Writing for You1

Imagine a person who thinks of her father whenever she starts to enjoy herself. She thinks of him, how he's probably drinking, and she feels terrible for not visiting him more. She rebukes herself for his suffering. And she finds that when she drinks, which is not too often, she feels held away in some eddy. Like drinking is a crime and a punishment and a consolation all closing into one. It's a way to visit him and not. But then her father gets a terrible diagnosis and he's told that unless he stops drinking he'll die. The shock is that he does it, he quits. His daughter is happy except that she's not. “He finally has a reason to,” she understands, except she doesn't. And years later she looks back and realizes that was the moment when she started drinking for good.

Now imagine a person who leaves a missionary group that works in an urban neighborhood because she starts to see it as a cult with an abusive power structure. But once she's out she sees abuses of power everywhere in the world and it leaves her heartbroken and bitter. And at some point, on some day, she's returning to her car after an errand and she finds a homeless woman inside it. The homeless woman won't get out and starts to yell. So the former missionary does something she saw her pastor do once. She gets down on her knees in the street and asks the woman in her car: what do you need? When she's down there she remembers the intoxication of being close to God. How it was a distance measured against the debased other, how she too loved the lowly in order to feel far away from them.

Now imagine me, writing. I am the baby that waddles ahead and then looks back. Am I safe? Am I out of my depth? Are you impressed with my waddle and my distance? Are you still there? And even: do you need me back? I write to apologize for the distance between us. I write to get you off of me. I have never left without it feeling defiant and never stayed without feeling compliant. I am either staying as penance for wanting to