I Have A Plan For Me

Last Sunday, I watched a safe space turn into an uncomfortable serving of something not easily definable 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. 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 business of life at the time. My family is Sunday Catholics at best; the church really only appears for the highlight reel of Easter and Christmas. Every year that goes by, I feel like I'm singing an old song and desperately forging the lyrics when I recite the prayers. But it still felt safe, sharing in a community of people who deeply believe in love, forgiveness, and togetherness.

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 even is my 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 that happen. 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 of 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 this wasted your life, and now you just wasted mine with it.

That sounds harsh. I received it as ultimate love. Because yes, he ate with that one. And it was delivered in the thickness of a Portuguese accent layered with care. #Sexy!

Here's where I weave it together.

Jesus Christ taught by living. By existing so genuinely, so openly, so beautifully, that people were naturally moved to live and be like him. Men who didn't quite understand this created a religion out of him. They placed rules on how to embody him, on how to receive him. Made it so that Are you Catholic? became 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.

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 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 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 or religion to inspire ultimate love and reform.

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