Prayer for a Difficult Boy on a Difficult Day

Lord in whom I once believed, today:

Let me remember to take my medication as prescribed, let me think of these little white ovals I swallow as stones to build some great temple, and not as little white ovals of capitulation to someone else’s imperious commands.

Let me remember that jelly beans are not breakfast. Today, just for today, perhaps one fruit or vegetable before noon.

Let me not undercut the well-meaning suggestions of others with reminders that they’re dealing with a boy who will just break everything he touches, the reverse Midas touch that turns gold to shit. Let me listen.

Let me not elevate Defiance and Self-Destruction to cardinal virtues. “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven” is not, in fact, reliable career advice. Let your boy remember that his search for absolute autonomy, to do it HIS OWN FUCKING WAY, invariably takes him to the places where he’s not even allowed shoe laces.

Let me not take outlaw country music as didactic. Let me not take songs meant to serve as warnings as how-to guides for how to torch a life.

Let me remember that my children may come to know the full scope of the past, but what they care about is the present. The damage I will do by leaving (in all the ways I might leave) will far outweigh the damage already done. Let your boy remember his best days as a father might yet still be.

Let me remember I am not defined by others’ disappointment and anger. Your boy is someone who has let down more than his share of friends, broken the trust of too many, told so many lies the truth itself has become a distant, ever-receding shore. And yet despite all that, your boy deserves to live, to keep trying, to keep fighting.

(Parenthetically let me interject into this prayer that while the aforementioned jelly beans are not breakfast, they do make an acceptable afternoon snack. In the same vein, those country songs about drinkin’ and cheatin’ and robbin’ liquor stores are splendid if not seen as instructional.)

Let me be thankful for everyone who loves me in spite of me, for all the friends who have offered support. On this dark day, let me believe that my friends know the good I do not know, and have looked past the bad on which I am so stubbornly focused. Our friends are not the fools we sometimes fear they are.

Let me remember to pause before I identify my own crushing fall from grace with the consequences experienced by other, far more famous and powerful men. Let me remember that I am not a Harvey Weinstein or a Michael Jackson. Let me not defend the indefensible out of a frantic-but-perhaps-misplaced sense of solidarity with the most tarnished of figures.

Let me love my girl for the endless revelation she is.

Let me call my mother and ask how she’s doing.

Let me consider — that’s the best you get, consider — cleaning the bathroom. Let me apply for three jobs online or in person.

Let me steer between the Scylla of hubris and the Charybdis of self-loathing.

Let me remember to put on deodorant, to walk quickly past the liquor store, to put the kids’ soccer games in my calendar for the weekend.

Let me remember I’m not done. I’m not done.

In the name of the God in whom I no longer believe and in the name of the mountains and plains in which I still do, amen.

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