geekdawson:

CONFESSIONS FROM HOME

My roommate makes coffee in the mornings. She doesn’t drink coffee, but she says she loves the smell. The ritual. She always asks me how the coffee was. Confesses to mixing two different kinds of beans because she hadn’t checked before she measured out the water that there was enough of one kind. Her family is Catholic and I think confession is just in her blood. What number of Hail Mary’s is required for the mixing of coffee beans? I don’t know. I tell her that the coffee is delicious.

She broke a heart for the first time this year. And sitting in her chair in our living room like she always does, she looked different. I didn’t know what to do. I had never seen her hands so heavy. When I offered to make tea I was grasping at straws for a way to help, she still talks about it. That one time I made tea in the face of tragedy. I think she was proud. 

In this house, we are not religious but the mundane is a reflection of the divine. The week I do all the dishes because she is barely making it through, my hands raw with scrubbing and prayer. The day she cooks and sits beside me to watch hours of TV while I cry my way through the end of a relationship, her hands blessing that food like a revival tent faith healer. When I’m sick, she always makes soup but pretends it’s just for herself, because I don’t like to be doted on. There is always a bowl left out for me…you know, in case I feel like it. it’s there. whatever. no big deal.

We don’t ever seem to talk about anything real in rooms. Instead we stand in the hallway, leaning into doorjambs like if we keep it all contained in these in-between spaces it won’t touch us when we sleep, eat, drink in our home. That hall is our confessional, she hears all my sins and I hear all her anxieties and we search for meaning as we nod and slouch our way to answers. Or not. 

How many Hail Mary’s for all the times I tried to draw lines in the sand and regretted it, how many for all that tea she spilled so proudly, how often do we genuflect at the alters of shame and fear and anxiety and forgiveness…always forgiveness. 

We are not religious, but our home is a church, a holy place where we say what is true. Where it’s okay to not be okay, where friendship means making tea, brewing coffee, where we say come in. stay. you’re home, here. you’re holy, here. you’re you, here.

How many Hail Mary’s for friendship? For family? I don’t know. Instead have some tea. Or coffee. I promise it’s delicious.