Have you ever interrogated a Catholic priest? I have. It begins like this: “Father, hi, hello, my name’s Brenna. I wanted to talk to you about something that’s been bothering me, because I want to do something about it, because I want to write about it
We talked a lot about our bodies. What we were experiencing in the moment, what our bodies felt. What we were putting them through.
I wish I had thought to report what I had seen, or to confront the old woman, or to have immediately run and brought my mother (or even the closest adult shopper).
Phones, these incredible devices that hold so much potential to create connections between humans through exchanges, too often create distance. I wonder what Alexander Graham Bell would have thought of that.
“You deserve so much better,” they said, “and he’s really not worth it.” To which my invariable response was, “But I still love him.”
A relieved sigh. Then: “You shouldn’t call it a mugging if you weren’t hurt!”
“You don’t understand…it’s more than just a health thing. It’s the whole turning-into-a-white-guy thing. My whole life I’ve been black. And now it’s all changing, so that I don’t know what I am anymore…society, you know?”
We commit all manner of sins and crimes, but I can’t say we commit suicide, because to me, suicide is neither sinful nor criminal. It isn’t a deliberate choice of a wrong over right; it’s blindness to the very existence of choices.