When I was young I wanted to be nun. I wanted it so desperately that I actually did my sixth grade career report on my grandmother’s friend, Margie, an honest to God nun at St. John the Evangelist’s on Seneca Street. I met Margie for lunch one spring afternoon. The convent was bright and airy with lots of windows, which looked out on a small garden on one side and the rushing traffic of the polluted Buffalo street on the other. Margie was a fun nun. She cracked jokes that were not always appropriate, and had a sarcastic streak. She gave me a tour and answered all of my childish questions, like “does everyone have their own room?” I thought the convent had to be the coolest place ever. You lived with a bunch of your friends, rent free, with no parents. You could eat what you wanted, go to bed when you wanted, and hang out after church for all of the picnics, and gatherings in the church hall. You could do anything…the opportunities were endless.
I immediately pictured myself making scrambled eggs in the morning (that’s all I was capable of making) and brewing some earl grey for myself and the other St. Johns’ residents. All of the sisters would come down and we’d talk about magazines and the young new priest while we ate; then, after painting our toenails, I’d sit in the library room and read books by great women: Charlotte Bronte, Emily Dickinson, Judy Blume. Everyone would love me. I’d be the queen of the St. John’s sorority. On weekends, I’d teach religion classes to children and work at the soup kitchen. All of the elderly ladies of the parish would request that I be the one to bring them communion after mass, and my fellow sisters would whisper behind closed doors about how wonderfully pious I was, and how selfless.
It was only logical, then, that in seventh grade I decided that I was going to attend an all-girls Catholic high school. I was tired of trying to be someone and felt completely alienated at Maryvale Middle School. Eric Gillette, my latest crush, didn’t know that I existed, and my brother wouldn’t stop singing “Gillette, the best boyfriend Caroline can get” to the tune of the Gillette razor TV commercials. It was embarrassing. A new school would afford me the opportunity to be an individual, to break free from the nerdy smart kids. I’d get to wear one of those cute skirts and knee socks and see a different part of Buffalo. Plus, I didn’t have to worry about doing my hair, because I was only going to be surrounded by other girls. No fighting over boys. I wouldn’t even have to think about them. So, I started my research.
There were a few schools in the area that stood out. I had a soccer friend whose sister, Leigh Ann, went to Holy Angels, and she and I would be able to enter in the same year…a built in friend. My mother went to Mount Mercy, which was across the park from my grandmother’s house, and Sacred Heart was only a few miles from my house, and right near the University of Buffalo’s south campus. These three were my best options. I decided to visit each of them.
As I entered Holy Angels, I felt special. I had my own tour guide (Leigh Ann) who led me from class to class, through the cafeteria and around the shadowed chapel. I tried to see myself as the intellectual sophisticate that I thought emerged from private girls’ schools. I imagined skulking the halls with other teens, joining student council and eventually ruling the school. I’d of course graduate at the top of my class and be the most beloved student ever to walk the hallowed halls. Photos of me would flank the main doors for decades…me in a drama production, building houses for the poor, organizing a 5k to raise money for scholarships. In this scenario I was also thinner, had unruly curly hair, and my torso had miraculously stretched three inches. This would be the place that I thrived.
But, no matter how hard I tried to feel like I could be this fabulous person, there was something missing at Holy Angels. I was ridiculously bored. These girls seemed to be just passing time in their knee length wool skirts. They seemed to have no personalities, no goals, no drive. It was not like the movies.
Hoping that maybe I had just not found my niche there, I visited the other two schools. The Mount Mercy girls had a little more edge (being from South Buffalo instead of the wealthier suburbs) but the school was dark and felt haunted. Freshmen were housed in the basement and didn’t get to interact with upper classman. It was as if they were lepers. It would not be easy to take over the school if I was locked in a dungeon, and Buffalo winters were depressing enough without having to feel like a medieval prisoner. And Sacred Heart seemed to be pretty much full of upwardly mobile, socially obsessed, snobby rich girls. I would be the girl from the wrong side of the proverbial tracks, otherwise known as Main Street in Williamsville, there on scholarship from a decidedly middle-class (possibly even lower middle class,) Cheektowagan family.
But there was something else that I couldn’t place my finger on…something that made each school feel empty and still. I couldn’t figure out why I felt so out of place, until my grandmother jokingly pointed it out to me. There were no boys. Unbeknownst to me, seventh grade would mark the beginning of my boy obsession. This was the last year that a nun’s life would hold such interest to me. Soon, I would become sex obsessed and power hungry. I would no longer want to make my mark as a moral do-gooder, but as a female temptress, just stretching her wings to see how many men she could catch in her web and feed on before letting them back into the world, crippled and desperate for her attention. Plaid skirts and habits be damned.
However, it turned out that there was a problem with this change of purpose. While I enjoyed flexing my teenaged hormonal sexuality, I really still spent a great deal of my time searching for a center, and going about it in a very unproductive way. I had a hard time balancing my need for a higher power with my need for male attention. In high school, I joined the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) at St. Barnabas church. While striving to be a leader in the organization, I couldn’t help but get caught up in interpersonal relationships. There was a point where I danced provocatively on a table and sang along to “When I Kiss Your Mouth” by Merrill Bainbridge in the cafeteria next to the gym, with the sole purpose of unnerving a very proper older male counterpart. I loved feeling the rush of control tingling from the back of my neck throughout my body. A year or two later, I would end up kissing a boy in the back of the old church while other members of the group stuffed themselves into a confessional, trying to see how many people they could squeeze in at once…clown car style. At CYO, we didn’t pray as much as we socialized. Most of the members were there to take part in the intramural sports program, not to get in touch with God. And at the time, that was fine by me. When you’re sixteen, drama takes the place of self. If I could feel enough angsty energy, I didn’t need anything else.
When things at home got more complicated, and college loomed in the not-so-distant future, I needed more than an intense flirtation to make me feel good about myself. And just in time, I discovered the Rock. The Rock was a peer-ministry group in Alden, a small town about twenty minutes from my house. The group had taken over an old convent, converting the house to a retreat center. Its name came from a giant boulder that was rolled into the house by its founding members. The Rock was a place where one adult (and the occasional adult volunteer) led a group of teens in a quest for religion. Here, teens would be able to learn about God from their peers. I was introduced when forced by my own religion class to attend a confirmation retreat there. That first day, I went in aggravated that this day-long retreat would take up my entire Saturday. And my whole goal was to mock the experience. But something happened to me inside those walls. I felt a glimmer of myself come out, that part of me that I’d done a good job of subverting in the presence of my peers.
We began the day in a large back room, which was devoid of furniture or any sort of decoration, sitting in a giant circle on the floor. Rules were given, and I rolled my eyes with the rest of my close friends, angry that the staff took our watches so we wouldn’t know what time it was. But when we went upstairs into tiny bedroom spaces in small groups, my seventeen year old group leader shared her experience with “finding God.” She grew up in a household with an absent, mean-spirited father. In order to find herself, she had turned to alcohol and the occasional illegal drug use. But then she came to the Rock and found a home, a place to just be quiet and be accepted. While I did not share her experience, I understood her emotions. I experienced similar feelings in my own depression affected household, and admired her for her willingness to be so honest with complete strangers. A week later, I joined the Rock team.
At first, I just enjoyed feeling as if I had another home. Mary, the leader, was constantly baking and the house constantly smelled like chocolate chip cookies and stale Doritos. We often made craft projects and spent time listening to inspirational music in the dim, cozy chapel room. I did not have to share anything about my life, I could just exist in this place of acceptance. But then I finished my training and was able to lead my own small groups. I loved feeling as if I were in charge. I was able to share my own ideas about God with unsuspecting teens. This was not the God who was sanctioned by the Catholic Church, and I gloried in that. I suppose I was a little like a cult leader. And while I talked about personal issues I began to feel more settled in myself, more at peace. Once I was in that comfort zone, however, I let the old habits take over, and began to use the Rock as a place to flirt.
I felt like a martyr the first time I was brave enough to share my story of woe with my peers in the large group meeting. I sat at the head of the circle, making eye contact with each retreat-goer, pausing in the middle of my sad story for effect. And even while I was honestly choked up, I was purposefully entreating the cutest boys in the room to be my saviors, hoping that one of them would fall in love with my maturity and vulnerability, and while I wouldn’t admit it at the time, I wanted to sneak away and do unseemly things with someone in one of those tiny rooms.
Only a teenage girl would think that personal suffering was sexy. I had it all planned out. One day, some muscle-bound addict would waltz through the door with tattoos and piercings and long black hair, and I’d be the one to lead him to spirituality though a passionate make-out session in a room with a shag carpet, where every Rock member had signed their names and penned their favorite inspirational quotes on the walls. I would, of course, cure this boy of his addiction through my passionate French kissing. Then, we’d fall madly in love and go to prom together, where I’d be the envy of all the girls there with clean-cut, boring boys. Score one for spiritual awakening. I was popular and saved.
My teenage angst ebbed in college, and getting in touch with my inner-self meant doing a few too many under-aged lemon drops, flirting with boys who were not necessarily my boyfriend, and sharing a little too much about my sex life (or lack thereof,) in a stairwell of the dorms with my best friend, Meghan. I was still somewhat active in religious groups. I had joined the Newman Center at SUNY Fredonia, mainly so I could sing in the choir and have something to do on a Sunday night. Here, I was harangued into acting in “Seven Last Words,” a mime production of the Stations of the Cross where I would have to don black garb and paint my face with thick, white oil paint, drawing stars in black eyeliner around my eyes. There are pictures to prove it. That first year, I was a guard. I went to my first rehearsal where we discussed the basic actions of the play. My role was simply to drag mime-Jesus up to the front of the Newman center, throw him on a cross, and scowl at him from the sides of the make-shift stage. Then, after he was crucified and Mary had finished her theatrical, silent sobbing, I’d pick him up with my guard counterpart and carry his dead, limp body from the stage. Easy enough.
But then, the star of the show walked out. Jesus was to be played by a lanky artsy guy with long blond hair and blue, soulful eyes, who played the guitar and was gorgeous. Suddenly, my small part seemed much more exciting. I wouldn’t even have to accidentally cop a feel. I got to manhandle his leanly muscled body all the way down the aisle, and then gaze at him as I helped carry him out, hands positioned strategically at his upper hamstring. I enjoyed every moment, and prayed for extra rehearsal time, and a possible butt grope opportunity.
That night I went home to my townhouse and accosted Meghan. “I have a crush on Jesus,” I told her. Meghan, although usually hard to surprise, just stared at me, dumfounded. Later, this comment would end up on the quote wall we had created from colored construction paper on our living room wall.
For some reason, for me, men and spirituality always seemed to go hand-in-hand. Maybe it’s just because my developing sexuality and the need for a spiritual life usually hit the hardest at the same adolescent times. Or, maybe my Catholic upbringing made me feel a little guilty about love and sex. Looking back, it’s possible that I needed neither men nor spirituality, but just to figure out my place in this world. And I never really saw it as a problem until I entered a serious relationship at the end of my junior year of college.
During my parents’ break up, I really did need to find a calm, centered world. And Luke (not his real name) was the perfect guy to be with at this point. He was quiet (which I interpreted as being deep and intellectual). He played the piano, taught figure skating, and was a bit of a computer whiz. He had long eye lashes and pale blue eyes that drooped a little in the corners, giving him a sleepy, wise look. With him I saw potential for my own eventual home. His brother was a Catholic priest, and he was a pretty avid church-goer. His family had old-fashioned values. Luke was not a believer in premarital sex, which took a lot of my worry about my sexual naïveté out of the equation. And while I admit that I hoped he’d change his mind about the sex thing, because I was obviously irresistible, part of me actually admired his dedication.
Luke began playing concerts at churches in his home town with his brother. I tried to make every one of them. This was when I loved him the most, when his emotion came out in through his long fingers. I’d wonder if people were watching my back, jealously, as I waited for him to play the song he wrote for me, our own little secret. I’d sit in the front row of the church, imagining myself years later in the same pew, wearing a smart sweater set with a child on either side of me. It was the middle-class family dream. While my own home-life was stressful, Luke’s home became a sanctuary for me. Everyone was polite and well behaved (except possibly, for his Italian grandmother who always spoke her mind and his rather excitable uncle who banged his fists passionately on tables in fancy restaurants). They prayed before meals and were all active in the community. I wanted so badly to be that kind of person. The problem was that I never felt good enough. This lifestyle was not natural for me and I had to constantly be on my best behavior. I was not devout. In fact, I really struggled during sermons not to get angry. The church I’d grown up in seemed limiting and close-minded. I did not believe that skipping church meant a requisite trip to confession, or that acting on human nature was a sin. The whole time I was with Luke, I felt myself watching my words and reigning in my rather flamboyant nature and sarcastic, sometimes inappropriate humor. I wanted so desperately to fit into this comfortable life that I began losing the small piece of self worth I had found. And while I tried to adapt my spiritual needs to fit into what was offered at the Catholic Church, I actually found myself pulling farther and farther from a spiritual center.
My discomfort was only heightened by my physical self. To Luke’s family, spiritual health and physical health went hand in hand, which meant that the “freshman 500” I’d gained (ok it was more like 30 pounds and it took four years) was not really acceptable. No one ever said anything directly to me, but Luke’s mother would comment about her son who had gained a few pounds, and I would hear it. And Luke himself would tell me my weight didn’t matter, but when I took time to get dressed up for holidays and parties, he never praised my appearance, either. I distinctly remember that his older brother (not the priest) would compliment me when Luke wouldn’t. This solace was not working out. So, I did what any true hard-ass, tough Buffalo girl would do. I ran.
