Abandoned

Trigger warning: death, pregnancy loss, emotional abuse, loss of parent, loss of friends, social exclusion, suicidal ideation. 

 

There is a theme through all my toughest moments.

 

When Brittney died, my roommate -- one of my best friends at the time -- suddenly started avoiding me. We had been joined at the hip for over a year -- eating together, sitting together in chapel, going to events together, goofing off in the dorm room together. It was immediately obvious she was avoiding me.

Lost as I was in the sea of grief, I couldn't find the words to ask why. After three weeks of losing one best friend to death and another to completely checking out, I talked to one of the hall leaders. She somehow got my roommate and I to have a conversation about it. My roommate said my friend's death triggered memories of a close death for her. I remember thinking but why abandon me? I'm not the one who died. But it seemed the appropriate response was to smile and nod, so I did. Our friendship was never quite the same after that.

 

When my mother miscarried two pregnancies in a row when I was young, her grief altered her so drastically and so quickly that I remember writing in my childhood journal that it was as if she walked out the door and never came back. For several years I referred to my mother as 'an imposter' and 'not my real mom.' Not only was she not present in our lives in the way she had been, she would scream at us, insult us, throw objects (with the intent to break them), with absolutely no provocation. She and I did quite a bit of relationship healing while I was at college, but even today I still get locked in the memories of those years where my heart was broken and my own mother could not hear my cries.

In June of this year, when I broke my arm while my husband was living away from home for work and I was already in a depression flare-up, I tried to lean into the cast of the show I was doing. This is something my husband has often tried to encourage me to do... to accept the love and assistance that others in this show are (allegedly) trying to give me. With my dominant arm broken and my mental health spiraling with no practical way to stop it, I had no other choice. I asked for help.

Silence.

I asked again.

Silence.

And again.

Silence.

Well... not silence, not really. More like, "not tonight, we have plans with so-and-so tonight," or "we have a thing with [other actor] tonight," or "Bob and Jane wanted to hang out so we're hanging out with them," or "maybe after we're done hanging out at Boston Pizza with our other friends" (followed by them conveniently not returning until after 3am even though Boston Pizza closes at midnight). I literally watched one friend come up to the actor stationed beside me backstage (also in our friend group) and invite him to a group dinner, then turn and walk away without even looking at me.

The thread was clear: "we want to hang out with our fun friends, not some depressed broken wannabe who will always bring down the mood by the sheer fact that she exists." Even when they could physically see the wound, they still turned away. My own husband snapped at me for 'not trying hard enough' to 'stop being depressed.'

Less than a month after this show closed, I was Googling how much of my prescribed medication it would take to kill me.

 

The irony is they'd probably band together if I died, and not a single one of them would be left to mourn alone.

(...assuming anybody mourned at all.)

First-Person Faith

Originally written September 18, 2022, 6:51pm. 

 

Something I've noticed about Christian music that you don't really see in any other genre is second-person songwriting. The big late-'80s arena rock bands were especially bad for this (Petra, Stryper, and DeGarmo & Key all loved this approach).

Don't get me wrong, I love Petra. But this approach to songwriting creates the tiniest 'holier-than-thou' feeling. It's always 'you feel lost and confused, your life feels empty, oh look, here's Someone who can take all your pain away.' (This also feeds into the insidious prosperity gospel that is the foundation for modern Evangelicalism, but that's another blog post.) This is why we look back now and feel a slight cheesiness in the music of Petra and Stryper, while bands like Prodigal and Daniel Amos (you knew I was going to bring them into this) still sound lyrically fresh some forty years later.

Why?

DA and Prodigal wrote in first person. Prodigal was especially good at this; it was even noted as one of their strengths by critics of the time. Pick literally any Prodigal song and you have a masterclass in first-person characterization. Their cheesiest song happens to be one of only two songs that they wrote in second person (Emerald City). (The second song was Bobby, which was written with such immersive detail that it feels like you are living that life, in first-person.)

But look at a song like Masks or Answering Machine or I Don't Know Who You Are or The Big Sleep -- all of those are emotional heavy hitters, and every one of them is in first-person. Daniel Amos has songs like Here I Am; Big Time/Big Deal; Dig Here Said The Angel; Props; Half Light, Epoch, And Phase; and perhaps the most devastatingly tender song ever written, The Twist.

 

Where Petra and every late-'80s-solo-male-CCM-radio-vocalist-ever wrote songs that kept the listener at arms' length until they repented, DA and Prodigal were taking their listeners by the hand and whispering I know. I understand. I'm here.

 

And isn't that really what Christianity is based on? Jesus, Emmanuel, God-With-Us, coming into our lives and taking our hands and saying I know. I understand. I'm here? 

 

Being held at arms' length makes you a project. Being sat with while you cry makes you loved. And if God is love and we are supposed to be reflect Him, why are we holding people at arms' length? That's not at all what He did. My theory is this is why a lot of the late-'80s-solo-male-CCM-radio-vocalist songs feel cheesy or hollow today... they feel so far away, so distant, so not how the God they preach really is.