I was introduced to the concept of Wearing It through my now 14-year-old son and his Little League mates.
When a batter is at the plate and he dives out of the way of a pitch that otherwise would have hit him, his teammates in the dugout would scream, “Oh, come on! Wear it!”
The implication is that ducking hurts the team, that by taking the pitch on the shoulder or back or arm or knee or foot or head, you’d become a baserunner and the next guy in the lineup would have the change to drive you in.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been hit by a pitched ball. I have. It tends to hurt. Sometimes it hurts a lot. I once got hit by a pitch in that bone that sticks out of your ankle and couldn’t walk right for the rest of the summer.
But that doesn’t mean the jeerers from the dugout are wrong. In many cases, they are right. Sometimes its best to just Wear It.
For example, if you’re leading off the bottom of the last inning and your team is down by two, your run doesn’t mean a whole lot by itself. Going up there and swinging for the fences would be cool if you happened to connect, but even if you did and the ball went 500 feet, your team would still be down by a run.
Sometimes it’s better to take one for the team, get on base, and bring the tying run to the plate.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole concept of Wearing It. As I’ve written about way too vaguely, I’ve been dealing with this proverbial thorn in my side for years now. For nearly half a decade, I have tried to find a workable solution that creates a sense of peace and calm inside me that I have been unable to hold onto except for very brief periods of time.
This lack of peace doesn’t notably affect anyone else but me, and for that, I am happy. But that doesn’t mean it’s not one huge thorn that tends to stab the shit out of me if I lean just the wrong way, which has turned out to be all too easy to do. Suffice to say I would love to figure out a way to deal with this motherfucking thorn.
The problem is that every way I and the very few others who know the details have thought of to deal with this thorn come with the risk of driving said thorn from the side into the heart. And yes, I know the vagueness is annoying, but please indulge me a bit longer.
Here’s the thing: I have not always been the man I would like to be. I am sure a lot of men can say that. I am one of them. I have said things and done things that have hurt people I care about deeply. I have lost friendships that meant a whole helluva lot to me and, in losing them, I hurt people I would never have wanted to hurt. All of that is to say, I accept the responsibility for it. If that thorn is there until the day I die, there is a strong case to be made that it would be justified and that others in the world would be happier for knowledge of its presence. I accept that. It’s fine.
But I am not the man today that I was then. I have spent a lot of time and dug incredibly deep to find a path to a new me, the me that those who love me have long known I could be. I am thankful for their faith and loyalty and patience. I am proud of what I have accomplished.
I think that there was this thought inside me all along the way that as I grew — as I figured things out, as I fixed all the things I needed to fix to be a better man, a better husband, a better father, a better friend — I would find the key to addressing the thorn and, in the process, be able to hold onto that elusive sense of peace.
In that, I was wrong. As I ticked things off a really ugly to-do list of personal improvement, the one thing that never got a checkmark was the goddamn thorn. And it’s not for lack of effort or discussion or prayer or mental energy.
Over the course of the past five years, I and the professionals who have assisted me on this journey have given a lot of labels to this thorn. It’s been called everything from a drug to evil to extrasensory bliss. The method of dealing with it has been to use all these labels to create a view of reality that somehow led to peace.
I have faithfully tried all of them. None of them has worked.
One of the best things to come from my personal evolution over the past five years or so has been the development of patience. Yes, it has been exceedingly annoying to not be able to figure out a solution to the one thing that has been at the core of so much disquiet. But I’ve been generally OK with it because I figured that it would solve itself when it was time to be solved. I have given myself up to the timing of God or the Universe or whatever your name might be for the divine force that governs our existence. I have learned the hard way that pushing too fast for a solution leads to pain.
And so I have waited. Patiently. Kind of.
Yesterday, I was feeling incredibly unsettled from the moment I woke up. The past few weeks have been really, really rough as I deal with the pure insanity that is the relationship I no longer have with my birth parents. Add a less-than-stellar work trip and a few other little things to the equation, and I knew I wasn’t in a good place by the time early evening rolled around. So I did what I know to do: I got away and into nature.
I have a spot near my Humble Country Home at which I have never seen another human being. It’s got a nice place to sit and it’s near a lake and forest. Aside from the asshole ducks I wrote about earlier today, it is extremely peaceful and has proven to be a good place for me to get my feelings into some sort of order.
It was there yesterday that the whole concept of Wearing It came back around. I didn’t intend for that to be something I thought about. It’s simply the direction I went or was taken, depending on your beliefs. So I went with it.
Over the past five years, I have dabbled with the idea of being much more proactive in thorn extraction. There are a lot of different things I could do to attempt to wiggle that sucker free and bring the whole issue to what I hope would be a good resolution for all, and yes, that includes me. Yet every time I have been on the precipice of taking that step to yank the thorn free, something had stopped me. It has never felt like the right thing to do — or, at least — the right time to do it.
And so I haven’t. I have chosen inaction and the status quo instead.
Yesterday, for the first time, I truly felt like that might be how things stay, that for me to find any semblance of lasting peace, I simply have to Wear It when it comes to the thorn. No one else can Wear It with me. I have to Wear It. Me. Alone. For however long I have left Here.
So much of me wants to cry out about how unfair that is or how it’s not how I’d want things to be were the world perfect. That’s the whiny little bitch part of me that I hate and that I refuse to bow down to, and the real me sure as hell knows this world ain’t perfect.
Here’s what else I know: Actions have consequences. We can bring this into the realm of the religious, and I can frame it using my Christian background. When we do things we know we shouldn’t do, when we are casual with our hearts and the hearts of those we care about, people get hurt. There are consequences for causing hurt to people we care about.
And then there’s the concept of penance. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been hanging around too many Catholics of late, but Wearing It seems an awful lot like penance. If your team is losing for a reason you helped create and you are a needed baserunner but instead duck out of the way of a pitch, well, you’re not doing your penance.
If, from a religious standpoint, Wearing It is my penance for the hurt I caused, then I am OK with that. I might not like it. I might wish there were another way. But if there’s not, well, then, my lack of peace caused by my actions is my penance, is my cross to bear. So I’ll bear it.
I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to be a martyr or that I’m searching for sympathy. I’m not. Please know: This isn’t about that. This whole section of the website has been about me trying to figure out exactly who the hell I am and how I work.
Wearing It is all about minimizing the hurt for others. If I take the pitch to the knee and get on base, my teammate can swing away and go for the game-tying dinger. The guy after him can pursue the game-winning run. None of them have to deal with any hurt from being plunked thanks to an issue I caused.
My team, in this case, is everyone involved in this situation, from my own loved ones to the loved ones on the other side of what happened in that time. I want to hurt none of them. Not any more than I already have. Even those I don’t particularly care for in this situation. I had no right to hurt them — any of them — in the first place, and if Wearing It means they are spared from future hurt that would be caused from my pursuit of peace, well, OK then. That’s what I have to do.
I don’t know if this is the right thing to do. It feels like it might be. But of course, it also hurts. Fastballs to the knee don’t tickle.
Maybe this peace and resolute determination to not duck won’t stick. Maybe at the last minute I’ll flinch and the pitch will go sailing by. That’s OK. I’ll stand up and be ready to take the next one wherever it is headed should that be the what I’m supposed to do.
I just don’t want anyone else to hurt, and I’d like to find some lasting internal peace.