You Don't Seem the Type

Today when I took in to the Tribunal the witness form from my cousin, the woman handling the annulment asked a few questions and if I was going into a community. I said that I may at some point be canonically approved as a hermit for the diocese, but in the distant future, and I needed to be prepared if God so willed.

She said, "You don't seem the type!"

I explained that hermit types run the gamut from recluse to more gregarious and cited St. Philip Neri who was vivacious with people but also had his solitude and silence. His very life was a stricter separation from the world in his constant, intense, spiritual life.

The woman didn't seem to know who was St. Philip Neri. Oh well. I have noticed that using his hermit life as an example of one not a recluse, often draws that blank look with Catholics. But I'm sure there are others who know about St. Philip Neri.

To not look the type is a benefit in my particular call, for it ensures more hiddenness yet being visible in blendability. No one thus can look to me for answers, for I have few if any even though I spout off in my blogs! Mostly I have struggles that give way to progress.

Last night I thought more of what the VG said regarding friendships not being based on my therapeutic needs. I had come to an understanding, after spending four hours with a schizophrenic friend and her depleted husband, that my friendship is often based upon not only my therapeutic needs but those of others. My chronic pain requires friends who can be supportive through thick and thin; and I tend to be on-call for others in like fashion. My cousin sometimes will call and say, "I need therapy" when her mother has been rude. I give the therapy which includes spiritual views--and laughter, too. Often the situations are laughable.

My schizophrenic friend's delusions are not laughable, and even more sad is her resistance to getting therapy. She doesn't want to go to the hospital again. She doesn't think her delusions are delusions. I'm her friend for the long haul, as long as God wills.

Last night I prayed about being open again to my Protestant friends. I had determined a few years ago to develop Catholic friends, to have close Catholic friends. Evidently this was not God's determination, for other than the schizophrenic friend, I have no close Catholic friends. The erstwhile friendships have ended in women withdrawing, not able to comprehend or have the means to be empathic or even to come up with practical helps such as talking or visiting in order to distract me when the pain gets too intense.

Perhaps some of this is due to their being too busy, or not knowing just how severe the pain can be, for I look just fine enough. I mask the pain on the outside, but it sure sweats out in my writing, despairs, talking, and struggles. Other women have become spiritually envious or competitive. I find this exclusive to Catholic women, and I think the lives of saints makes them wary of those who are doing as we are told: imitate the saints. Imitating saints and being a saint do not equate, for imitating is not a perfect rendition, e.g. imitation gemstones or copying a fine painting. But the women don't seem to comprehend this fact.

Then, when it eases up some, I seem a different person. I have used my experience in suffering to try to bridge over to the schizophrenic woman, telling her how therapy can be so beneficial to give strategies to cope.

A major coping mechanism for me is to have others be supportive and listen, and then for me to do likewise for others. Love and love, love for love, unconditionally. After all, the extreme pain situations are not all the time. But perhaps that lends all the more to their misconceptions and lack of friendship based on "therapeutic needs."

I admit that I cried, privately, after my confessor said what he did, yesterday, after Mass. It means that he does not understand that I do not generally go on and on about my suffering, and that it is suffering and not therapeutic needs per se. Anyone with that degree of pain and no means to alleviate it except to suffer it out, year in and year out, would crumble during the worst episodes. And there ought to be people willing to help pick up the crumbs at those times. But from the tears came a greater comprehension of what it means to be a friend, including a friend based on other people's therapeutic needs.

In praying about friendships, I decided to be open to reconnecting to my old Protestant friends. It would mean that I could not discuss the love of my life which is Catholicism, and my very life, but maybe I had willed what God had not. None of the Catholic friendships had panned out, and twelve years worth of trying seemed a good effort.

This morning, an old Protestant friend called. We had not talked on the phone for a long time. She said how she had missed my friendship since I'd moved to a nearby city. Yes, I had moved in order to more fully embrace my Catholic identity. She didn't know this was the reason--that and to be free of town gossip and misunderstanding. It is not easy to convert to Catholicism in one's small, hometown. She has had back trouble now, for a couple of years. But even before, she had been extremely supportive and compassionate when I'd be ill with pain, she and a few other friends. They don't like Catholicism, and the slipped comments were painful to me, but now I am considering that since Catholic friendships have not been fruitful, it is I who had decided what I thought I needed.

We are going to get together for lunch sometime soon at a restaurant she likes because she can stand and sit at the bar using the tall stools, not having to suffer from sitting on regular chairs.

I think of what the Vincentian priest told me in confession last week, that hermits are to be very comfortable with all people God brings even if the hermit is not like them, is not of their world.

Part of being a hermit, I am learning, is that the life evolves with twists and turns. My path is the more hidden one, with no defined direction known to me. I have to keep going, brushing aside branches to reveal the path and the next steps to be taken.

The past does hurt, all the emotional wounds, and even now realizing that my spiritual father and I are about the only two who take my vocation seriously. I suppose it is true that I don't look the type, and maybe I don't seem the type--whatever is the hermit type.