It’s Ash Wednesday – the day Christians remember their mortality – that we are nothing, come from nothing, and go to nothing. Nothing but dust and ashes.

Worthless sinner – You are a sinner child, the Devil is in you! Get on your knees and pray for your soul…you are going to hell…

And there she is, that voice, rousing the haunting from my childhood.

Blech.

My brain becomes a chaotic whirlwind of blame, confusion, and theological inquiries:

 You deserve ash – You were never anything before, but ash. * Hey! I thought the ashes came from the Palms on Palm Sunday! That’s not nothing! * NO! You go from the dust of the earth back to the ash of the earth…

And then with numbing force, as if I’m falling off a cliff or into some chasm of forgotten souls: I am dead. The isolation of my inside reveals it’s corpse- it is my song…I sing the body electric – I celebrate my Corpus Christi – my unholy incarnation – my…

That’s just great Erliss. What are you – the embodiment of a lost Addams Family episode? Are you Wednesday  Addams? How goth of you. 

I almost always debate my existence with a touch of sarcasm.

But the self hate is sincere.

I wake up wanting to die. I go to bed wanting to die. Ash and dust are my salvation.

AshAshAshAshASH!

OK… I understand that Ash Wednesday is not about suicidal ideation. But the sense behind the ideation – living into the realization that I am nothing, every breath wiser than the one before –

This may end now…or now…or maybe with the next one…you are definitely closer to the ending…yep, almost there…well, maybe a few more breaths…I think it’s going to take longer than expected, but it will happen…eventually…

Usually I am alone in these thoughts – if they ever escape my head, people try to fix me.

You have so much to live for/Your life is important/You gotta love yourself/ Self- esteem self-esteem self-esteem self-esteem

I AM TIRED OF WORKING ON MY FUCKING SELF ESTEEM!!!

Please! Let me have my shame. Let my scars bear witness to my suffering.

   He took everything else, please don’t take my shame. 

There is a sacred ritual in my thoughts. My desire for death has saved my life.

We have these instincts when faced with danger; fight and flight are heralded as the most popular means of survival. There are Olympic sports dedicated to fight and flight. But freeze and collapse usually elicit more disgust than celebration.  Sometimes contributing to dissociative “disorders” (I prefer to call them dissociative “adaptations”), freeze and collapse are the most amazing survival tools. They say to our bodies: “You could die right now, so shut down and you won’t feel the pain.” Blood is pumped from our extremities to our most vital organs, like the heart and lungs, so that we have the best possible opportunity to survive. Freeze enables us to feign death, making us less desirable as food.  And collapse makes it more difficult for us to be found if we are hiding – behind a tree, in the grass or under the bed.

My little heart, my tiny self, I can’t breathe, how…why…please make it stop… 

[The numbness began to abduct me, so I just now took a break. I stood on one leg and counted backwards by 7s from 100, found 4 red things in the room, pet the dog’s ears – all tools to help me stay more present. Trust me, you don’t want me to go into another world right now, it’s too scary and late. Maybe for Halloween…]

Let’s go back to the main story – Ash Wednesday.

Tonight at church, I wondered if my despondent mind, that incessant desire to fade into death – I wondered if it’s not born from a desperate urge to live?

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return…. The Priest’s thumb pressed into my forehead the sign of the cross. There is a name for this, it’s not just me, I am with others…You are not the bad little girl, Erliss, or at least you aren’t the only one.

This was a congregational affair. Together we knelt at the altar, heads bowed in humble contrition. We remembered where we came from, and where we are going. We recognized that this life is ever brief, that we will never be “good enough,” and the point is not to live into perfection or holiness; the point is to summon the holy in our depravity.

Tonight, no one tried to fix me.  No one said “Be grateful,” or “learn to love yourself.”  I was not outed as especially evil or bad or sinful.

We were all told  “You are each sinners. We are all sinners. “

Beautiful

Precious

Wondrous

Beloved

Holy

Sinners.

 One day every year my existential isolation becomes communal worship. One day a year there is nothing wrong with my self-abasement. For one day in the year, I am usual, normal, with everyone else. I don’t cower alone, so I don’t cower at all. I can walk around with the symbol of my depravity just above my eyebrows – and I can wear it with pride. For today, I am not alone in my shame. My scars belong to everyone. It is about our sin, our mortality, our humanity.

The unique nature of my ”badness” disintegrates into dust and ash.

This is my Atonement. My Suicidal Eucharist.

And from there, the desperation to live is reborn.

Thank you for listening,

Love, Erliss.