Shadows that Speak

Beautiful freaks laughing

If my boyfriend is an atheist, I guess I’ll be one too. Try it on for a while, see how it fits. I’m 18, and sleeping off the speed I took in a bathtub. The same bathtub I’ll retreat to when I need to cry without being heard. My atheist boyfriend is getting sick of my tears. They keep him up, and he’s got class tomorrow. I do too, but he’s in the liberal arts program only a select few get into. He has a planned future, a band, and a weekend job at the local supermarket. He doesn’t need god. For now, I am pretending that I don’t either. 

Besides, after sixteen years of sitting in pews, I was ready to try on a new theology. Mormonism hadn’t stuck. I had questions. Such as, why was the church sandwiching a political endorsement in-between the sacrament and a eulogy? I wanted answers. The ones the teachers offered didn’t stick.

AGYA, by 33 Bound

But in rural Canada, I was far from the Southern California beachfront church. There, I walked to the frozen lake alone, while my boyfriend smoked weed in the basement with his band. I wrote poems and posted them to Tumblr. At night, I left the shadows of our bedroom and texted my ex-boyfriend. The same ex-boyfriend that had stopped talking to me after I told him, No, I wasn’t okay but didn’t want to explain exactly what was wrong right then.

Yes, I thought, certainly he’s the one who can understand this anguish I’m in. 

In the morning, my religious studies class got me out of bed. My professor was bearded and jovial. He spent the semester running through the popular religions, and offering us a taste of each, like a theological buffet. I was hungry.

After the Buddhism lecture, I walked through the school’s linoleum-tiled halls in a haze. Time could move in a circle. It could bend and shape beyond a linear track. My life was not on an immovable path. It could be changed. 

Yosuke Yamashita

In my thirties, at least I can find more humor in the drama. Now, I spend my weekends meal prepping and swiffering the floor. During the week, I get paid to sit at a computer, in an air conditioned office, and watch videos of someone who was shot by the cops. I read their family members’ testimonies. I print and file autopsy photos. Then I go to the YMCA, where I lift weights that are as heavy as I can manage. I blast hardcore and sweat, trying to exorcise the rage out of me.

I’m in the here and now, writing at the gym in-between sets. I’m answering the phone while strangers detail their loved ones’ deaths. I’m riding my bike home, and swerving around traffic. I’m developing a deeper sense of humor the more life I hold onto.

I’m hogging the weight machine to write: 

God, are you there? It’s me, Lora. I’m still here looking for a destined path, rather than working with the one in front of me. But I’m trying, Lord. I light candles, I read books, I stay off social media. I try to be a good partner. I try to call my friends and answer emails on time. I try to eat my own tail, forgive as simply and wholeheartedly as I can, and follow my to do lists. Sure, I mess up. Sure, I still yearn and wonder and feel dissatisfied, even though I am loved, fed, and housed. I don’t know, god. Do you ever get bored up there, pondering? Do you laugh at our human dramas?

Detail of a painting by Armando Resendez – with light on it in the hallway.

God, if I’m you, if we all have a piece of you in us, then is this conversation the same as the ones I have in the mirror? Am I speaking to a shadow? 

The thing that bores me, god, is how neatly everything is tied up. Everyone claims to have the answers. Sometimes I get caught up thinking I have the answers too—really, I get so caught up. But I keep looking for you in the complications. I keep looking for nuance. I’m not finding it in political debates, or Instagram, or reviews, or sermons.

I need poets who drive mail trucks. Saints who wear high heels. Artists with big hearts. Skateboarders who always share their food, even when they’re hungry. Train hoppers on their way to the action. Anarchists with willful hope. Writers who put up their own flaws in the text. Angels wearing leather jackets and riding the bus. God in the window. Shadows that speak. Will you point me to them, god?

Throw Down the Mountain, Corey Arnold

Somehow, I keep finding them. We have conversations in parked cars, or on the street outside of closed bars. We talk for hours, then don’t see each other for months. We say what we each need to hear, and then we go on our ways. Together, we crack the little moments of life open. We laugh at our little dramas, then we go back to them.

We’re busy, god. We need to send a text message. We need to clean the dishes. We have to meal prep, touch up our fingernails, and dust our bedframes. We have exercise routines and day jobs. We’re tired, and often, we lose track of the perspective we have on our lives as soon as we have it. At least I do.

When I don’t know how to live in this world, I think of them. There they are, painting houses while listening to theological podcasts. Going to recovery programs to find community in change. Working their jobs then going home, where they turn the lights out by ten pm. Driving trucks across the country with their flip phones dead. Leaving everything behind, just one more time. Cutting their hair in bathroom sinks. Riding trains through the desert. Searching for something, and finding it for brief moments in each other. 

I find them all the time. We have lunch together when we can. We hug each other and never hope it will be the last time. I keep standing out in deserts with my fists up, sifting through answers in empty sand. And they’re there too–looking for you.

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Thank you for reading and for being here.