Perfect

straying from restaurants to talk about bigger things

When I began this project, I’ll admit that I was afraid to dive too far into a certain side of it. It takes a long time to deconstruct certain things. Not recklessly and wantonly demolish. But carefully and painstakingly deconstruct. 

One of my earliest memories is of watching my parents take down a wall in our house. There was a sledgehammer and a bang and then there was a mess. The initial blow was quick; the subsequent process of taking the wall apart to ensure the integrity of the remaining structure was less quick. 

It takes time. It takes care. 

I grew up being good. I needed to be good, otherwise I would fall out of favor with folks. I was painfully shy, afraid of mistakes. More accurately, I was afraid of getting in trouble. 

Feeling the need to be perfect, I went through my adolescent years following a straight line, gazing out sometimes to marvel at people around me who were following less straight lines. More often than marveling, I was judging them. 

As I know now, this stemmed from the belief that I could never stray from the straight line or I would be cast into obscurity. 

I heard the way adults talked about other adults or their children, and these voices were downloaded into the choir of commentary growing in my mind, and that commentary told me I’d better behave. 

The checklist of what not to do lengthened such that, by the time I left home to go to college, I was unknowingly penned into a very, very small space. 

You might call it a cage. I hesitate to point fingers here, preferring to talk about how I got out rather than how I was contained. Suffice it to say, I craved  a certain freedom that I could not find. 

A brief note about God. I’d like to leave God out of this, as I believe God is often left out of church. There was a night, and it was the last night I went to church for the sake of going to church, when I sat inside the four walls of a sanctuary and the amount of stress sitting on my shoulders was suddenly very clear and very, very heavy.

On that night, I was relieved to walk out the doors of that building and find God waiting for me outside.

That night, it was as if the cage door opened and a gentle voice whispered, “this way.”

I have not gone back. 

That night when I left church for good, I experienced the initial blow of demolition that would lead to me eventually having to slow down and take that thickly walled cage apart, brick by brick. 

Things take time. My world fell completely apart, as it needed to. 

The notion of being in public took on a different meaning. I’ve often thought to myself that I traded the church community for the bar community, where I was accepted regardless of my beliefs. It felt so good at the time that I stayed, forming habits and a chosen family. The habits have all been curbed, and the family remains intact despite great distances. 

I remain free.

We need to make mistakes. We need to be allowed the freedom to be imperfect, and in being so, experience real, tangible love. 

I would not have been able to stand in the avoidance of mistakes, whether I wanted to or not, which I see now. In fact, the avoidance of mistakes in itself is probably a mistake. We could follow that rabbit hole straight into Wonderland, but we won’t. 

Being in public, for me, became worship in itself. The incredible kindness of strangers, for one thing, caused me to relax. The gentle council I found in the bar regulars, men I could be myself around, who didn’t need me to be proper or appropriate.

Wearing whatever I wanted, even things that weren’t modest. Claiming my body as my own. Temple or no, on my own terms.

Learning to say “No” in different ways, being downright rude to people who were rude to me, the pendulum of my behavior losing balance and swinging far each way without warning of change. Everything I knew was upended, and being in public, being seen, became refreshingly vital. 

Get among ‘em, you see.

Let ‘em see. 

This marks the first column that addresses my experience with church, purity culture, and the unbelievable relief in walking away from that cage. I hope you’ll join me for more.