Learning to Run

Written June 2018

I have always been alone. Even as a child it seemed I could not make close friends. My cousin was the only close friend I ever had. The meaning of true friendship seems clear but where have I ever seen it in action? In those who abandoned my parents in multiple churches? In the cold clinical love of those in Christian leadership? Is real friendship just in prayer, or is it in something tangible?

People say I give good hugs, but who hugs me? 

I would sell my soul to feel like I had a friend – and that’s what I did.

Sold it.

Not really for sex, but for the chance to feel loved and accepted for an hour. It was a lie of course, but was it more of a lie than those who have watched me struggle for years and never came to hold me close and wipe my tears?  They didn’t know my secrets, but were they willfully blind to the pain in my soul?  Who was safe to tell my struggles and sorrows?  Nobody.  

I am convinced that true male friendship cannot exist in IFB circles. We are too proud, too judgemental. Our friendship is like that of an elite sports team. It is only valid while performing at a high level. If you are struggling then be quiet. Doubts are worse than failure and failure is not tolerated.

 … but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Ecclesiastes 4:10

It is truly bitter to realize how alone I am. Nina knows my sin but she has not experienced it. I feel like a genocidal warlord explaining his past military campaigns to a Quaker. She has no point of reference to understand my terminology, let alone deal with the immense violation of her soul.  She must feel filthy just being in the same room as me.

Nobody really understands. They can’t.  Someone in a maximum-security prison might, but nobody in our sanctified circles will.  We just don’t have people like me in the pews in our churches.  The people who have spoken of their similar sins are well-meaning but off base.  Because what does a serial killer have in common with someone who committed vehicular homicide?

I truly am the most wicked man I know of.  Jack Chick would make a comic about me, and I’m sure I will be the face of a thousand warnings from the pulpits of our churches.

The walls are closing in on me. I wonder if my lifelong claustrophobia is sin based? What will it take to find real help and healing? 20 years? Blood? Exile?