BE LESS WEIRD / SUSAN DYER

I used to check my poop for spiders and worms, seeking external proof of my internal condition—that’s how much I hated myself, even as a little girl. My self-loathing wasn’t mentored. My parents loved me. But I was born clairvoyant, and they were born Catholic Republicans.

My spirit sight overwhelmed me. Watery walls made it hard to concentrate. I branded myself as weird and broken, and St. Luke’s 100-proof Catholicism confirmed it. After mass and bagels, the kids drifted to CCD, a Sunday school fueled by fire and brimstone. But once instructed to draw God, I felt like a sooty phoenix whose time had come.

Being a native of the spiritual wilderness, I craved safety. I’d envisioned God’s visage long ago and enjoyed solace since. I drew Him cross legged on a cloud, wearing an undershirt, boxers with red hearts, and a scalloped crown.

“What’s this,” the teacher asked, pointing to God’s globed scepter.

“A bad-people zapper,” prompting a pedestrian nod.

Day and night, I saw colors of all shapes and behavior. As a captive anthropologist, I sought patterns but, like Jane Goodall forced to live amid the apes in grade school, I lacked common sense and resources.

My new companion, a microwave-sized swath of crimson, was opaque and plodding. Never swooping and playfully disappearing. Never sparkling or mingling. And I mangled church and cartoons in deciphering its identity.

Crimson was the Devil.

My inference felt as factual as gravity. Weird was instantly insufficient. I was unwittingly bad, which curdled into unlovable, the wickedest label of all.

∞

Leaving lights on at night is a common point of parental contest, as if light blights the sleeping mind. As a tiny psychic, my parents bore the brunt of my hysterics. At least the daytime was less malevolent. I trusted light like Americans trust TV—until the morning the Devil appeared.

My next-door neighbor, Stephen, didn’t report to church on weekends. We were building an airport in my bedroom from a sack of Legos. I was crouched over a taxi stand and missed the Devil’s entrance—but Stephen’s head clanged my bed frame as he scrambled beneath.

“The Devil’s here!” He’d never said that word. He’d never seen my world. I clutched the handle of my rocking horse and saw his aversion—the Devil’s shadow, with a body like Kermit the frog. I lifted all moveable items attempting to explain it away, but he stood, tail curved, patient as God. Out of independent variables, I fled downstairs after Stephen.

My babysitting Uncle Mack was young, childless, and exuberantly religious, “I’ll check it out.” He was ambushed.

But the Devil disappeared when we returned.

“I’m leaving,” Stephen said and never mentioned it again.

Uncle Mack dropped it, too, which I approved. My parents grappled with my clairvoyance, and while they couldn’t solve my supernatural problems, they housed, fed, and camouflaged me.

∞

Fast forward to the sacrament of confirmation, demanding months of study and culminating in interrogation. Father Red Beard facilitated, with the demeanor of a Potato famine survivor who secretly ate babies. We split around him in the hallways like swift, silent schools of fish, duly frowning in reverence.

As the Devil’s darling, I expected rejection. At best? I hoped rote memorization would buy me credit.

Father Red Beard’s nominal tolerance for his flock meant his office door was always closed, so the jungle inside surprised me. I skirted around unruly potted plants and swooping fronds to the couch, and he began.

“Recite the Beatitudes,” but my repetition didn’t pause his inquisition.

“What symbolizes God’s relationship with Jesus?”

“A mirror.” Duh, swiping a tendril at my neck. Only the answer was father and son. 

“But Jesus is just like me!”

“Meaning?”

“Jesus and I are both made of God, so father and son isn’t a big enough box. But a mirror shows what’s the same.” Father Red Beard’s chair shrieked across the linoleum in an unprecedented, emotive moment.

I overshared.

He walked to the couch after an exhaustive volley, and I felt like a thief readying for the pillory. 

“A- slash B+,” he conceded.

“What does a mixed grade mean?” I asked, assuming less than an A+ meant failure.

“You passed.” God approved the Devil’s future recruits? The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders should headline with Old Testament PTSD.

Father Red Beard fetched my dad. “Your daughter was a pleasure.” 

He lied. 

“I heard,” said my dad, wrapping me into his side. 

God’s approval was still possible, but relief was temporary. Considering Satan’s affinity, I’d soon be a goner. But until God zapped me, I’d be sprinting.

∞

I sat through classes, flirted on bus rides, and eventually, eventually slept at night. I was in therapy for clashing with my mom. I answered when questioned, while watching the rippling walls and whizzing beings. I wondered why the floor stayed solid.

Fear ruled, but I got by. I even asked out the love of my life. Besides getting velvet Vidal Sassoon pants, it was the happiest eye-blink of my life… until my old teacher waylaid me in the library. 

I was a sixth-grader researching court jesters, when Mr. Higgins seized the chair across from me. He stared like a bounty hunter, his abdomen pressing into the table. I dropped my pencil; defense mode activated, but I didn’t know the crime.

“Susan, I found you!” I was never a favorite, so why the jubilant reception?

“Okay.”

“I know you fairly well, and you need to hear this before moving on.”

Crickets from me—and surging anxiety.

“If you’re going to make it in this world, you’ve got to become less weird.”

What.

He shared his supposition with pride and prejudice, but I knew a jarring hypocrisy from last year’s fieldtrip: Mr. Higgins had a potato museum in his basement.

Regardless, degradation fell like ash. I needed communal acceptance and vowed to redouble my vagueness. No more Susan—girl was my new name and invisible my new life.

SUSAN DYER / POTOMAC, MD

Susan Dyer was born clairvoyant and raised by baffled, Catholic Republicans. Per life in a sci-fi screensaver, she doubted her sanity and hated herself by kindergarten—until a near-death experience in 2017 clarified her journey. Now she mentors spiritually-awakening women, in between “get a real job” warnings from her father.

Find her at www.susandyer.com and on social media @SusanDyer1111