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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK218 Jack Fritscherthe hall and again right at me. I felt the force of the light as a kind of cold heat penetrating the dark night of my soul. E! E! The shrieking violins of the Psycho score!I closed my door and ran to my bed, hoping he wouldn%u2019t come back. Always I had set impossible tasks for myself, because the thrill of defeating the threat of failing caused in me a rush that always caused me to succeed at the very last moment. When I was a little boy, I often laid on my stomach lengthwise on the edge of my bed, whispering nobody loves me, inching over bit by bit, till half my body was on the edge, then half was over the edge, nobody loves me, then more than half, and still more, as my pajamas clung to the sheets, until in a slow tense avalanche of bedclothes, nobody loves me, I slid ever so quietly, ever so thrilled, chest, stomach, thighs, knees, and ankles, to the floor. I had fallen in love with anxiety. Oh God, life would be perfect if I weren%u2019t mentally ill.The clock was ticking.I had known, felt, for four days, at least, that, as sure as Tank sank, I must leave Misery. Hank the Tank had got out easy. Come our Ordination Day in fifteen months: subtract me, one less boy. I would not be whiterobed in the chapel. My impossible task was to escape Misery even if I had to delay or deny my vocation to the priesthood. I had been sliding out of this miserable bed for three years. My breathing stopped. The difference between my vocation and my seventeen classmates was a simple matter of talking out timing with the Jesuit. For a month or two. Until Christmas. To be certain. Wait until Christmas. Eleven years. My parents. My uncle. My brother. My little sister. Me. Knowing nothing of the world.What I will do, oh Lord, I prayed deep in the night of my room, the secret my own%u2014no one else%u2019s%u2014I do not know. Why, my God, are You doing this?I have a vocation, but this is the wrong time in the world and in the Church to become a priest.Vatican II is an earthquake.The dome of St. Peter%u2019s Basilica in Rome shakes over the epicenter.Misery is trembling under my feet.Priests, once simply Catholic, good Catholic priests, are shaken by Vatican politics, scurrying right to tradition and marching left to change.Maybe I lack real faith, my Lord, but how dare I promise a permanent vow of celibacy in the sacrament of the priesthood that puts an indelible mark on my soul during a civil war of politics and purity?The faces of Gunn and Karg tell me who will win this time around.Oh, I recognize this.