Day Twenty — The Dark Night of the Soul
“What is it exactly that you are trying to accomplish?” sister deAngelis asked one of the children, who had been moving the cookies from a plate to a basket, and then to a wire display, and was now preparing to move them again.
“Sister Mary-Francis said we should find a display for these,” the little boy replied, with his hair in disarray and a perplexed look in his eyes. He looked so much like Jimmy that sister deAngelis couldn’t suppress a smile. The boy couldn’t have been more than eight years old and was fidgeting to consume a little of his boundless amounts of energy.
“What was wrong with the basket?” sister deAngelis’s curiosity got the better of her.
“The cookies are bunched together too tight, you can’t tell what kinds they are,” he expertly explained.
“Why are you trying to put them back in it, then?” said deAngelis.
“The wire rack doesn’t look right, too spread out,” he said.
“Do you have an idea of what the final result should look like?”
“Yes,” the little boy jumped at the chance and started describing an elaborate display system that swooped gracefully along both sides of a center tray and met in the middle, where the cookies accumulated, forming a pool of sorts, like the pond at the bottom of a waterfall. The flavors and colors of the cookies had been given very serious thought and the entire display was supposed to draw interest from afar. The production was supposed to be continuously in motion grace to a carefully dissimulated mechanism on the underside.
Sister deAngelis was impressed by the detailed design of this display piece, so she set aside her current chore to assist in its development.
“Why don’t you make the display exactly the way you said?” she asked.
“I didn’t know I could,” the little boy answered, with measured hope.
“Let’s go to Roberta, you’ll give her the details and she can input them in her alchemy machine,” sister deAngelis said.
“Do you think she’ll want to? Everybody looks very busy,” the little boy evaluated his chances.
“Don’t let them fool you, we don’t have a lot to do, actually, we’re all keeping busy to take our minds off the Fusion Cloud,” sister deAngelis said.
They arrived to Roberta’s lab just in time to see the latter struggle to untangle herself from an unruly bundle of lavender tulle, which sister deAngelis recognized to be the ever changing podium draping.
“Who in his right mind came up with this stupid idea?! Who needs fabric around that knotted bundle of energy, sometimes I worry about living among you!” she grunted, frustrated.
“The Fusion Cloud is not a fire hazard,” sister deAngelis tried to calm her down.
“What do you want?” sister Roberta stared them down, which made the little boy very doubtful about his idea’s chances of success.
“James here wants to make a cookie display,” sister deAngelis said. Sister Roberta turned to the little boy who looked so much like Jimmy that her frustration completely dissipated.
“That can’t be!” she whispered softly.
“It’s not. Life can be interesting that way,” sister deAngelis laughed.
“Are you sure Jimmy is not doing some experiment about going back in time?” sister Roberta asked, incredulous.
“As sure as I’ll ever be of anything in this life,” deAngelis reassured her.
Sister Roberta and James sat down to draw all the details of the cookie display, and the more the little boy became at ease with the sister’s blunt style, the more he reminded her of Jimmy, with his messy straw blonde hair that was constantly unsettled by the lightest breeze, his avid curiosity and propensity for trouble, his excitement about the project at hand and the plethora of ideas he was constantly bouncing about in his head. In a few short minutes, while sister Roberta wasn’t looking, he managed to change the settings on her monitoring equipment, just to see what happens, and set an experiment in progress back to zero. They fine tuned the design until it looked just right, manufactured it, modified a couple of details after the fact and replicated it a few times.
“Thank you, sister! This is exactly what it’s supposed to look like,” James grabbed the displays, struggling to open the door while carrying everything.
“Stop by more often, I’m sure there’ll be something here you might find interesting,” sister Roberta said, still fascinated by the little boy’s uncanny resemblance to Jimmy. “There is someone I’d like you to meet,” she said as the boy took his leave.
“Where is Jimmy, anyway?” sister deAngelis asked.
“He had to run quickly to Soléa, he forgot some of his research notes,” sister Roberta answered.
“I guess you found yourself a new pupil,” sister deAngelis smiled.
“He’s got a lot of potential, I’ll grant you. How did you figure it out?” sister Roberta.
“If you want to find something, you have to know how to look,” sister deAngelis answered, with the gaze of a Sphinx.
Landing Bay, Terra Two, July 22nd, 3245
My dear child,
Like many women of my generation, I was raised on the concept that it was my duty to make other people happy. The more people’s whims, needs and opinions one could accommodate, the more praise and approval one got from one’s family, and that was all I lived for and cared about. My mother was an absolute undefeated champion at people pleasing, she could fill up her schedule with twice the amount of hours available in a day and from the moment she woke up to the moment she went to sleep she didn’t stop for even a second to consider her own needs. She didn’t have the time, after all she was everything to everybody in her circle, what more could anybody want from life? Her life’s meaning was fulfilled.
I worked very hard to live up to this ideal, it seemed so selfless and admirable, everything I was always taught: think of others first, work really hard, giving yields its own reward. This really happened for my mother, she was a pillar of the community, the center of activity in our neighborhood, she had more friends that I could count and didn’t forget to pay attention to each and every one’s life events, good or bad.
Whenever us kids needed something, we knew we could always count on her and didn’t hesitate to pile up our last minute tasks, and she always managed to get them done on time, somehow by miracle and despite her impossible schedule.
There wasn’t anything more that life could ask from my mother, she went above and beyond in her commitments to her church, her work, her household, her children, her friends. She was always put together and flawless and despite my natural tendencies to rebel like all teenagers do, I was in awe of her.
Naturally, I worked myself ragged to get into the best college, pushed myself, challenged my weaknesses and grew. It was hard but I didn’t expect anything else, life was not supposed to be served to me on a silver platter, right? You have to work really hard to get what you want. If only I understood what that meant at the time!
I graduated and went on to find my way in society, and based on the feedback I got from my friends, family and acquaintances, I was supposed to be a prize for any work environment: smart, motivated, pleasant, hard working, dependable and selfless. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to bring me into their enterprise?
In the beginning, nobody did, and I was baffled and hurt, and cried a lot. Why didn’t they want me? I asked myself obsessively. What was it about me that they didn’t like? I thought, vouching to change whatever the defect was immediately, so that I could regain the approval and communal support I simply couldn’t live without.
While pleading with everyone for a place in the world, any place, just anything, so I could get back to being what was expected of me, I changed myself completely, I molded my appearance to what I thought would be more pleasing, I collected an endless string of certificates and degrees to make myself look relevant, I cultivated people I didn’t like, because I was told they were important, I put all my silly dreams in a box and buried it three feet deep so nobody could find it and embarrass me with them.
For some reason I couldn’t understand, people still didn’t want me, and I had to work harder and harder for lesser and lesser results, until finally I got to the point where I didn’t get any results at all and started sliding backwards. I was in distress and shared my predicament with my very supportive family, who was always there for me in spirit and condemned the ineptitude of the rest of the world: people didn’t know what they were missing by not appreciating me enough. At thirty, I was a victim. Nothing in my life was right, or so I thought, and my family’s continuing encouragement through the tribulations was my only consolation in the valley of despair that I perceived life to be.
I couldn’t understand it, and it didn’t feel right, after all I did everything that was expected of me, right? I worked really hard, I dedicated myself to whatever I was doing at the time, and it was never for myself, just the right blend of “being thereness” that society demanded.
Day after day passed with at best no events, and at the worst, bad ones, the kind that people like to avoid if they can. I got into a state of perpetual sadness and life turned worse. My body felt this sadness and started deteriorating: my eyes were constantly irritated from the endless crying, I was always tired and my heart ached, and not in a metaphoric sense. I ate too much and my body became flabby and awkward and I was constantly nauseous and starving, which made me eat more and more.
My family was very supportive through this struggle, with countless loved ones constantly wringing their hands at my bad luck and reinforcing my conviction that life wasn’t fair. I was barely past my thirties and had nothing to look forward to: my health was a wreck, my occupation was a failure, my future was bleak and other than my family nobody liked me.
I look back at this narrative, trying to see myself through the eyes of another person, and can’t help but ask wherein lied the tragedy? There was no catastrophic event in my life to justify this amount of desolation, but if you pay attention to life in general you will notice that with most people being unfulfilled is not the result of a specific event, but rather a accumulation of letdowns, disappointments and compromises, a downward spiral whose inevitable outcome is failure.
Despite the inner struggle I was working really hard at the time, doing my best to apply myself, and one of my many work errands took me to a conference. I wasn’t supposed to be there but the person who was couldn’t go, so I filled in for them, even if I had no clue what the conference was about, yet another testimony to my blameless work ethic. I had my pencil and pad to take notes and everything, determined not to disappoint the people who gave me the assignment and finally prove my worth.
I couldn’t find a place to park to save my life and arrived an hour and a half late, and had to waste even more time upon arrival trying to cover up the fact that I’d been crying my eyes out all the way from the parking lot, which was ten blocks away. It was of course raining, and I arrived soaked, not the best way to make an entrance if one wanted to get noticed in a positive way. I didn’t have to worry about the wet clothes or the red eyes: the room was filled to the brim and I could only find a seat on the second balcony, up a creaking stairway meant for roof access.
I sat down, conscientiously opened my notepad and prepared to write down anything that might be of importance to the people back at work.
The conference was running a little behind schedule, and I’d gotten there just in time to hear the MC announce the keynote speaker, a Seth Rosenfeld somebody. I jotted down the name and prepared to be underwhelmed in the dutiful, hard working way with which I approached every event in my life.
A striking young woman walked up to the podium. She was tall and had an electrifying clear gaze that swept over the audience and made the large room go suddenly quiet.
She talked for an hour and a half, at ease in front of that sea of people, with passion and conviction. She wanted to show us the good things she and her group had been working on, things she cared deeply about, things she was proud of, things that defied the possible, and I listened mesmerized the entire time, open mouthed and feeling more stupid than ever and wondering in the back of my mind why I was attending a horticulture conference.
Slide after slide flashed on the screen, with projects that everyone in my circle of acquaintances would have said were not financially feasible, practical, or timely. Who had the capacity and the means to do things like these? On the other hand, when things like these are being done by somebody somewhere, why would you want to spend your life doing anything else?
I felt like I’d spent a couple of hours in a different world, a world in which life wasn’t hard, or unfair, a world where I fit in and didn’t have anything to prove. When the conference was over I was almost surprised to notice that my life was the same as before.
I walked the ten blocks to my car, without the rain, this time, and drove back to find the workplace just as I left it. My supervisor was absent minded and slightly irked by some extraneous event that had nothing to do with me, really, but while being in this state of mind he mentioned that I’ll have to give a talk about what I learned at the conference.
I spent the following week wringing my hands and anticipating failure instead of practicing my presentation, and in the end I appeased myself with the thought that I’ll figure out what to say on the spot. I don’t think it needs mentioning that my performance was a majestic flop, but this time I didn’t feel bad because I was an inept speaker, I felt bad because I thought my poor performance didn’t do those wonderful ideas justice. I tried to summon some of the keynote speaker’s energy and enthusiasm while I fast approached the end of my yawn inducing presentation, and for a very brief moment just a glimpse of it shone through, a fleeting glimmer of something better, right before I got back to my reliably boring self.
That fraction of a second was enough to change my life. In that moment I wasn’t the overworked, overweight and inexplicably sad person who bent over backwards to please everybody, I was someone with ideals and convictions who had something to say, and this is persona stuck with me, it is who is writing to you now.
I tried repeatedly to reconnect with that moment, that feeling that there was something better out there, but the only thing I managed to accomplish was to get myself fired.
This was the drop that made the glass run over. My loved ones were ashamed of my predicament and didn’t want to have anything to do with me and my avalanche of failures. The closest ones tried to find excuses for my appallingly aberrant behavior, others became openly hostile and shunned me publicly.
I loved them, but I didn’t feel the need to guide my life by other people’s standards anymore and this mindset belongs to the category of sins communities who thrive on conformity and mutual obligations are never willing to forgive. I suddenly realized I had nothing: no love, no friends, no career, no health, no money, no place to call my own, no support network, but worst of all, got the dreadful realization that everything I worked so hard to accomplish up until that point was worthless.
My new life didn’t think me good enough and my old life despised me, and I spent these early days terrified, scraping for odds and ends and bouncing about concessions and compromises, trying to find a reason to push through the pain of yet another day. I begged and humiliated myself in ways that still flush my cheeks and fill me with bitterness, even after all this time, in order to recover the connections I didn’t think I could survive without, but it was all in vain. I felt I was drowning and desperately looked for a rope; every now and then my old life threw me one and I felt grateful and relieved, only to find out later that it was there to pull me even further into deep, treacherous waters. But do you know what happened then? I learned how to swim, and not just enough to keep myself afloat, but with the skills and sharp instincts of a real water creature.
You might have read some of the other sisters’ stories already, and are probably expecting some miraculous, inexplicable circumstances to have happened to me and justify my presence here. They didn’t. I had to dig myself out the hard way and build myself up from scratch: no, I’m not worthless, yes, what I think does matter, sure, I can learn anything I put my mind to, of course I can do this. In this vein I did some research and found Seth and her group, took a trip to Perpignan all on my own and showed up on their doorstep.
I don’t really know what it was that persuaded Seth I was worth a place in the order and I never worked harder in my life. See, there are the flashy presentations, the ones that make everything look effortless and magical, and then there is the grueling work that makes the presentation possible, the flaws and failures you have to set aside, the changes that occur mid-sequence, the giving of more than you think you can without collapsing, the mind numbingly boring details you have to go over again and again, the tensions that spark when everyone is on edge, the disagreements, the temperament differences, the physical pain — the back work.
I often thought of what my life would have been like if that defining moment happened sooner, but this is the kind of wasted energy that doesn’t yield any benefit. I just chose to believe that my life unfolded exactly the way it was supposed to in order to lead me here. Or not. Don’t know, don’t care, and in either case, I’m grateful, because if it didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be in this handmade paradise, a thousand years later.
You may find yourself at crossroads at some point in your life, with no aim and no compass and exposed to the winds, most of us get to that place sooner or later. Don’t pick any of the roads just because somebody is asking you to chose between them, find the destination you want to reach and cut your own path to get there if you have to.
Blessings,
Sister deAngelis
