Life Without People

If memory serves, I more or less set up my life as it was when I moved into the Rectory, just into the month of June, and made it fairly clear it was a not particularly good time in my life. June was too busy to be much better, one way or another. I was still settling in, and I was busy with going home on weekends, spending time with friends, and, of course, work.

July was a horse of a difference colour.

Work was the same.

Residence was the same.

Nothing else was.

I went home for the last time, the last weekend of June, for my cousin's wedding. That was a long weekend, and I stayed until Monday night/Tuesday morning, getting up really early, so as to avoid the long weekend traffic as I returned to the city. From then on in, I had a month to myself.

The single most important thing about the month of July, 2007, at least as far as I can see it right now, is that it amply demonstrated I'll have no problem with living alone as a priest. This is no small discovery, given that loneliness is given as one of the biggest stumbling blocks to people envisioning what it is like to be a priest. Mind you, I never had any serious doubts on that score, but there's a world of difference between thinking something probable, and knowing it.

In all fairness, though, I probably had a quieter month than I'll ever get as a priest. True, unlike the priests living at Annunciation, I probably won't have housemates, but considering that they were hardly ever in the building at the same time, that's not exactly a major factor. With holidays and three disparate schedules/careers, they were often gone, and I was quite often home alone.

Furthermore, the day jobs of the priests are a good deal busier and full of people than my job was. Working in the Archives was lovely, given bad memories of dealing with hungry, cranky people at Panago, simply because it was almost completely free of human contact. There were a couple of weeks we had a researcher in, but that was hardly something I was much involved in, and researchers (like archivists) seem to be a quiet sort. Other than that, there was the odd visit from upstairs into the sacramental registers (usually regarding people wanting to find out if they were baptised and/or confirmed in the church, in order to get married) was about it.

I've described the month of July many times to many people already as a "silent retreat" or a "month long retreat" or a "sabbatical". Words like this describe really well what it was for me: a time to recharge my batteries. May and June, particularly the parts where I was around people, were full of me putting on a happier, more patient face than I really felt like doing, simply because it's not in my personality to whine and complain very often. By the time May rolled around, I'd had my leg broken for more than a week, I was out of the hospital, and I was starting to get around. I still needed help with things, but my mind was already going into its normal mode of "you don't want to bother anybody, either with your woes or to take up their time helping you".

For me, it was a major struggle during May to deal with people offering to help me. Maybe it's my genetic heritage, maybe it's being an eldest child amongst seven children, maybe it's just how I fluked out-- but whatever the case, I am not the sort who is good at asking for help, and I get uncomfortable if it's offered too often, at least if I actually do need it, since I feel like I should somehow be tougher.

By June, I was pretty much past needing much help, and I was getting really good on the crutches, but it was hard month too, with those weddings, ordination, and grad. Three weekends out of five that month, I made the journey back to Olds, squeezing in a weekend between the pressures of work and commutting, to attend some sort of major ceremony where there were all kinds of people that I had to explain--again--how I broke my leg, as well as Mass each Sunday in my home parish where there were, every week, people who didn't know about the leg... and had to ask.

I appreciated the concern and the interest in my life--really. As someone who has at least as much of the general human condition of insecurity and a need for validation as the next person, it feels great to be noticed and love.

But.

There's always a but, isn't there?

But the fact is, though, that what I wanted, as early as the beginning of May, wasn't attention and sympathy about the leg--I was tough enough for that--but to be able to blend into the crowd. I wanted to be normal again. Perhaps a rather plaintive cry, and a very silly one, given that I'm hardly normal to begin with, and don't intend to become such, but as regards my leg, I wanted normality.

And recovery never goes as fast as the patient wants it too. I was (and am) making noticeable progress from week to week. I cannot say I was ever stagnating or backsliding... but I wanted off of those crutches so badly. I had hoped, initially, that I might be into a walking cast after a few weeks, but either my doctor isn't a fan of those or I had the wrong sort of break for it, but he kept me on crutches. Then I thought I might be off them towards the end of June, say 8 weeks/2 months or so after I broke my leg. Well... no luck there. It was another 3-4 weeks of crutches, then onto a cane, then I would see him again in late July. Accepting that was hard.

So what was the sum of all this?

Basically, it was that I was tired of having to put on a happier face than I was feeling, and the effect of having to "ride the circuit" saying "hi" and being happy on the weekends was really too much. Perhaps that's a very ominous thing to say, given that it can be taken as one of the descriptions of a priest's weekend life, so I'll point out a fundamental difference between the two: as a priest, I'll be a working man, I'll be a useful, busy, funtioning member of a community--a man with a mission, while as the guy with a broken leg, I was exerting all this energy at a low point in my life, and coming home and.... doing nothing.

The fact that I was sort of just "there" at the weddings etc, and unable to really do anything irked me. While I'm not a dancer to begin with, the fact that I could not have danced and was basically a chairbound invalid meant that I would have LOVED to danced, something not normally the case.

A solution for many people in a situation like this, of having to put on a happier face than they feel might be resolvable by being around people they feel really comfortable with, who they can let down their guards and just whine and baby themselves--I don't know, since that solution is an imperfect one for me.

It's only my family that I could really do that around--and they were much too busy and wrapped up with all that was going on those weekends to really be available in that respect--and Mom complained each time, I think, that my visits were too short and hectic. Furthermore, I am probably just as likely to put up a strong face for family and friends as for anyone else, if not moreso. For me, the solution is not the right people, but no people.

And that's what I got in July. Thank you God, that is what I got in July.

To Be Continued...