Je voudrais un croissant, s'il vous plait.

I was going to call my minister just now. I haven’t spoken to her in years, nor have I set foot in her church, but I know she’d speak with me as though no time had passed. That’s what ministers like her do.

But I realized, I’m not having a crisis in faith. I’m having a crisis in people.

Having my mom and my aunt pass away has been difficult enough. Writing a semi-autobiographical book and facing my life – including my dad, the only one left, who was a pathetic father and who I am now in charge of because he sits paralyzed in a nursing home – makes everything worse.

Why do people think writing about things is cathartic? Is it cathartic to open a vein and bleed out? That’s what this process feels like. I do get satisfaction from writing well, but not from the act of getting it “all out.” Frankly, I feel like I may puke. But I write on. It’s my mission. This much I know, because every time I’ve tried to veer off my path the universe has plopped me right back on it, sometimes kicking and screaming. I don’t fight it anymore. I just write.

The behavior of some people has been utterly appalling¸ and unfortunately it continues to be. There’s a pain in my heart and it’s been put there by humanity (which is not an appropriate name for many of the inhuman occupants of this planet.) Near the end of her diary, Anne Frank wrote that she still believed people were good at heart. Then they put her to death in a concentration camp. What is that?

Still, I write. It’s my job.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself right now, other than write. My plan is to move to Europe eventually, where at least if someone is unkind I probably won’t understand them. It’s the benefit of being a hermit without actually being one. The country will probably be France, because I studied French for about eight years, so I can successfully order a croissant. And yet, I can never get what they are saying in conversations because they speak so fast. Perfect.

Until then, what will I do? Where will I go? I don’t know. I have a house I can’t deal with, plus my mother’s house which I really can’t deal with. The few people I can count on for support have problems (and lives) of their own. The people I ought to be able to count on, I can’t.

Maybe this turmoil is part of grief. Or maybe I just see things more clearly now.

Or maybe this isn’t turmoil at all – just a turning point.

By the way, lest you think I’m despairing of life – I’m not. I feel grateful to be alive, to have my children and the people I can truly call “friends.” It’s the “others” I can’t reconcile. Like an innocent, I still don’t understand why people hurt each other, and why they throw good love away.

Silly me.