At Least They're Committed

I was a junior in high school. He was a large man both in stature and in girth, a round, soft face segueing into the standard, square white-collar-and-black-shirt. I’m not sure if he was always eating when we met or if I just remember it that way. No matter, this jovial priest told me something in my pre-Confirmation one-on-one that would completely upend and violently destroy my uncertainty and menial self image.

He said I was smart. He said I was a player of games. He said I must be careful lest I become a danger to myself and to others. . . I was that good at it.

Months before, Father Tom had stood next to my sister — one of his favorites though she would eventually go Judas on him. She’d pointed me out among a gaggle of geeks jumping mindlessly about the basketball court flailing arms and giggling like a Britney. “That’s my little sister,” she’d said grudgingly.

He was shocked, no appalled. “I said, ‘THAT’s your sister???’ I thought, ‘How can THAT be Cindy’s sister? Cindy is so bright!’ . . . .You were the dumbest girl I’d ever seen.”

(Cindy, sadly, responded to his distressed awe by saying, “Yeah, the younger ones always get the looks.” Tragic, tragic, tragic. She was so pretty, but she never felt it and eventually grew into her perception.)

That day, however, I grew — no burst fighting and spewing — out of my perception. Father Tom had changed his mind. He’d watched me socialize, study, interact and morph like a chameleon to each group, each situation, never standing out, escaping unscathed from each corner of hell I’d been painted or had thrown myself into. I wasn’t one person, one personality. I was an amalgamation of many: growing in wisdom, cunning and skill with every encounter. He’d never met anyone like that before.

My eyes widened. I was free. It wasn’t only that he pointed this important power out to me, although I do SO adore being called on my $hit. On some level I had already known it, but I was insecure and twisted enough to think I could be wrong and were I correct about myself, then I would be ‘wrong.’ Yet, this beautiful, well respected Holy Man saw all of this chaos in me and acknowledged it, but did not judge me.

He only warned me. With good reason.

Father Tom was right. My games have hurt other people and, more often, I’ve hurt myself. It comes too easy. I can see people so clearly. It’s difficult to stand there suffering abuse when you so quickly and effortlessly could smote the abuser tenfold. To see their fears, anxiety, self doubt and turn it against them in wicked fashion. I learned hurting other people, even those I despised, hurt me more. I then felt my own pain and theirs, exacerbated in my having been the cause of it.

But that doesn’t make it any easier to stop.

Sometimes, like today, when things aren’t going right for someone I love, my thirst to play The Game wells up inside me so tight, so fluid that it sits, cackling, at the back of my throat. I can’t fix what needs to be fixed. But I can diminish those around me to tools of my wrath, manipulating and puppeteering until my rage is vetted upon fools who may never know they’ve been toyed with and even so would never, ever consider it was me.

But, no, I won’t do that either. I’ll just let it trickle out of me sightlessly, harmlessly fading into air like teardrops in a burn unit. I want to play. But I won’t today.