Hiding Places

When the world feels unsafe, where do you hide?  Never one to wear my emotions on my sleeve, despite my rather public breakdown,  I tried to bury my feelings even deeper.  I also found an assortment of hiding places, places I would not be easily found.  When things got too stressful, I took refuge in a number of places that served me well.  

There were a series of wooden closets that lined the long hallway of the dormitory floor.  The dorms were the first place any one looked.  The wooden closets were never searched.  I remember hiding their while listening to them look for me in the various dorm rooms.  I prayed they wouldn't find me as I remained just feet away, hardly breathing.  Not being found felt like a small victory.

There was an empty room at the end of the hallway that most assumed was locked.  It was not.  I often hid there because once inside I could lock the door.  During one search, one of the posse called out my name saying,
"Sister Carol, if you're in there, open this door."
I kept perfectly still and waited.
When she left, possibly to return with a key, I slipped out and fled to another of my secret hiding places.  Animal me was learning to elude my predators.

My favorite hiding place was an old unused library.  It sat at the end of a long hallway on the bottom floor of the grade school.  Crammed floor to ceiling with books, the books flowed out of the shelves and into piles, piles everywhere.  It was a maze made of books and a perfect place to hide.  It smelled dusty and musty.  I often had to stifle sneezes but being in the company of those books felt oddly comforting.   The sane part of me was ashamed of my childish hiding.  The crazy part of me just wanted a safe place to regroup before the next onslaught. 

At this point, I must clarify that the vast majority of the Sisters had no idea what was going on in Formation.  Most of the Sisters seemed to genuinely like me and were often genuinely kind.  When I eventually decided to leave, they were sadden by the loss.   Unfortunately, having made enemies in higher places within a system that controlled communication, and bringing a fragile vulnerability with me, I became a perfect target for the powers that be.  They saw their treatment of me as "guidance".  To me, it felt like torture. 

For many years, I've viewed this part of my past as a "me vs. them" scenario.  The impersonal "they" were the enemy and I the victim.  As long as this was how I saw it, this was how it felt.  It was never that simple.

For purposes of telling the story, I often fall back into viewing things this same way.  Sister Zelda sounds like a royal pain in the tail feathers.  Sister Felicity may sound like the perfect soul-less villain.  This is only part of the larger truth.  The larger truth often lies just beyond my grasp but I believe it is there.  It smiles at me from the edge of my awareness.

How do you tell a story from all perspectives?  How do you tell a story where everyone is at once victim and victimizer?  If it were easy, wouldn't we have more stories that do just that?  But if we did, would anyone be interested in reading them?

We all create our own stories.  I hope that in your story, you are the hero and that at the end of whatever quest you pursue, you remain the hero and are better for having made the journey.  Life, other people, sometimes even we, ourselves, often interrupt our stories.  Everything we have known up to that point, changes.  We change.  How we view ourselves and our lives is dramatically altered by things outside our control.  How easy it is to see those things beyond our control as evil.  And, sometimes they are.

Creating dichotomies helps us cope, helps us fight against something which in turn helps us define who we are. We see ourselves as opposite the evil we reject and yet who would we really be without it in our stories?  Seeing someone who caused us harm or opposed us, as human beings like ourselves is a constant challenge.  How often have some of us heard, "Love the sinner, hate the sin?"
Humans seem to have a horrible time living up to that, this one included.   We are more complicated and yet more simple than we imagine. 

There were injustices against me during the convent years.  Things happened that should not have happened in a perfect or more ideal world.  But they did happen, right, wrong or hopelessly indifferent, it's up to me to take the raw elements of this story, this particular way I view my world and my life and turn it into a story that helps me live a slightly better life than I did the day before.  My experience is simply my experience.  There are other ways of seeing it, there are other ways of being in it.  Remain ever aware of that and your life, your story will never read quite the same again.  Your life will become a richer story, with more color and complexity than you can imagine.  Enjoy the unfolding of the tale.