I Have A Plan For Me

Last Sunday, I watched a safe space turn into an uncomfortable receiving of something I couldn't easily dispose of as not meant for me.

Everyone helped me cope the same way: just wait until you write a column about this. But that's not really how these columns work. I have to live the story before I can write it. So the days that followed were an intense, cloudy, weird manifestation of a lesson I had no choice but to live to learn. And like always, as I press my hands to the keys, it all feels worth it: beautiful, light, and maybe even laughable.

Last Sunday was Easter. My first one away from my family, away from California. Well, I did have family, a version of it. My little sister was in town. But it was still strange, the unfortunate side of growing up being that you have to get back home, rather than simply be there.

I was raised Catholic. Catholic school. Baptism, communion, stopped before confirmation for no real reason beyond the busyness of life at the time. Nowadays, the church feels like the highlight reel of Easter and Christmas. Sometimes, I feel like I'm singing an old song I want to believe I know every word to, desperately forging the lyrics when I recite the prayers.

But I still cared; it still felt safe to share in a community of people who deeply believe in love, forgiveness, and togetherness. And I had come to know God through the simple experience of life; every day began to feel like Sunday, the church a haven of God's love, not an enclosure with impermeable walls.

Then a sword sliced through it.

Like I've done hundreds of times in my life, I went up to receive the body of Christ, feeling especially connected to receiving it on Easter. Left hand cupped over right, a bow before the priest's helper, ready to receive. I took a small step forward, the way you do in large LA churches where people funnel through, and was stopped. Are you Catholic?

I had never been spoken to in that context. But I answered immediately, without hesitation, yes, and proceeded to make the sign of the cross and receive. Before I could finish, a hand appeared in my eyesight. It was taking the body of Christ back, with a muttered: ...see you after church.

Here's a fun fact about me: authority figures have never been my thing. Another fun fact: I take everything extremely literally and attach meaning to every single thing in my life. And with the internal debate already firing: what is my current relationship to the church?  My mind went straight to the only conclusion it knew how to reach.

Here's your answer. It hates you. God hates you.

I know. Calm down.

But here's the thing, I couldn't.

I stared at the lights to stop myself from crying. Pretended to pray because that would look normal. Tried to barely speak so I wouldn't lose it when my friend asked me to fill her in. Tried to think about absolutely anything to quiet the noise of God hates you, and everyone just watched him turn you away.

My little sister, forward as ever, was murmuring beside me: Hudson don't cry, do not cry. My ride-or-die girlfriend had already gone to find the father, desperately trying to hold back her own rage that was silently screaming: this is how people get scarred from the church.

Soon, the father was inserting himself into my conversations, and then came the next most terrifying words: Can I speak with you?

The Catholic guilt hit immediately. I looked down at my dress. Are my tits out? Did I murder someone unknowingly? What did I do?

He delivered a speech. What happened was unacceptable, he said, and then offered what I can only describe as a quite sorry explanation: many non-Catholics come to church on Easter, and sometimes people take the body of Christ to perform black magic.

Hell of a message. God triumphs over all evil, except the black magic that Hudson Serletic was clearly equipped to perform on her first Easter away from home.

What followed, I believe, was my first panic attack. I was practically yelping trying not to break down, but also unable to stop the crying from taking over, losing my breath between his words, losing my ability to speak when he offered: well, I hope you can still have a good Easter. I cried and cried. I could barely understand myself. The only thing apparent was that I have some genuinely good friends; they held me and reminded me of the love around me.

I temporarily cured myself by signing up for a trapeze masterclass, where within two hours I went from never having done it to pulling off a backflip and a catch with another human being. But the fear, the rejection, the emptiness, they hadn't left. They followed me into the whole week.

In a way, I had spent the better part of this past year feeling in control, feeling grateful for the people and energies that move through my life, believing I had this ongoing dance with the divine. That I was responsible not just for myself but for my circumstances.

And then, suddenly, I became a product of my environment. I had experiences that wasted my breath, and then I wasted more breath retelling them. I called Mr. International to dump all of it out, and he did that grounding thing he does: you said these things wasted your life, and now you just wasted mine with them.

That sounds brutal. I received it as ultimate love. Because he listened anyway, and enough to realize the real me never made the story.

Here's where I weave it together.

While I strive to be genuine, to be my most authentic self, I'm still learning what it all entails. Rejection is hard for me. Public rejection is harder. Rejection from authority, impossible. And underneath all of it is this belief I can't shake: that I am responsible for every micro moment of my life, that what happens to me is of my own creation.

So a simple moment of unalignment like a long commute on a day where I can't be late carries a similar pain to getting the body of Christ taken back at church. Nothing is allowed to be random or unattached to me. And that's intensely gratifying when life is good, and I'm feeling like I'm signing my autograph at every turn.

But that's a panic attack when I'm controlling chaos, trying to be authentic. When I'm so scared of not being liked, I forget I'm also allowed to dislike things and people, and that doesn't make them bad, it just means I can learn to love and radically accept instead. It's like I said before, I'm trying to sing the good song by forging all the lyrics.

It's like I'm missing the whole damn point.

I'm telling myself how to tell other people to live instead of just living my life, encouraging others to do the same.

I've been worshipping in the enclosure instead of breathing in the open air.

Jesus Christ taught by living. By existing so genuinely, so openly, so beautifully, that people were naturally moved to live and be like him. Mankind placed rules on how to embody him, on how to receive him. Made it so that Are you Catholic?  could become the entrance ticket, so that all the conviction in the world could still be turned away at the door.

Jesus is good. And he's not good because only good things happened to him, or because everyone liked him, or because he liked everyone. He taught us to love our enemies. He never said like  them.

A friend told me recently: denying yourself is the root of giving everyone accessibility to you.

And not the fun kind of accessibility that connects you to someone. The kind where you allow people to tell you who you are, or make decisions that aren't theirs to make.

Another friend said they couldn't imagine sharing their life the way I share mine, that they'd lose their special relationship with themselves, the things only they know.

I thought about it and realized I'm not sure there's anything that at least one other human being on this planet doesn't know about me. I've made my vulnerability my mission. I've served it by making myself accessible, open, and trusting to every person and experience I encounter.

And this nourishes me when the outcome is good. But it hurts me when I become accessible to something I am not aligned with.

You don't have to like your enemies.

And what if the real enemy to my life experience is the constant auditing for meaning, for what I am receiving and how I am received?

What if, instead of pursuing what's likeable and accessible about myself, I started pursuing me? All of me.

What if instead of trusting my reality, I learned to trust myself?

Because imagine the force of that. To know yourself so completely that liking or disliking doesn't even enter the equation, only love. Because the things I don't understand, the things I don't like, can simply be loved from a distance. And my existence can become so authentic, so genuinely my own, that accepting myself becomes the only thing I have to do to fulfill my mission here.

Growing up is learning how to become yourself. And maybe being that person, the one who really knows you, is enough to permeate a whole world of good.

Without sacrificing your secrets with yourself.

Without having to be liked over loved.

Without making yourself accessible to everything.

Without creating rules to inspire ultimate love and reform.

Without deriving meaning from life, instead putting meaning into it.

I have a plan for me now. Where water becomes wine, rejection grows love.