout students I have. Your decision about your degree may not have been a total surprise to me, but if you had said you were leaving the church, I think I would have called for a doctor.”</p>
<p>I smiled, I remember. I smiled through my shame.</p>
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<p>I suspect there is some reason that such embarrassing things stick in one’s own mind while slipping so easily from others’. Perhaps it is a symptom of culture, or perhaps it is simply part and parcel of existing in the world. <aclass="footnote-backref"href="#fnref:embarrassing"title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
<p>I write these memories like a story. It is an occasional dalliance, and I do not quite know where it formed, but it has been with me since youth, to the point where teachers often suggested I major in creative writing. I did consider it, I will admit, though I know it isn’t something my parents would necessarily have condoned. Whether or not the words I write here are an exact replication of the conversation that took place is neither here nor there; whether or not I am accurately remembering the emotions that took place is unimportant. I am writing for me now. <aclass="footnote-backref"href="#fnref:writing"title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text">↩</a></p>
