Vachon Imagined

I was in a women’s Bible study group many years ago and, honestly, I don’t know why I do these things to myself, but I do.

Every few years I convince myself that this time will be different. This time I will sit quietly. This time I will nod at appropriate intervals. This time I will behave like a normal participant and not accidentally turn a discussion into an existential audit of everyone’s assumptions.

It never works.

I arrive eager to fit in and somehow leave having exposed what people are made of.

You’re welcome.

The topic that day was sex.

Not sex in the exciting sense. This was Bible study sex.

We were carefully exploring the rules, the boundaries, the do’s and don’ts, the consequences, the temptations, the spiritual implications, the moral responsibilities, and all the other ways human beings have attempted to organize one of the most chaotic forces in existence.

It was thoughtful.

It was sincere.

It was surprisingly vulnerable.

We were discussing intimacy, desire, commitment, restraint, and the mysterious ways people can either honor or completely derail their lives through relationships.

Then, somehow—and I still cannot tell you how we got there because the path remains lost to history—we arrived at teabagging.

Not gradually.

Not through a series of logical conversational stepping stones.

One moment we were discussing virtue and self-control, and the next we were apparently conducting a symposium on teabagging.

I nearly spit out my spiritually purified water.

I’m assuming it was spiritually purified. We were in Bible study. It felt reasonable to assume.

The women were discussing the act, its various meanings, its cultural baggage, and the general consensus that humanity had probably made some questionable decisions along the way.

Being who I am, I asked what I thought was a perfectly reasonable question.

“Has anyone actually experienced it before?”

In my defense, I wasn’t asking for entertainment.

I was asking for research.

Field notes.

Data collection.

If we’re going to discuss the many ways human beings derail themselves, it feels efficient to hear from someone who has already done the fieldwork.

Why stumble blindly into poor decision-making when someone else has already documented the terrain?

I wasn’t advocating for teabagging.

I wasn’t forming a committee.

I wasn’t requesting a live demonstration.

I simply thought we were exchanging information.

Silence.

Not ordinary silence.

Church silence.

The kind of silence that arrives when everyone simultaneously wonders whether they should answer the question, rebuke the question, or quietly add your name to the prayer list.

A few heads turned.

A few eyes widened.

Someone looked at me as though I had smuggled an unsanctioned philosophy into a very regulated space.

That’s when I realized—again—that what I meant and what everyone else heard had taken completely different exits off the same conversational highway.

Story of my life.

I have never fit comfortably into organized anything.

I joined a sorority in college.

That lasted about as long as milk left on a summer sidewalk.

I have joined groups, clubs, committees, organizations, and every single time I discover there is an invisible handbook everyone else received that somehow got lost in my mail.

There are things you’re supposed to say.

Questions you’re supposed to ask.

Opinions you’re supposed to have.

And then there is me, accidentally wandering into the conversation through a side door nobody knew existed.

For years I thought this was a flaw.

Now I think it is just how I’m built.

I ask the wrong question.

I say the wrong thing.

I point at the elephant in the room while everyone else is complimenting the curtains.

Over time I’ve learned that sometimes silence is wisdom, especially when someone isn’t ready to hear what they’re asking. Other times, the best thing I can do is simply stay to myself.

I have one close friend.

One best friend.

And honestly, that’s enough.

I don’t spend hours on social media. I don’t even have an account. The whole thing bores me.

Show me a challenge.

Show me something difficult.

Show me a mountain everyone says cannot be climbed.

That gets my attention.

Tell me I can’t do something and my first instinct is not reflection or maturity.

It’s, “Watch me.”

I’m working on that.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

The truth is that I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.

Given the earlier conversation, I felt obligated to make that joke.

But that’s okay.

Not everyone likes tea.

Some people prefer coffee.

Some people prefer neither and spend their lives pretending sparkling water is exciting.

The real question isn’t whether other people are comfortable with who you are.

The question is whether you are.

Are you okay with what you think?

Are you okay with the questions that naturally arise within you?

Are you okay with the person revealed when the room grows quiet after you’ve said the thing nobody else was willing to say?

Because eventually fitting in becomes a much less interesting goal than being honest.

And honesty, while occasionally awkward at Bible study, has a way of leading you back to yourself.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been learning all along.

The goal was never to become everyone’s cup of tea.

The goal was to stop apologizing for being coffee.