Missing Pieces II: Grotto Journaling

Greasespot Cafe. The online anti/ex-Way internet forum became my umbilical lifeline shortly after I'd exited The Way in latter 2005. I'd exited alone, without my husband and children. During our last years with The Way, my husband John and I had a strained relationship on the brink of divorce. We didn't fight or holler or carry on. As my 15-year old son had stated John and I were like two people being carried by a river current, each manning our own little raft. John and I had shared with our children when they were 14 and 17 that we might separate.

Greasespot Cafe, the online anti/ex-Way internet forum was named due to the second president of The Way spewing from the podium how anyone who left the "household of believers" would end up a "grease spot by midnight." The forum was a drive-by for some ex-Way followers, a haven for others, a toxic brew for some, and anathema for loyal Way followers. As followers we had been explicitly directed to stay away from those type sites on the internet; people who frequented them were possessed with devil spirits. The adversary, the devil, would like nothing better than to destroy God's ministry. I was loyal so I obeyed...up until around 2003.

I was sitting in Borders which had become a regular safe place for me to journal. I'd go almost every day and spend hours writing and reading...and then feeling guilty for 'wasting' all that time on myself. I'd asked my psychologist if I was a narcissist; I spent so much time writing and writing and writing and writing...about me. It seemed selfish and unproductive, yet I knew my life had changed dramatically since I'd taken this dive with the pen onto parchment. Because of journaling I'd been led into areas I would have never ventured previously, corridors I still pretended didn't exist. Sometimes it was like I'd peek around a corner but run back to another safer area of the maze, where I knew my way out. Sometimes I'd get so totally lost and have dirt caked in my fingernails from trying to climb out of the hole...that deep dark damp hole. So often at the top awaited that god-damned boot to push me back down into my proper place. That laced gigantic army boot belonging to some obscure face that I never saw, only felt. That boot that uttered so loudly without ever saying a word, "Shut the fuck up you moron!"

Was I a narcissist? Why did I have to write so much? What would I ever do with all these journals, with all this chicken scratch? Wasn't it just some selfish act of survival, time I spent away from my family and kids, time better spent working the Word, or teaching, or slaving for a buck, or housecleaning, or cooking, or perfecting something tangible? What the fuck was wrong with me? Why couldn't I just walk through and get on with life? Why was I always so fucking sick?!?

I sat at Borders again that day around 2003 at the table in the back. I didn't much like the cafe area; it wasn't sacred enough. But here in the back at the table surrounded by travel books, there was something holy about it for me. A grotto. There were other folks too, poets and journalers, who found refuge in this corner amidst the world of cheap or lush traveling logs.

On this particular day a black man sat beside me at the table. I was writing and probably reading some book, which one I don't know. I was always in process of reading some self-help or biblical book. He was reading his Bible with a pen and pad in hand.

As my manner was, I struck up a conversation.

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Missing Pieces I
Missing Pieces II: Grotto Journaling
Missing Pieces III: We All Stand Together (Part 1)
Missing Pieces III: We All Stand Together (Part 2)

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