Weird but Normal

by Mia Mercado

  Our tour ended, my dad and I left, and I shoved that memory deep within my eight-year-old brain, planning never to speak of the horrific things I’d done to that Ziploc baggie or that woodpile ever again.

  That is until about 2005. I was a sophomore in high school and contained six more years’ worth of humiliating memories (including all of middle school) buried deep within my easily embarrassed psyche. I’d never spoken of The Incident to anyone—my family, a friend, the pages of a diary, or a compassionate vagabond—forcing myself to forget about it completely.

  So, of course, when my dad called us all out to the backyard, where he’d just finished disassembling the woodpile that had been in place since we first moved in, I was initially just as confused by the object he beheld: a small Ziploc bag stuffed with a pair of girls’ underwear, patterned with small blue flowers and smears of, what appeared to be, shit.

  In hindsight, it looked like a crime scene. This is perhaps the only situation in which saying “Oh, that’s just my poopy underwear from 1999” would bring sighs relief. The events eventually all came rushing back to me in the way that my diarrhea probably rushed to my lower intestines on that fateful day: slowly, then all at once.

  I’d been found out, betrayed by the actions of my former self. Had I acted sloppily? I mean, yeah, duh, I did an extremely sloppy thing. All things considered, this is exactly how it had to end. Of course I’d gotten sudden-onset sour butt (the scientific term) during the only twenty minutes of that day I wasn’t at home. Of course there hadn’t been any toilet paper. Of course there was no garbage can. Of course I had to shamefully shove my soiled underwear into my pants and then dispose of them under a woodpile. And of course my dad—the only member of my family who was with me on the day of The Incident—had to find my hidden poo-poo secret. There was no other way this could have ended.

  My family is comfortable talking about bodily functions like a dog is comfortable licking itself whenever and in front of whomever. It’s second nature. It’s at the core of who we are and how we connect with each other, and if you happen to be in the room when my brother farts, Guy I Just Started Dating, welcome to the family, I guess. Please laugh accordingly.

  My family found what had been one of the most traumatizing poop-related moments of my life hilarious and were likely more unsettled by the fact that I hadn’t told them about it immediately than they were by any other part of that experience. Yeah, yeah, you contemplated wiping your butt with dental floss, but how dare you hold on to this precious gem of a shit story all to yourself for six entire years? Do you not love us anymore?

  I am measurably more comfortable with myself now than I was at eight or as a sophomore in high school. I’m starting to hit the point in my life where telling people embarrassing things I’ve done (and continue to do) doesn’t completely ruin me. I definitely still have pangs of guilt for things I did in middle school that only I remember. I still play that fun game where I try to fall asleep and my brain is like, “Would now be a good time to hyper-analyze a bad presentation you gave in college or no?” I’m also starting to realize that becoming comfortable with myself and finding comfort in those around me is way easier than trying to hold in something my body wants to let out. You can learn how to accept yourself and how to find people who will accept you as you are.

  You can’t learn how to not diarrhea yourself. If you could, I wouldn’t have mistrusted a fart in a Lowe’s. When that happened, I immediately told Riley. His response was to laugh and KEEP SHOPPING. Again, it was an uneventful occurrence. A few weeks later, I texted my sister about how I’d shit myself, and she immediately called me to verbally berate me for not telling her sooner. I’m lucky to have found people who love me, shit and all.

  Daily Affirmations for My Sister

  Hi, Ana. I wrote this for you. If you, reading this, are not my sister, that’s okay too. You can just imagine you are her, something I think would make the world a more compassionate, bizarre, and overall better place.

  Let me start by saying: you are allowed to say nice things to yourself. Aloud. In the mirror. I know it feels strange and silly in the moment, but afterward, it feels good. We spend all day secretly telling ourselves mean and nasty things we’d never say to our internet nemesis. We are the devil on our own shoulders hissing, “You probably look stupid right now” and “Remember that time you peed your pants in high school?” We are the voice inside our own head, anxiously pacing in front of a mental corkboard of Post-it notes and red string like, “Everything you’ve ever said . . . it all leads back to being bad!” You should tell yourself some nice things every once in a while or, if you can manage it, all the time.

  If you’re feeling stuck or get sick of telling yourself “Good hair, me!” here are some suggestions for things you can say when you want to give your brain a sweet little treat. If you say them aloud, change every “you” to “I.” Or read them as is, doing an impression of my voice and pretending I’m telling them to you. If you do the latter, make me sound cool and British, okay?

  You are worthy and deserving of a right swipe.

  In fact, you are better than a right swipe. Maybe you should delete Tinder altogether. I know how people’s Tinder minds work. I, too, was once a Tinderer. The idea of you having to suffer through profiles of shirtless strangers holding some big fish that I’m assuming they . . . fucked?, listing “music” as a whole entire interest, makes me hulk all the way out. (You like music? Really? Do you also like transportation and breathing? Grow up and specify a genre, a musical instrument, or a Beyoncé era.) The thought of a man whose entire personality is having been to Machu Picchu once in middle school swiping through your photos, thinking he can pass judgment on you, makes me want to march right up to Silicon Valley and call all of their mothers. You don’t need dating apps. You are worthy and deserving of a rom-com meet-cute.

  Remember to feed your spirit.

  Your spirit gets hungry, and I heard she likes gooey brownies with frosting, big glasses of kombucha, and salty snacks when she least expects it. I know I sound like a Snickers commercial, but sometimes when we feel particularly angry or sad or frustrated, we’re just a little hungry. That applies to everyone, but us in particular. We’ve seen each other in a 3 p.m. tizzy, running around like a headless chicken squawking, “I feel weird. Do you feel weird? Why do I feel weird?!” A well-timed bagel with cream cheese can save a life. (Our own, sure, but mostly the people around us who have to deal with our very real hanger.) Oh, also you should meditate or whatever.

  You radiate kindness.

  You are like some kind of radioactive bug who is also super nice. It’s the sort of disease I wish were contagious. Your kindness is my most and least favorite thing about you. Most, for obvious reasons. Least because of how it lets you give the benefit of the doubt to noticeably terrible people. People like coworkers who say rude things to your face and white college boys with dreads. These people needn’t benefit from your doubt.

  If I were a better person, this is where I’d say you’re doing a good job killing them with kindness. You’re crushing the whole “murder them with your radioactive kindness rays” thing. Burn niceness holes into their skin with your gentle touch. Give them whatever the compassionate form of scabies would be.

  You are LIGHT. You are LOVE. You are LAUGH. You are LIVE. You are LIPSTICK. You are LLAMA. You are LINDA. You are LIGHTNING. You are “LUCKY” by Britney Spears (2000). Those are all the L words I can think of right now LOL.

  Oh, I forgot “LOL.”

  You don’t need to sweat the small stuff.

  And even if you wanted to, you couldn’t because you don’t really sweat that much. I only hold that against you a little bit. I don’t understand how I got all the sweaty, hairy genes and you got the “my BO smells like maple syrup” genes.

  You can and you will and you have.

  Every time you think you can’t do a thing you need to do, you somehow, eventually, find yourself on the other side of it. If you woke up one mor
ning and thought, “I bet I could create the next big plant-based milk,” you’d have some dandelion milk or smushed-up-acorn milk by the end of the day. That kindness bug you have keeps you from using these powers for evil. Although, “dandelion milk” certainly does seem like its own kind of torture.

  You do not need to live in comparison.

  This is because everyone else sucks except for you. That’s that on that.

  You are enough.

  Too much even. I’ve always been a little envious of that. You’ve always known how to grow and flourish, to turn your branches to the sun, to take up space in a way that is also welcoming. You’re like a tree. A tree with boobs.

  You are your own superhero.

  Are we the only two people in the world who just . . . don’t really care about superhero franchises? People always want to talk about how Avengers movies are the greatest crossover events in cinematic history, like Disney Channel didn’t air “That’s So Suite Life of Hannah Montana” in 2006, a television episode that featured Raven-Symoné, Miley Cyrus, and two entire Sprouse twins. If we absolutely had to be superheroes, you’d be Mary-Kate and I’d be Ashley.

  You are whole.

  You’ve got a head and a body and a heart (organ) and heart (spiritual). You are a whole entire being. You are a complete person, in this sense, but you’re far from finished. Please read this part twice: once, with loving eyes and generous big sister energy. Then, read it again, but this time say it like it’s an insult, just to keep you balanced.

  You are hole.

  :)

  You have the power to create change.

  In that sense, I do need you to break this twenty for me, thanks. (If you were here, this is where you’d laugh condescendingly. I will pause for your obligatory and rude laughter.) I want you to know that you are never stuck. If a job, a person, a situation is hurting more than it is helping, if it is draining more than fulfilling, you can leave. You can go. You can be like, “Oh, sorry, my sister is actually calling right now,” and get the fuck out of there.

  You can do anything you put your mind to.

  If you pressed your little bean into the ground, a bountiful harvest would grow. If you pushed your noggin into a notebook, it would turn into a novel. If you set it on the dining room table, the table would come to life. Your mind is magic, and I do mean that in the most literal Frosty the Snowman kind of way.

  You are loved unconditionally.

  Specifically by me. I’ve told you before that if you said you murdered someone, my reaction would be, “I bet it was for a good reason. I’ll go get some bleach.” Once, Riley said he didn’t like Doritos, and I started looking up how fast I could get a divorce in Kansas.

  You deserve goodness.

  When I think of the things I want for you, every single thing I wish and hope and dream for you, I want to puke. It’s kind of like how when you think about space too hard it makes you nauseous. I love you as big as the universe. I love you as deep as the ocean. I love you as wide as my eyes get every time you’re like, “Want to see all the tonsil stones I just pulled out of my mouth?”

  You will never join a rec league.

  Or an improv team. These are less affirmations than they are demands, but they’re for your own good.

  Father Mia

  One of my favorite games growing up, among Guess Who? and Scrabble and making my siblings drink offensive concoctions I created in the blender, was Church: Catholic Edition. If you don’t know anything about Catholics, they’re the ones with all the kneeling and sitting and standing and chant-like prayers and spooky singing and swinging balls of incense and repression and hidden sex abuse. The way you play Church is relatively simple. First, you start by being born into a family that goes to church and being raised in a community that indoctrinates you into Christianity. I guess that part isn’t that simple.

  Then, after years of seeing old men lead Mass every Sunday, singing off-key and raising their hands at certain parts like an air traffic controller, you think, “I could do that.” So you make your family sit in the spare bedroom, dim the lights, have your mom light a candle, and you lead Mass.

  When I played Church, I’d drape a blanket I made in Sunday school over my shoulders as a makeshift vestment. The blanket had different Catholic imagery stitched on—a cross, a tabernacle, a Bible, probably a dove or a lamb for good measure—and was signed in fabric marker by all the other second-graders in my CCD class. “CCD” stands for “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine” and is an extremely Latin-sounding way to be like, “You kids are going to accept Christ, got it?”

  After I set the altar (a circular side table that wobbled a little) and dressed in my priestly blanket-robe, my family would file into the room and greet me as I’d requested. “Hello, Father Mia,” my dad would say. “Hello, Dad,” I’d say back with no hint of irony. I had no interest in preaching or giving a homily or reading passages from the Bible, all the boring parts of a Catholic Mass. I’m sure I had them sing my favorite hymn (“On Eagle’s Wings,” a song specifically for funeral masses), but then we’d get right to the good part of Church: Communion.

  First Communion is one of the seven sacraments in Catholicism alongside other milestones like baptism, marriage, and confirmation. Children typically receive their First Communion in second grade—around the time I started playing Church a lot. Having your First Communion is a big deal in the Catholic Church. You spend your CCD classes leading up to it by practicing how to walk up the church aisle, how to hold your hands in preparation for the host (the circular wafer that tastes like crunchy air), what the priest or Eucharistic minister would say when you got to the front of the line and they held the host up to you (“The body of Christ”), what you would say in return (“Amen”). I learned the call-and-response of receiving Communion before I knew about long division, persuasive essays, the Trail of Tears, where babies come from, or what puberty is.

  Though I’m sure it was part of the curriculum, I don’t remember talking about why Communion is such a big to-do. I assume my seven-year-old brain processed it as, “We get to eat Jesus and eating Jesus is, I’m guessing, important?” I was much more focused on the fact that I’d get gifts, a cake that said, “Congratulations on your First Communion, Amelia,” and the chance to wear a fancy white dress.

  My First Communion dress was passed down from my mom. It was the same dress she wore on her First Communion. It had lace detailing, beaded accents, and came with matching gloves and a veil. Yes, a child-sized veil. For girls, First Communion attire is like a bigger version of a baptismal gown and a smaller version of a wedding dress because Catholics aren’t concerned with subtly. Boys were expected to wear suits and ties, like child grooms or baby businessmen. I don’t remember if we walked down the church aisle paired up girl-boy during our actual First Communion, but it would be very on-brand for the whole experience if we did.

  The Communion I administered to my family while playing Church involved much less formal wear. Before my at-home service started, I’d find some thin crackers in our house, preferably a rice cracker but a Ritz would also do. “The body of Christ,” I’d say to each member of my family as they reached the front of the Communion line. (My Communion had no age restrictions so my younger brother and sister could participate.) I’d lift the salty snack above my bowl, blessing it with my grubby little seven-year-old hands. “Amen,” they’d respond.

  Then, I’d grab the glass of “wine” I’d prepared earlier as well. “The blood of Christ,” I’d say, holding a cup of grape juice or water I’d died red-purple with food coloring. “Amen,” they’d say. After all five of my parishioners made it through the Communion line, service would be done.

  Like most kids, I also grew up playing School and House and Musical. Musical is where I’d write a musical and make my siblings perform it alongside me. There are hours of home video footage of me saying, “And NOW I preSENT to YOU” as an introduction to something I’d written or choreographed or reimagined for me and my th
ree siblings. Some might have called me “precocious”; others may have said I was “bossy.” Both were coded ways to say “annoying.”

  Just as playing Musical never led to starring roles in high school shows, being Father Mia did not carry over into my adulthood. I never wanted to be a nun, one of the few leadership opportunities for women in the church. I didn’t get married in the Catholic Church. I no longer would even identify myself as “Christian,” something I know my parents take personally.

  Though I haven’t been to church on my own in years, the many rites and rituals of Catholicism are hard to break and shake off. I know to genuflect before entering a church pew, a situation I encounter so seldom my knees crack when I do so. I know the sign of the cross as reflexively as my left and right. In addition to all the Amens and And with your spirits Catholicism is known for, we have a fun thing called Confession. That’s where you tell a priest every sin you’ve ever done, the priest tells you to do a certain number of prayers in a specific order, and then you are forgiven. Another game I’d play with my parents was Can You Even Get Forgiven for That? That was where I’d list things I knew to be Very Bad (murder, stealing, lying about turning in your social studies assignment even though you didn’t) and ask if even those sins could be absolved. The answer, to my surprise, was almost always “yes.”

  First Reconciliation is where you give a confession to a priest for the first time. It is another one of the seven sacraments in Catholicism and happens when you are in fourth grade, a normal time for a kid to have done a shitload of sins. Unlike First Communion, this sacrament required no gown, just nice “church” clothes.

  For our First Reconciliation, we didn’t go into the confessional booth like you see in movies. There were no dimly lit cubicles, ominous shadows, or partitions with curtains or cross-shaped patterns. Instead, we waited in pews before being called into a spare room of the church I’d never noticed before. It was basically a small conference room, down the hall from where we had Sunday service. The room had one round table, a couple of chairs, and that gross yellow lighting you’d expect from an old church conference room. The only decoration was probably a crucifix on the wall.