I'm not religious but I know how to pray. I think everyone does. Maybe we don't all kneel or recite from a text, but we've all asked for help with something. Five days a week I'm probably an Atheist. Or maybe I just don't care to fiddle with questions I can't answer. When I am desperate I do things I normally wouldn't to find relief. In my opinion, prayer is just an honest action of any kind that reveals the reality of my current situation. There was a point in my life where a fist fight was the best prayer I could come up with. Win or lose it was quite a humbling experience. To collapse all bloody and worn and beg for the strength to get up is as honest as it gets. We've all done it in one form or another.
If I've had a bad day, it follows me long after the sun goes down. While my family sleeps I sit and think. Fear has a way of catching you when no one else is around. Without the shield of distraction that other people provide, there isn't anywhere to hide. In the past I used to try and outrun the setting sun to the nearest bar stool. The minute I walked into the artificial midnight of the closest dive bar, I knew I was safe from "that old sinking feeling". If I didn't see anyone I knew, at least the music was loud and they rarely ran out of whiskey. Even half drunk and alone in the smoky corner of a lively pool hall I could create the illusion that I was at least part of a crowd. At times I was lucky and could look mysteriously attractive (and drunk) enough to catch the eye of another loner. The fantasy was always the same. I'd see her looking longingly at the ceiling. Then, she'd notice me out of the corner of her eye and saunter over and ask me my name. I found other loners but the reality of our encounters turned out to be far removed from the velvet curtain backdrops of my mind. If there was a saunter, it looked more like a stumble followed by a limp. Five packs of "reds" later we'd watch the glow of a cocaine sunrise find it's way into my room. There's not a curtain on earth that can block the sounds of a waking planet. I hated those god damn birds. White lines at dawn feel like death. Fear can make anyone a fugitive and I went to great lengths to escape the reality that I would someday unravel.
When I'm afraid, I write. It helps. I can dig in and get honest. I can bring up the past and sort it out. With the past sorted I can envision a real future. Today I am terrified so I MUST write! There is so much inside a human being. I could write every minute of my life until I die and record only an abbreviation of myself. Even then, perhaps only the apostrophe would show up with the letters in the word missing. That's how I feel most of the time. As the pen moves, there emerges a conversation on paper I do not understand. That reflection can be a terrifying glimpse of who I am. This is what I've always been afraid of. If it turns out that you are the villain in your own story, can that be changed? What if you try as hard as you can and the story is always the same? Then what? When all I have is questions, I start looking for stillness. I hate it when fear makes my life feel like I'm looking through a dirty cellar window. Here I am on my tip-toes staring out a dusty pane trying to see just enough to understand what's going on outside. I huff/wipe and huff/wipe but only the outside of the window is dirty. There's not much I can do except get down off the balsa wood box I'm standing on before it sends me reeling.
This is not as hopeless as it sounds. Some people ask a specific God for specific direction. Some people drive around in their cars late at night crying to sad songs on the radio until they feel better. Some people make love and some drink. Prayer is what you make it. For me, answers are not terribly important in the end. It's the honesty in the surrender and in the words that show up on my paper that lets me sleep. It's ok to say "I don't know what to do" or simply "I just don't know". I shuffle through my struggles in conversation with that written reflection that initially always terrifies me. In all my years of writing the only thing that hasn't changed is the never ending rediscovery of some part of me worth keeping.
