Cremating Demons

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Art work by Bryan Villalva, lyrics by NF

The "check engine" doesn't bother me.  It doesn't beep, doesn't flash, just appears.  Like all the other little lights in my car that exist but don't necessarily demand my attention.  So I just keep driving.  I'll attend to my car tomorrow.

I got my first two payed acting jobs last summer, both of which were amazing experiences with wonderful human beings.  I received the acceptance calls within 3 hours of each other.  Like any proper lunatic, I said yes to both of them.  I made the calculations.  I could make this work, and because I don't have the bravery to say no, I'll also work full time at my food service job so as to make everyone happy.  My plan was perfect, like a puzzle, with about as much breathing room between pieces.                     

BRILLIANT PLAN:

My bear friend liked to visit me 
on my way to my tent.

If it took two hours to get to the Fair for my first acting job, and than an hour to get to the next Theater, I would have 5 minutes to wriggle out of my prehistoric costume, 30 minutes to shower the dirt and sweat off my body in the backstage sink, paint my face pretty, put on a fluffy pink dress and rush to curtain call, clean up and get home around 11:30 PM, then wake up at  3:00 AM to be ready for work by 4:00 AM and take the hour drive to work so I can open at 5:00 AM and I'll work late till about 4:30 PM 5 days a week so I can

Early mid-life crisis.
(not real bear).

still get to my night shows by 6:00 PM and than make the hour drive to my tent outside the Fair by 12:30 PM and than we repeat.  I am a wizard god.

I only face a few predicaments...I didn't schedule a full nights sleep.  And time to make meals.  Oh well.  That's why we have granola bars.  I sleep in my car on breaks.  Small sacrifices must be made for big plans. 

I forget to tell anyone about that check engine light.  Guess I'll do it tomorrow.  My AC ceases to perform it's duty and blows warm air.  Oh well.  I'll just roll down my windows and take off my shirt when no one's looking.  Small sacrifices must be made for a big life. 

Some good friends let me crash at their house for the night.  I wake up in a bright sunny guest room still gritty with sweat, makeup, blood, dirt, and tears, eating a full

When you wake in your tent
in the same position as 
your sloth.

breakfast of a granola bar and self-belittling thoughts about how much of an inconvenience I am.  

I arrive at work, running back and forth, dropping dishes left and right.
Workmate:  "You need to keep being vigorous...without the panic."
I'm not panicking.  I just 3 more coffees than usual to remember who I am in the mornings.

I'm sure my car can go one more day without me bothering about the check engine light.  It did before,it can do it again.  I sweat till my clothes stick to me.  I breathe a funny burning smell.  It's probably fine though.  I'll just pull the collar of my shirt over the lower half of my face.  It's not unbearable. (Acknowledge my bear pun). 

I feel as though I've developed narcolepsy. I fall asleep instantly.  Anywhere.  My trunk.  The dirt.  A booth.  Just never on the job.  
I wake up to someone tapping my shoulder.  I fell asleep against the porter potty in our back-stage tent.  "You good?"

"Yup!  I'm fine!"  I stand back up, straighten my costume and get back to work.
My food for the weekend gets eaten by the bear family that lives in the dumpster beside my tent.  RIP.  I survive the next few days on kindness.  I must be a burden and an inconvenience to my playmates.  Maybe they wish I wasn't here.  I'm stupid.

I spend so many hours in the car that I something I forget where I'm even going.  I drift into the comfort of the engine rumbling, the heat, the winding road beneath the cliff...

BANG!!
I don't know what broke first, me or the car.  My eyes snap back open, my

Rest in Peace ol' man.

steering wheal and I wrestling for control, rubber screeching, spinning, a dramatic impact on my right that sends us sideways for a spell, than one more metal-crunching impact as we land back ride side up. 
Silence.  What a weird thing.
I realize my arm is in the protective "mom seat-belt" position to protect my stuffed bear in the passenger seat.  My emotions shut down like any hope of life in my car.  "Well crap."

After driving my parents car to work, I ask a work mate to pass something from the top shelf.  My voice is gone.  I feel like a deflated balloon.  He puts his hand to his ear and keeps asking, "What?"  I want to puke.  I start to cry.  And for the first time, I ask if I can go home early.

By the end of this grand adventure, so perfectly well planned with only a few minor inconveniences, I find myself (after a rush of soby goodbyes to playmates, packing up my tent, head pounding with dehydration, road closures, a dead phone, and being hours late), I find myself unpacking my bags at a hotel conference building full of theologians, Christians, and probably a lot of homeschoolers.

I never felt so much like a burnt scrap of twisted, good-for-nothing shipwrecked wood.  Every sparkly, spunky, social trait that defined me was gone.  I attempted to revive my sick body from dehydration and the granola bar diet.  I would meet someone, and than begin to cry.  My self control was lost and I couldn't even stop myself from crying at the dinner table, and didn't even care who saw. I couldn't explain why.  Perhaps I had finally reached insanity. 

It finally came to me after the second week, as the band played praises and we listened from our seats in the conference room.  

I was faced with thoughts I couldn't handle because I did not give myself the time to handle them.  I didn't give myself time to think.  Like makeup over dirt, I slathered activities over the dirt collecting in soul.  And now, in the silence, my heart was naked and my thoughts were daunting.

Quiet. 

  I watched my dear friend perform in Matilda the Musical.  There's a scene where chaos is erupting around her, and suddenly everyone freezes, the music goes silent and she sings, "Quiet."

And the heat and the shouting

And my heart is pounding

And my eyes are burning

And suddenly everything is, 

everything is

Quiet

Like silence, but not really silent

Just that still sort of quiet

Like the sound of a page being turned in a book

Or a pause in a walk in the woods

Quiet

Like silence, but not really silent

Just that nice kind of quiet

Like the sound when you lie upside down in your bed

Just the sound of your heart in your head

And though the people around me

Their mouths are still moving

The words they are forming

Cannot reach me anymore

And it is quiet

And I am warm

Like I've sailed

Into the eye of the storm

I crash landed into the eye of the storm.  In one broken piece of neglected relationships, anxiety and

self-loathing.

And like the check engine light on my car, I had plenty of warning.  

Justin Witmel Early describes this in his book The Common Rule:

The worst depths of my emotional breakdown happened when I began to fear my own mind.

After getting counseling, I up and moved to New Mexico for a show Albuquerque.  What possessed
me to decide within a week to pack a bag a move to another state for a show I wasn't even payed for AND (unbeknownst to me), would shut down after a week of shows, I don't know. 
And somehow, I don't regret it in the slightest.  

In my separation from acting, scheduling get-togethers, and the general hustle, I was forced to flip-flop

my last years plan.  I was forced to think.  I read.  And read.  And read about rest.  And rest while reading.  And as if God himself was trying to tell me something, (as if he like, communicates or something) suddenly all of my readings and homework papers were about rest.

I asked God to take me deeper, what ever that meant.  I realized that "going deeper" did not mean "making it bigger" or "doing more."  On the contrary.  God answered by prayers by teaching me to rest.  To think.  To wait.  To say no more than I say yes.

The outcome of these practices lead to me longer, deeper conversations with God.  Writing.  Drawing.  Dancing.  Smiling.  Singing.  Going out with just me and Jesus.  Spending moments with him on the roof that were so magnificent I can't even being to describe them to you.  Spending time with friends and family out of love, not obligation or lonely compulsions.  Doing stupid things and filming it just to make people laugh.  And laughing.  I can laugh even when there's no one laughing with me.  I met a man who in many ways reminds me of Jesus.  I fell in love and jumped in mud and laid down in puddles and fell through ice and ran in the rain and cried and panicked and jumped in a hot air balloon and hiked and prayed and sang to God like there was no tomorrow.  It was just as much of an adventure as last year, only instead of resulting as a corpse I feel alive.  

And now I have returned.  Returned to the same ol' basement where I started the first sprouts of this

blog 4 years ago, and where I have since broken all myself-mandated blogging rules (Like consistency and length).  If you have made it all the way through this, I thank you, (now go get a life).  

Since moving back from my un-expected 6 month delay in Albuquerque, I dusted, cleaned, re-organized, and got rid of half of my nick-nacks minus the good memories.  I even took down the shelf I used to wallow under in self-hatred and depression.  Those demons are long slain, yet there's no sense in slaying the dragon and just leaving it's carcass beneath your bed to reek throughout the room.  Demons need to be cremated and buried too.

There's a check engine light.  It's quiet.  Subtle.  It doesn't demand your attention.  its just there.  Waiting for you to break when you least expect it.  Don't just consider the problem. 

Find it.  Open the hood.  Go deeper.  Take an early morning just to yourself.  Go someplace quiet, without your phone, without any distraction, and take 20 minutes to think.  And see what kind of check engine lights appear.

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
-David (Psalms 139:23-24)

   

(Balloon photography by Bryan Villalva)