Post 14: Daybreak
“Some people come in our life as blessings. Some come in your life as lessons.” Mother Teresa
I was totally at a loss as to what to do with my life post high school. My parents did not talk to me about it. Dad was busy with his new relationship and mom was obsessed with dad being happy and how she wasn’t. My high school really didn’t have much of a guidance counseling process to move the journey along. However a fabalow, in high school herself, put my name on an information card for Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY.
So I applied on early admission and got in. Good thing because Manhattanville was the only college I applied to, that’s how little I knew about the application process. My Cleveland fanilow friends were excited I was moving to the New York City area. Before I left, I met Barry briefly a second time and I was invited to run the National Barry Manilow Fan Club. It seemed things were moving in the right direction!
I learned quickly that moving away may help, but it doesn’t solve your fundamental problems. The National Fan Club was not the same close-knit experience of Cleveland. I fell in love with the field of sociology and found myself surrounded by Marxists. However, in the dormitory corridors, the Christian evangelicals reigned and declared they held the correct interpretations to all matter of life and damnation.
Was God the answer to life’s problems or the opiate of the masses? Without the network of my fellow fanilows, my discomfort grew. Old memory fragments of the trauma with my brother Sean began to surface at college and the Handbook wasn’t doing its job of keeping things under wraps. What’s the use of having a Politburo if they didn’t keep things suppressed?
Was I out-of-range?
Did I need to upgrade to a New York version?
Was there a Tammany Hall edition floating around?
I needed help. Fast.
During summer break, a California fanilow invited me to visit. I thought getting away would resolve the growing turmoil I felt over the clashes between faith and reason, my lack of a close fanilow network, and those crazy bite-sized childhood flashbacks that left me queasy started intruding into my consciousness. I remembered how much my brother Chris loved California. I wanted to get away from the confusion I felt. I thought if I could move geographically I would change.
All I needed was a vacation from myself. A horrifying realization occurred to me when I got off the airplane (besides discovering I lost my return ticket). I am stuck with me! I discovered, walking on whatever beautiful beaches I visited, with hot sand imported straight from hell, you just can’t walk away from yourself. I had witnessed the makings of one messy suicide so I was not very interested in that plan.
I was lost. Plain and simple.
My fanilow friend was at work for the day. Everyone was far away. So I decided to try God. Mother T. said to begin with prayer. I prayed a very awkward prayer, something like,
“Hey God, I don’t know if you really exist, but if you do, would you do something with my life? Because I’ve tried New York and California, and even Ohio, and nothing I’m doing is working. So please make it better. I’m turning management over to you now. Amen.”
After I prayed I felt the paradigm shift. Just like that day I felt the Archangel Azrael enter the room when Sean died. Instead, this day I felt as if the Creator of Angels filled the room. I felt back in St. Colman’s sanctuary, near the "cookie jar."
Back in the presence of Mother T.
I felt loved.
I felt as if a power as immense as the universe was present at my side and cared for me. Was it just too much time in the California sun? A sudden misfiring of dopamines?
I heard a Divine Song, with the kindest words that floated into my heart: “everything will be all right - I am with you.”
My evangelical friends informed me I just had a “born again” experience. What an oxymoron: being "born again in Hollywood, California! I was so calm, so different when I got home to Cleveland my mother slammed a bag of beans on the counter that burst and scattered across the entire kitchen. She demanded to know what Hare Krishna group I had signed up with now.
What changeling stood in front of her? She nearly pulled out the crucifix to exorcise this babbling fool going on about this “Jesus shit” and demanded the return of her moody, mute daughter.
Notes:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/838305.Mother_Teresa?page=5
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
[email protected]
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.
I was totally at a loss as to what to do with my life post high school. My parents did not talk to me about it. Dad was busy with his new relationship and mom was obsessed with dad being happy and how she wasn’t. My high school really didn’t have much of a guidance counseling process to move the journey along. However a fabalow, in high school herself, put my name on an information card for Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY.
So I applied on early admission and got in. Good thing because Manhattanville was the only college I applied to, that’s how little I knew about the application process. My Cleveland fanilow friends were excited I was moving to the New York City area. Before I left, I met Barry briefly a second time and I was invited to run the National Barry Manilow Fan Club. It seemed things were moving in the right direction!
I learned quickly that moving away may help, but it doesn’t solve your fundamental problems. The National Fan Club was not the same close-knit experience of Cleveland. I fell in love with the field of sociology and found myself surrounded by Marxists. However, in the dormitory corridors, the Christian evangelicals reigned and declared they held the correct interpretations to all matter of life and damnation.
Was God the answer to life’s problems or the opiate of the masses? Without the network of my fellow fanilows, my discomfort grew. Old memory fragments of the trauma with my brother Sean began to surface at college and the Handbook wasn’t doing its job of keeping things under wraps. What’s the use of having a Politburo if they didn’t keep things suppressed?
Was I out-of-range?
Did I need to upgrade to a New York version?
Was there a Tammany Hall edition floating around?
I needed help. Fast.
During summer break, a California fanilow invited me to visit. I thought getting away would resolve the growing turmoil I felt over the clashes between faith and reason, my lack of a close fanilow network, and those crazy bite-sized childhood flashbacks that left me queasy started intruding into my consciousness. I remembered how much my brother Chris loved California. I wanted to get away from the confusion I felt. I thought if I could move geographically I would change.
All I needed was a vacation from myself. A horrifying realization occurred to me when I got off the airplane (besides discovering I lost my return ticket). I am stuck with me! I discovered, walking on whatever beautiful beaches I visited, with hot sand imported straight from hell, you just can’t walk away from yourself. I had witnessed the makings of one messy suicide so I was not very interested in that plan.
I was lost. Plain and simple.
My fanilow friend was at work for the day. Everyone was far away. So I decided to try God. Mother T. said to begin with prayer. I prayed a very awkward prayer, something like,
“Hey God, I don’t know if you really exist, but if you do, would you do something with my life? Because I’ve tried New York and California, and even Ohio, and nothing I’m doing is working. So please make it better. I’m turning management over to you now. Amen.”
After I prayed I felt the paradigm shift. Just like that day I felt the Archangel Azrael enter the room when Sean died. Instead, this day I felt as if the Creator of Angels filled the room. I felt back in St. Colman’s sanctuary, near the "cookie jar."
Back in the presence of Mother T.
I felt loved.
I felt as if a power as immense as the universe was present at my side and cared for me. Was it just too much time in the California sun? A sudden misfiring of dopamines?
I heard a Divine Song, with the kindest words that floated into my heart: “everything will be all right - I am with you.”
My evangelical friends informed me I just had a “born again” experience. What an oxymoron: being "born again in Hollywood, California! I was so calm, so different when I got home to Cleveland my mother slammed a bag of beans on the counter that burst and scattered across the entire kitchen. She demanded to know what Hare Krishna group I had signed up with now.
What changeling stood in front of her? She nearly pulled out the crucifix to exorcise this babbling fool going on about this “Jesus shit” and demanded the return of her moody, mute daughter.
Notes:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/838305.Mother_Teresa?page=5
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
[email protected]
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.