The demons in my sleep, they come to haunt me…
There’s a certain shameful relief in the realization that one of my most traumatic childhood events wasn’t one of molestation or sexual abuse or losing a loved one. It didn’t cause any sort of pain on the level of all those other atrocious things, or turn into so many other possible events that could have befallen a child. If you can make it out of your childhood years relatively unscathed, you might stand a chance at surviving in the world with some sort of moral clarity. Or maybe it’s all just a crap shoot and we will turn out to be whatever monsters we will be. I don’t know anymore.
It happened around this time of the year. As if the return to school wasn’t bad enough for my social anxiety-riddled system, my parents had been asked by our priest if I would start serving as an altar boy for St. Marys church. At least, that’s what they said. Hard to know how much of childhood is really true. They also made it clear that saying no was not an option, despite how clearly my entire existence was rebelling against it. The suddenly-stressful idea of walking in front of the entire St. Mary’s congregation on a Sunday morning and having all eyes on me with no idea what I was really doing filled me with immediate dread. My insides coiled up into a sore knot of worry – one that would last until well after the actual event. It was a slightly strange lesson, now that I think of it – that saying no to a priest was not an option (stranger still now that we know that particular priest would end up having credible charges of abuse against him). But back then no one spoke of such things, and the overriding sentiment was that if a priest picked you out to be an altar boy, your family should be honored and touched and blessed fucking be. My parents certainly weren’t going to refuse a priest just because their son was having a nervous breakdown.
When the priest gave my parents the altar server’s schedule, I frantically searched to see when and where my name appeared. It wasn’t far down – a few weeks from the date we received it. Above my name was the name of my fellow server – Brady. Everything about the whole experience was already tainted black; the whole idea of it made me sick, and being powerless to say no or voice my dread made it all the worse. I didn’t want to let my parents down, I didn’t want to let the priest down, but above all I didn’t want to have the eyes of the entire church watching me on that altar. I’d always been shy, and this was the most nightmarish of horrors for a socially-anxious introverted child.
I couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve years old.
A week or two before I was scheduled to serve, the priest had me come by the church and learn what to do as a server. My heart sank as I realized there was no way out, that I would be standing there in front of everyone shaking and on the verge of crying and no one was going to help me or stop it from happening. My mother sat in one of the front pews as Father showed me when to kneel, when to bow, when to genuflect – one sad submission upon another, and at the end of it all he thought I had it down when I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to take the first step into the church.
In those weeks leading up to that first Sunday of serving, the idea of what was to come haunted my every step. What should have been a carefree stretch of September weeks, when school was still new and we hadn’t even had to take a test yet, were weighted with this burden – something none of my other classmates had to carry, and of course something that my brother didn’t have to worry about yet. When I got lost in laughter over something, it quickly ended as soon as I remembered I would have to serve in a week. It ruined weekends because one half of the weekend was Sunday.
To this day, I remember the night before that Sunday. My brother and I were allowed to stay up late and watch television in the family room, where we would set up sleeping bags and fall asleep there. My sleep, what little there was of it, was fitful and tormented. My stomach, always troubled as a young child, had retained the knot of worry that had tied itself tightly over the previous weeks. When I peeked out of my sleeping bag and saw that it was light, I pulled it back over my head for one more minute of pretending I was at peace.
That was, of course, the worst of it – the waiting and anticipating – that was where the real trauma was. I remember trying to find a cassock and surplus that didn’t drown me – there was only one that didn’t pool at my feet, it was the one that the shorter of the altar boys would fight over every Sunday. I remember ringing the bells right when I was supposed to ring them – the priest had a little hand motion for alerting us if we didn’t start the ringing at the right time. I remember handing him a white cloth after Brady had poured the water over his hands before communion. And then I remember walking out, and sense of relief wash over me when it was done – short-lived because I was on the schedule in another few weeks, and the dread began to build up again.
I would serve many masses – many more than my brother who would start in another year or so but somehow never got held to the same strict standard I was – maybe when you’ve traumatized one child you step back on traumatizing the ones that follow. Of course, whenever there was a no-show and the priest would come into the congregation searching for someone, he’d point to our family and I would somehow always be the one to go up.
That’s just one of life’s little fuck-overs I guess. And who knows – maybe I saved my little brother from getting molested before one of those Sunday morning masses.
All’s well that ends well, even in hell.
