An Inveterate Sinner in Christ the King's Court

With all due deference to Mark Twain and his [really appallingly bad] novel, it seemed an appropriate title for the forthcoming pensees.

In a half-hearted attempt to eschew the more flagrant forms of emotional exhibitionism to which I am so prone, I thought I'd relegate my thoughts this Lenten season to blog form rather than than voicing them in that [slightly] more shamelessly self-promoting and self-aggrandizing format of the Facebook note. In sum, I plan to render a thorough and honest reckoning of myself for the next 40 days and make privy to said reflections only those whose input I value and whose judgment I do not fear.

That being said, here we are at Ash Wednesday [I am, incidentally and apropos of nothing, reading Eliot's poem of the same name as we speak, his first piece written after his 1927 conversion to Anglicanism -- good stuff.]. These past few Lents I have been so enmeshed in a lifestyle diametrically opposed to Catholic spirituality that I've scarcely noticed its arrival, and certainly done nothing to herald it.

This time, I'm determined to make some real and lasting life revisions and excisions. This time, I'm determined to trade my sorrows for joy and fumigate once and for all the sordid shithole of sin and addiction I've inhabited for far too long. This time, I'm determined to choose life, that I and my descendants might live. For this, as Sandra Bullock's counselor observes in one of the more heartrending moments of the film 28 Days, "is not a way to live. This is a way to die."

I'm disheartened, discouraged, and a little dyspeptic, to be sure. I've failed, time and time again. I'm reminded of Marya Hornbacher's words on leaving a long stint in treatment: I was patently aware that I didn't think I could do it.

The thing is, I can't. I am utterly impotent in the face of leftover Chinese food. And after effectively obviating my one and only route to sanity for the the past four years, I've had the effrontery to wonder why I am still so freaking insane.

Enter grace, stage right.

I've accompanied enough recovering alcoholics to AA meetings and hit enough Eating Disorders Anonymous meetings on my own initiative to know that the first and seminal step in any 12-step program is admitting we were powerless . . . that our lives had become unmanageable; the second, distinct but intimately related -- we came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

And it can. He can. He, the only one who can restore the years the locusts have eaten, strip me of my scales [those of both the Voyage of the Dawn Treader dragon variety and the more prosaic but equally pernicious bathroom variety], and remove at long last the monkey on my back and the thorn in my flesh.

Behold, I make all things new. (Revelation 21:5)

In sum, for those of you who are wondering if my bloviating knows no bounds, this Lent, I am:

1) Not purging. Seriously. I have to cut this bullshit before I drop dead of hypokalemia and heart failure over a ceramic god, and I really, at the end of the day, have better things to do. Please - text me, call me, ask me point-blank if I have been. It's as awkward and uncomfortable for me as it is for you, but I desperately, desperately need to be kept accountable.

2) Not losing any weight. Urgh. I'm at my minimum healthy weight now, and I'm not going to allow myself to go below it, much as it drives me batshit to think of maintaining or gaining weight.

3) Weighing myself once a day, in the morning, instead of doing my obsessive little dance on and off the scale all day long every day. Observing weight fluctuations at too close range inevitably leads to #1, purging.

4) Going to Eating Disorders Anonymous in Falls Church on Sunday nights. If anyone wants to come with me, I'd be eternally grateful.

5) Not drinking. Addiction recovery tends to be a wild little game of Chuck E. Cheese Whack-a-Mole in which another arises as swiftly and surely as the first is temporarily tamed. I know I in particular have a tendency to juggle a whole host of subordinate dependencies concomitant to the major one; booze is my major backup escape mechanism, so I'm preemptively nixing it for the next 40 days.

5) Going to regular Confession and daily Mass insofar as it is in my power to do so. [Given that for quite some period of time, I wasn't going to Mass at all, or at best in hit-or-miss capacity, it's going to be an... interesting... transition.]

I am, for what it's worth, publicly promulgating these because I deserve a good ass-kicking if I start violating these precepts willy-nilly as is my wont.

I need plenty of prayer, and plenty of hugs. I'm teary, angsty, and repeatedly questioning, like J. Alfred Prufrock, "Do I dare / Disturb the universe?"

But unlike Prufrock, I'm going to actually freaking do it this time.

Life awaits. Or so I'm told, anyway. I've never actually lived it myself, but I figure it might be worth a go.