Page 14 of Saint
When I was a teenager, I no more saw myself eventually founding a support group for people living with mental illnesses than I saw myself one day founding a support group for fishing boat captains. Even after my sister died by suicide when I was in high school, there was no talk in my household about mental illness. Our focus had been on the shock of our loss and the twinned grief of learning at the same time that she’d been sexually abused by our parish priest. And then that focus had ignited into an anger at the Church that had consumed my brothers and me.
I feel flares of that anger even now. They complicate the joy I’ve found here, and the peace, knowing that my relationship to God and my newfound contentment are knitted indelibly with the pain of thousands and thousands.
But I also feel a sense of rightness at the abbey, like I’m meant to be herewithmy anger, like I’m meant to be driven by it.
It is often stressful, and agonizing, and I don’t recommend cognitive dissonance as your next skincare routine. But it’s where I feel called to be.
Lectio Lexapro is one of the fruits of my anger, I suppose. After I came here and started seeing Dr. Rosie and treating the depression that brought me to the abbey in the first place, I began to talk about what happened to Lizzy,reallytalk about it for the first time. And even though what drove me to the abbey had been something different than the memories of her death, I began to wonder if my entire family would have been better off if we’d been able to translate our hurt into language.
And when I think about what might have happened if Lizzy herself could have had that...
So after learning firsthand that many in the Church still don’t admit that therapy and medication are needed alongside prayer, yes, I was angry. And I did something about it—something small, maybe, and limited in scope. But something. My little group, a space I wish someone would have made for me a long time ago.
Birds sing somewhere in the trees while we wait for our last brother, and I listen to the endless wind ruffling high up on the hill, my thoughts drifting away from Lizzy and onto what’s happening right now, onto what’s going to happen when I leave for my trip.
What might happen after.
If I changed orders, my familiar black habit would change. If I changed orders, I might never see these woods again, hear these birds, or listen to these brothers gossip and tease.
Would it really be worth it? Leaving behind all these tangible,goodthings and people for the mere promise of more?
I don’t know yet, not for certain. That’s why I have to go and see for myself, because if I can feel there the way I felt simply looking at those pictures...
Then yes. It would be worth it.
Brother Peter arrives right at nine, and we go around the circle, speaking a little bit as to how our month has gone. Years ago, this would have been something I would have monopolized, trying to make people laugh, rambling on, talking too much. I would have left the group on a giddy socializing high, which would have crashed not thirty minutes later as I relived every cringey comment or joke in vivid, miserable detail. As I remembered exactly how foolish or unthoughtful or inappropriate or grasping or needy I had been, and then I’d be haunted by shame for days after.
And no matter how many times this talking-too-much/shame-for-talking-too-much cycle repeated itself, I could never break myself of it, I could never stop myself from plunging right into the middle of a conversation and making an ass of myself all over again.
It is easier now. St. Benedict says that monks should strive for silence—that monks should lovesilence—and learning to listen is one of the first things a postulant is taught here. You listen to psalms, to prayers, to Mass. You listen to the clanging of the bells or the rumble of the tractor engines or the clank of metal on glass as you wash dishes.
I have learned to listen. Or listen better at least.
And anyway, the point of Lectio Lexapro is to be totally honest about the hard parts of our days. The anxieties, the depressions, the dank and clammy fingers that tug on our habits and grasp at our thoughts. Sharing here is the point, and so I feel less selfish when I do talk, because we are all here to help each other.
Brother Matthew, our resident baking enthusiast, is switching head meds and is struggling. Crispin has just added Wellbutrin to his rotation and is having difficulty dealing with the libido increase.
When it’s finally my turn, I lie by omission and say that it’s been a quiet month. It’s only a partial lie, because my brainhasbeen quiet on the depression and anxiety front (thank you, Lexapro, Wellbutrin, and therapy). It’s only my soul that’s been unquiet, and my heart, and I don’t feel ready to talk to my fellow brothers about it. I don’t feel ready to talk about it at all.
Unfortunately, I forget that Brother Titus and Brother Thomas witnessed part of the reason for my unquiet. “What about your visitor a few weeks ago?” Brother Titus demands, leaning forward so his blond hair falls over his lightly suntanned forehead in a very attractive way. We don’t do tonsures here, but if we did, Brother Titus would be the first to need it. His vanity about his hair is palpable.
Brother Thomas, on the other hand, keeps his hair soldier-short—probably because he was in the army before he came here. “Who was he?” he asks.
“Family lawyer?” Titus follows up.
“Doctor making a house call?”
“Do you owe him money?”
“Is he a librarian coming to collect a book you never returned?”
“Was it a mystery book?”
“A cookbook?”
“One of those financial self-help books with a blond lady on the cover?”
“Gentlemen,” Brother Matthew intervenes gently, folding his hands over his stomach. “Please.”
