Dungeons and Dragons Became my Ministry

Growing up during the Satanic Panic, I knew three things about Dungeons and Dragons: people played it in the dark, there were demons involved, and kids died.

It turns out people play around brightly lit tables, the only demons involved are the ones we defeat, and friends do die...inside the game. Like in checkers. Christians, of all people, should know that facing death, even in stories, can make you better at life.

Dungeons and Dragons has become my ministry.

A typical first session starts with strangers, usually other women from local Army support group Facebook groups, arriving at my apartment door. I greet them with my baby on my hip, welcome them inside, offer them cookies. They're usually nervous, find their seats around my coffee table while I hand out colorful dice in little tupperware with weapons written on the top. "These are the dice for your short sword, these are the dice for your long bow..." Sheets of paper are examined. One new player's character is good at talking to animals; another can heal wounds by laying on hands.

When everyone is comfortable and I've downed a cup of coffee, I pass around a cloth bag and let each woman choose a bracelet from inside. "Congratulations." The girl with the bangle is the much-contested crown princess they've sworn to protect. The two with matching bracelets are twins. Strangers stare at each other.

And I plunge them into the story.

"You've been tracking a monster through the night as it passed through the border of your tribe's lands moving toward the human settlements. As the sun rises, the tracks disappear into a stream."

Within five minutes, strangers are plunging into danger to help each other, laughing at ridiculous choices and silly moments, gasping as they incur imaginary wounds. Within three hours, they're shouting "FOR MY SISTER!", talking to imaginary people without shame and deciding what kind of heroes they'll be in this little world we've made.

When I finish, I ask, "Do you want to do this again?" No one has ever said no.

I believe in the power of stories to give us practice in being brave, to give us chances to make hard decisions while they're a little bit easier. I believe in the power of stories to let us feel who we want to be.

And I believe in the power of adrenaline, of doing something ostensibly silly but doing it together, to teach people they can trust each other. I've gone to coffee, I've gone to lunch, but a DnD circle will randomly switch from fighting a monster to sharing notes about abuse or difficult events in a way coffee dates never did. Hurting people find a sisterhood of women who care and listen and help them fight monsters. 

Not every game I run is going to be a therapy session. Sometimes it's just a story, just a chance for people to get together and laugh and do something hard. But creating that safe space? Creating that chance for people to get out of themselves and into who they want to be? That's worth every hour.

Dungeons and Dragons is the way I have to love people, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Setting Fire to Bridges

My heart was aching. My whole chest hurt. And I seethed with rage and frustration as my mother told me not to burn bridges.

When your heart is broken and a friendship is soaked with gasoline, sending out that spark seems so right. It seems like a conflagration is the thing you need to make you okay. It feels like keeping that connection is keeping an IV drip of pain whether you can see them or not. A "friend" had hurt me, and I wanted her gone.

Have you been here? Have you, like me, seethed in wounded anger and clenched the matches in your fist?

Have you felt like the only way to honor your pain is to set fire to your friendships? Words like my mom's lash like whips, like all the love in the world is just more gasoline. I held back my spark, but I told her she was wrong. I would never want that friend, ever, ever, ever.

Two years later, when I was at my most frightened, I asked that girl to hold my baby. 

I'm not the girl with the matches anymore. I'm the woman who's seen people who called me freak reach out with their hearts. I'm the girl who's seen bullies who broke me become heroes I lean on. I'm the girl who keeps bridges when all the hope seems gone, because with what I've seen, I know I can't make that call.

There are times and places to light the match on a friendship, but they are so much rarer than I thought. And there are people who seemingly drift away forever, but my wizened old-lady 26-year-old self can tell you that many, so many, come back.

So whether you throw the gasoline or disappear without a trace, I hope you know I like you. And when we meet down the road with more adventures and more understanding, I'll be glad to see you again.

I haven't burned our bridges. They're still waiting.

(Except you, creepy jury-duty man. You remain with all the men I've judged unsafe in the "See you in heaven, talk to someone else" zone. Good luck.)

So I was Sexist.

When I was young, I believed men were storms.

They didn’t make decisions; they didn’t commit sins; they happened to you. They swept in and out and left wreckage or not. They were not accountable for what happened to you when you encountered their wrath. You could make things worse, but never better.

I couldn’t bear that the beast changed for Belle, but my child self was not worth changing for. So, instead of deciding the forces that shaped and splintered my world could be wrong when they so obviously had the favor of heaven, I called them unchanging. I called them storms.

Then I married a knight in shining armor. And my world fell apart.

Collin was beautiful and perfect and he’d never hurt me on purpose, but he was terrible at telling me what was happening in our Army-controlled life, and as my panic attacks worsened and life was terrible I could only blame me. I wasn’t prepared enough for the storm. I wasn’t smart or strong or good enough to handle finding everything out at the last minute. I felt worthless because I was, dagnabbit, and poor, poor Collin having to deal with a woman who fell apart when life happened to her! Then my dear husband told me the thing that sent all my careful defenses for him tumbling to the ground, looking not like love but just like barbed wire. “It hurts me that you never think I can change.”

And I blurted out, “Men don’t change!”

*three…slow…claps*

In the middle of my panic and confusion and guilt, Collin took my shoulders and walked me through how to blame him for a mistake. He taught me that my suffering could be his fault, and it didn’t bring on his wrath or make me an unkind creature of horror. It was easy to forgive him. I’d never gotten to before, and it was easy to start.

And then he changed. For me.

Men aren’t storms. They are heroes or monsters. Absolving them of responsibility for their actions isn’t kindness.  It’s just barbed wire.

Meditations on Posterior Birth

My mom in her wisdom always told me, when I'd fret or compete or ask who was her favorite, that she loved each of her children exactly the same.

I don’t know if I'll be able to say that. I imagine myself, looking into Sam's eyes, remembering our wild meeting and the horrible battle to follow, and I feel in my gut that I’d tell him I will never love anyone the way I love him.

Sam. Your name was so foreign. I said it first, looking at your wide, disgruntled eyes in that pointed, Yoda-like face, your little beak-ed mouth. They said it would be love at first sight, but you gave me more. You gave me love through a thousand battles.

In Scandanavia, they call babies like you Star-Gazers. It’s a pretty name to put on the way you fought and rolled to come into the world facing upwards. Your head wasn’t made for that. My Muttermund wasn’t made for it. You can eat and be strong and not tear downwards towards the perineum or upwards towards the pearl, but a star-gazer shatters outwards and makes a new shape, shears off a part of you in a bursting moment. I used to feel broken that my mind broke, in that moment. Wasn’t I supposed to look into your eyes and know you better than myself, pull you to my chest and leave all pain and blood behind? I was supposed to bring you, sleepy and darling, to my breast, and the love of you would expel everything I didn’t need anymore. But that didn’t happen. The world was pain, my mind was pain, and there was no insta-love. I thought it was my fault, that my birth had been like everyone else’s but I wasn’t good enough to feel painless. But that was just what it took to have you. That was the birth of my star-gazer.

It was also the birth of me, as a mother. It was the birth of us. And I grieved the postpartum I thought we were supposed to have, grieved it deep and long, but at the bottom of that grief, I found our joy.

Sam. Will you ask me if you’re my favorite? Will you ask me if I love someone more? I pray I can love the next little someone as much as I love you. You re-made me. You’re a part of me, now.

There are cells from you in my liver, and my brain, growing, replicating, giving me more strength, more life. The story of you is alive in me forever.

You changed my brain structure, too. My amygdala reformed to meet you. The same process that made our early weeks so nightmarish and super-hero-origin-y is what makes me wake up at the whisper of your arm moving at midnight, that makes meeting your need the most intense thing in my world. Other people can laugh, tell me you’re fine, babies cry, but your pain or fear or hunger or desire for touch is as urgent to me as the waves of pain that gave you to me. I heard people say they’d do anything for their child, and it sounded like a statement of determination. It’s not. It’s a primal, raw, savage intensity of being. When something threatens a baby on television, I know immediately as fearless, calm adrenaline roars through my fingertips that I could kill without thought or remorse if something threatened you.

You changed my body. I was not always the curvy bombshell you’ll come to know. Nor was I star-shaped. I can never say anything like angry mothers do on TV, could never shout or whisper the idea that you ruined me. I am the most beautiful I’ve ever been. I am the bravest I’ve ever been. I’d never liked all of me before you. You made me a creature of raw power and fierce delight, and my soul only thanks you, little unthinking one.

When you grew in the deepest part of me, you didn’t know you would re-make the first person you’d ever know. When you twisted inside me, you just wanted out. But your first action coming into the world shaped both of us. And I wouldn’t trade our battles for a sweet entrance, ever.

My Sam, every day, every battle, I love you more. If it’s true what they tell me, and every brother and sister you have I will grow for, perhaps, as my own mother said, I will love you each exactly the same…amount. But, my little wolf, my star-gazer, I will never love anyone the same as I love you.

What Do you Do with Mom-Hazing?

Mom's can be mean.

I learned that before the ink on my mom-card had dried, before I could walk straight or get a cup of water on my own. I reached out with a question and was still exhausted. Of course I was exhausted. I'd just given birth.

Their diagnosis on me was visibly wrong, so I didn't rush to a hospital like they said.

And then I couldn't take every advice- because there was one of EVERY advice. When in doubt, trust your own mom, right?

And then I didn't update fast enough. I didn't realize they wanted an hourly play by play of a life I was just trying to live.

And then suddenly

Ow. Owwwwww.

Caring about a person enough to reach out when you're worried is a kind of caring. Caring enough to be vicious because they couldn't explain something proficiently while recovering from a mild hemorrhage is not caring. You don't get to keep using the "care" card when your care is stabbing them when they're at their weakest and making sure they never ask for help again.

You don't get to say you care when you don't care whether your advice is right, you just want it obeyed when it will hurt everyone.

I wrote down later that week that the only thing I regretted about our birth was asking for advice afterwards. That's not true, though. I regretted letting people far away from me speak into my life and tell me I was too stupid to be a mom, when the people close to me said I was smart enough. I regretted letting people be aware of my weakness and my struggle, when they could use that to shake their heads and say I was inadequate and immature. I regretted trusting people in aggregate instead of holding to the tiny circle of people I knew in person, when in aggregate, people couldn't be satisfied and all I could do was hurt them.

I regretted letting people in.

Now every time someone tells me I should join a group of moms, I shrink. I stop. My smile freezes, and I say, "That sounds great," or"Good for you!" But what I'm thinking is, "I'm not right for them. I'm right for a cave alone."

Because maybe there will always be someone who takes offense instead of holding space, who attacks first instead of reading twice. Maybe the response to, "Do you know anything about this? Because I'm scared and hurting," will always be "Don't come back; you bother people."

I've learned to find my own information. I've learned to trust my own gut and keep my own counsel and be fearless in my decisions. I've learned not to need them.

Maybe I'm ready to make more friends, with the part of my heart that was so hurt cauterized closed. I don't know.

"Are you in love yet?"

My first day holding Sam, when the full difficulty of getting back my strength hadn't been realized, and it was just a daze and I felt like we'd found a free baby in our hotel, a friend asked me, "Aren't you in love?"

I avoided the question, because, no. I wasn't in love. I was dedicated to this little creature with my life. I would die for him, as a matter of course. But I wasn't in love. That bizarre disconnect that hit the moment he tore out of me and the world when numb, when I picked up the little body and he screamed and my brain that had held it together through all the hours quit like a switch, that was still there. I couldn't even connect the angry little creature in my arms with the one who'd bumped around during D&D games and kicked at Collin's voice. Nothing seemed real.

And then everything was hellish.  I was alone and the infant didn't know how to feed.

He shoved me away and screamed. He punched and bit and kicked and I wasn't strong enough to hold back his tiny limbs from hurting me. He glared into my eyes with a desperation I understood and demanded things I didn't know how to give him. The first bonding moment we shared was when I let myself cry like a deserted thing with him, when I clutched him and sobbed for both of us. We were trapped in Hades together.

Then, we learned. We adapted. We fought. I fought for him.

Pain was our life. There were hot needles in my chest, and sitting up was horrible because the world perched on blades. But I fought to get tiny jaws clamping down while I yelled in agony, left him and staggered across the house falling against walls to get a clean eye-dropper and cup to bruise myself till I could make him scream just a little less. And moment by moment, you felt real, Sam. Nothing about you, nothing about us, felt free anymore.

You weren't pushing me away and screaming because you were mad at me. Little arms don't work like that. You pushed and then screamed because I was away, and you didn't understand.

There was that moment, holding you, when I finally understood that you were the one who twisted inside me before you entered the world. There was that moment when you woke yourself up with a scream that immediately cut off when you looked at up me, and your face went calm. And there was that moment, leaning on the couch with you cradled close, your tiny mouth finally eating, when your eyes looked sideways at me, and you finally smiled.

That's when I fell in love. That's when we won us, Sam.

It's somewhat like they said it was. I don't know about my heart being bigger than I imagined, but when you cuddle someone for hours to help them poop and you cheer when they fart, it's a bond you don't get anywhere else. And I bet it's going to be that cliche, where I'm softer on you than other people are and I ask you a million questions when you're out and grown because I still really care. When Collin was avoiding saying he liked me, what seems like a million years ago, he told me he'd invested a lot in me.

All of me is invested in you. So grow strong, Sam. Feel safe. I'll be here.

And I'm so proud of you for farting.

Last Shift

February 9^th, 2017.

I wasn't ready to share this before. And then I wasn't able to type much for a long time. But here.

I just worked my last ever shift as a cashier. I laughed with people, I ran for people, I circled things on receipts for them. When the people were gone, and I wiped down the surfaces again, I kept hearing myself whisper, “Goodbye.”

Goodbye, metal counter. Goodbye, ray-gun. Goodbye, red laser well. Goodbye, ugly phone.

My Collin told me, when I cried quitting our first teaching job, that you can lose a place, but you never lose the person you became for it. I can lose my store, but I can’t lose me.

I was never cut out for this.

I never got “mentally tough.” 

I never learned to read 100% which people wanted me to not be a person that day. I never stopped being a person.

I never got where I didn’t make mistakes. My speed and efficacy were directly dependent on how much caffeine was in my system, and I wondered frequently if I’d handed back a check or a coupon or someone’s $20 and whether I’d have a job in two weeks.

I was never good enough, but that was okay. Because every interaction, every glob of change, I was reaching out for help. I was thanking Him for every chance I had to be here, praying for the things I couldn’t fix, asking for help fixing what I had. It got to be where every moment became worship, and every hour fed my battered soul.

I was never cut out for this job, but I gave my all, and it was good enough.

It matters, because I know what’s next, and I'm not cut out for it either. I get scared. I’ve watched me fall like a house of cards.

The thing is, maybe I'm never going to be enough. And maybe that's okay.

Maybe I can go on without being enough.