It's two and a half hours before service when I wake up with a groggy start in my car. The sun would already be up but it's well covered by thick cloud cover that had moved in yesterday; the whole Gulf of Mexico had decided to park itself above the city, making sleep nearly impossible and ensuring I woke up dripping in sweat. Between the drowning temperature, a anxiety attack induced by far off gunshots during the night and a very vivid nightmare I am running on the memory of fumes, and I idly consider just...skipping church this week and go to the library instead. No one is expecting me and this week I feel more like I don't deserve to be there than usual, it'd be easy and comforting to just...not go. I push the thought down - I know it's panic talking - after I wake up the first few hours are always an irrational haze due to lack of oxygen from sleeping without my CPAP - and if I give into it now I will feel ashamed and panicked all day. After all, I pushed hard to get to this Sunday and it might be my last, so at the very least I should go to the one place I feel human. I finally marshal my thoughts after an hour sitting sweating in that car, and I finally turn on the car and head to church.


It's an hour before service starts, and I'm doing great. I walked in just fine, saying good morning to a few people on the way to the one person big unisex bathroom to clean up. It takes a little while, but I cleaned up fine enough and switched to clean clothes that fit relatively well, so I shouldn't stick out. I sit in the fellowship hall sipping on a coffee, then tea. I hear one of my favorite restaurants had closed and commiserated with someone, and I listened attentively as someone recounts a story about suffering appendicitis off and on for a whole summer. I'm a real human being, and people are treating me like a real human being. I can do this!

It's six minutes to service and I can't do this. I should never have come, I should be curled up in a ball in a library. The feeling that I'm an imposter, a fraud, has set in and this time it's so debilitating I'm vibrating. Overwhelmed by guilt about spending the financial aid the church much faster than expected (through no malice - just trying to keep myself sane & sated and keep my gas tank out of E) I find myself flashing back - not literally, though in hindsight given that I experience emotional flashbacks (thanks CPTSD) maybe literally as well - to earlier in the week when I had reached crisis. I had fled to the church to seek comfort and peace; after all I had originally stumbled across the church in a similar crisis and had found some measure of salvation sitting with the Buddha statue in the garden. This time though I couldn't look at the Buddha without feeling like I had betrayed him, betrayed the church, and that I had no right to comfort or peace. I would make it as far as my car in the parking lot before something burst inside me and I howled out my pain like my soul was on fire. It would take minutes to scream out weeks of, a lifetime of pain no one should endure by themselves. Once the wailing left me hollow, I hoped in vain that I would be okay for at least another week; then I'm back at service and as I fight back tears I realize it had been less than two days since then. Before I can make the decision to flee, the bell is rung and service begins.

I somehow make it through the greeting, the first hymn - #1 in the hymnal, "May Nothing Evil Cross This Door", and my brain chimes in *Too late!* - and the lighting of the candles. I briefly consider lighting a candle of my own, and then I briefly consider that if I kill myself before next week no one will write my name in the book of joys and sorrows and I can't tell if I find that upsetting or comforting. It's during the story time for the children when the storyteller mentions that covenants are loving bonds and that family is a covenant too where I break down crying for the first time. She tells a famous story about two brothers unknowingly donating grain to each other to help each other in their time of perceived need and for reasons I can't fathom even now I have to stifle screaming just like I did in the car two days earlier. I choke it down and the sermon begins.

I like my minister. He's exceptionally friendly, he feels like an older brother to me, and he reminds me of the best aspects of myself in a way no one else does. Between that and UU's doctrine of love and community and other gushy sentiments, it honestly doesn't take much for him to cause me to break down. It might not take a lot but this week he gives a lot and it's the roughest sermon I have yet to go through. He starts with a quote by Dough Zelinski which I tried to source but it seems to be private on UUA's page, so I must make due with a vague summary: whereas contracts are punitive relationships built solely to assuage the risk adverse, covenants are supportive relationships that is built on love and understanding; if a party fails - when a party fails, because failure happens - it's as much about lifting the one who misstepped back up as it is about holding them accountable. Failures of covenant aren't sins, they're opportunities to learn and to be better, and covenants are about lifting each other up to make the whole better.


I listen to the rest of the sermon but for the life of me I can't recount it, because I'm now deep in my own head. Maybe I didn't betray the church and deserve to be abandoned by it. They might be disappointed but ultimately they would understand that I was trying to do what I could to keep my head above water; this wasn't an unacceptable moral failure but instead was, truly and honestly, a mistake made by a desperate and irrational mind trying to stop the pain. And if I was in a covenant with the church and they could forgive me and lift me up, then couldn't I do that for myself? Perhaps that's what I need - to enter in a flexible, evolving covenant with myself, not a harsh, inflexible and frankly impossible contract that leads to nothing but pain. Inspired but still wandering around trying to ground this idea, I wander into the bookstore after service and on an impulse spend money I can't afford on a $10 pendant with the 7 principles symbol on it. I wear it so when I look in the mirror I can remember that love is the doctrine of our church, and that includes self love.


It's an hour and a half after service and I'm outside with the Buddha statue. It's sweltering but honestly it seems much easier to bear than the muggy night before. Regardless, I'm happy that I can sit with my oldest friend at the church and not feel judged by myself or others. And that's when I realize that, for the first time in a long time, I feel well and truly human, that I deserve love and am loved.

Love heals. It might take time, effort, and other tools, but love can patch the holes in a beaten soul, even if only for a little while. At this moment, sitting with the Buddha, I'm actually just me, and it feels great. It might not last the rest of the night; if I somehow make it through tomorrow without yet another breakdown and a miracle happens and I survive until next Sunday, the end of the month and unpayable bills looms like the sword of Damocles; but here, now, I'm me. And I'm happy.

And that's why I go to church.