Baptism and Breakups

When I was fourteen, not unlike many fourteen-year-olds, I had an intense and unrequited crush (let’s call him Crush). To make matters worse, Crush made out with one of my closest friends (let’s call her Friend), and I found out. That freshman year, Friend and I had unwisely shared Hotmail login passwords with each other. Throughout the spring, I’d grown suspicious that something was going on between Friend and Crush, and I found the receipts. I confronted (very nice) Friend about it; she changed her Hotmail password, and we didn’t speak too much more of the matter (at least not until Christian summer camp that year when I cried and asked for her forgiveness in front of a bunch of teenagers).

At one turning point that year (prior to summer camp), I tricked my eyeballs into accepting contact lenses. I had become so stubborn about not wearing glasses, yet remained unable to put a contact lens in my eye without full-body shuddering, that I had adapted by crouching in the front of the classroom whenever I needed to copy notes off the whiteboard. Not wanting to rip my eyeballs out while also being able to see was a real upgrade.

Having mastered contact lens insertion, I finally had a way to see things, and a way to see them without wearing glasses. One afternoon, I sat at my best friend’s desk (different friend), having thoughts about the song “I Can See Clearly Now” and laughing to myself about the double-meaning: I could actually finally SEE, but I could also see, and feel, the futility of this particular crush.

That afternoon, the clouds (literally) opened, dumping rain drops as big as pebbles onto Mississippi soil and tarmac. My friend wanted to dance in that rain. I wasn’t so sure, so I watched through the window as she did her rain-dancing thing. But she was having such a good time that I thought I’d give it a try as well. Initially apprehensive, I soon began to move just a little bit here, a little bit there, eventually kicking and punching and flailing about like a twister in the sun. It felt very good, a very good-ness that had become so foreign to me that I’d almost forgotten it existed.

Trauma often presents in the body as a frozenness (i.e., a freeze response); any kind of movement, even barely perceptible movement, can help the body transition out of the trauma response into something new. Move a finger, move a nostril, twitch a thumb, do whatever you have to do. In addition to triggering a physiological change, standing (and eventually dancing) under the rain may have reminded me of happier times in my childhood: times when I’d stood under the even more impressive Louisiana rain in my grandparents’ courtyard, or the time I riskily stood under a waterfall, feeling the flow of buckets and buckets. In other words, it reminded me of times when I’d felt a little lighter, more carefree, and certainly unburdened by unrequited crushes (who made out with your friend).

Taylor Swift’s song “Clean,” (on the recently re-released 1989) expresses a similar experience of lightness following a break from a love interest (in her case, Harry Styles). In a 2015 interview, Swift articulated the inspiration for the song:

… it hit me that I’d been in the same city as him for two weeks and I hadn’t thought about it. When it did hit me, it was like, Oh, I hope he’s doing well. And nothing else … A heartbroken person is unlike any other person. Their time moves at a completely different pace than ours … Nothing distracts you from it. Then time passes … and then all of a sudden one day you’re in London and you realize you’ve been in the same place as your ex for two weeks and you’re fine. And you hope he’s fine. The first thought that came to my mind was, I’m finally clean [emphasis added].

Swift arguably has a talent for cutting straight through BS to the heart of the matter. In her essay comparing Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen, Clare Coffey suggests that both artists succeed in connecting with such a wide cross-section of the population because they focus on big, basic feelings experienced by many (basic?) people — most especially, the “wonder and drama and danger of love.”

“Clean” is no exception in its directness. Swift sings:

Hung my head as I lost the war
And the sky turned black like a perfect storm

Rain came pouring down
When I was drowning, that’s when I could finally breathe
And by morning
Gone was any trace of you, I think I am finally clean

“Is she talking about baptism?” I wondered, upon my first listen. The lyrics evoke at least one Biblical passage:

I will sprinkle clean water [emphasis added] upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanliness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit [emphasis added] I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you … (Ez 36: 25-27).

At the same time, the notion of requiring “cleanness” after a breakup reminds me of urges I feel to shower after a traumatic or even unpleasant event. “I feel gross, I need to shower,” goes the thought. This is not an uncommon OCD-related urge. I recall, as a child, when my OCD was the most active, struggling to shower because I knew the task would be so overwhelming; I needed to get SO clean, and that kind of shower can take ages. For some individuals with OCD, cleanliness (washing hands, showering, or other behaviors) and cleaning can be directly related to moralism: for example, “I need to shower in order to literally wash off the guilt.”

That spring, I felt so much shame (long-held, unrequited crush) and so much guilt (reading Friend’s emails), that the notion of “getting clean” was extremely appealing, and probably another reason why that rain felt so damn good (although remnants of guilt lingered: I still felt compelled towards confession, another OCD-typical urge, at Christian summer camp). I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that, on that spring day in 2003, the rain, at least metaphorically speaking, baptized me. At least, at least: all I can tell you is that I felt somehow different. To frame it in a silly way, I had become a cool girl with excellent vision who had a lot fewer feelings about a certain boy. (Crush was really not that good-looking or interesting anyway.) To frame it in a serious way, through that clean water, I had become a new spirit, released from both a hard guilt and a heavy depression. And what was there to be ashamed of? The feeling seemed suddenly less relevant. I also remember that day as the first time that year that I felt happy, an emotion that had always seemed dangerously volatile to me (and often still does). But I accepted it in that moment.

Indeed, there is something sneaky and ultimately delightfully surprising about the kind of revelation that Swift describes in “Clean,” and the revelation I experienced on that spring day. This kind of revelation happens not in a full stop, but in pieces, and sometimes so gradually that you may not realize it’s even happening — but, before you know it, you see the rigid indentations on the tree, or feel the loud, clean rain, and suddenly, the world is new. That day, the surprises met me like a string of lights, pointing me elsewhere. My rain-dancing behavior struck me as a surprise, but also my feelings and thoughts, namely that I could let go of the idea of Crush, and that myself could feel things other than “dead.”

I like to imagine that underneath the surface — in dreams, in showers, between stepping stones and doorways — perhaps God is at work, cleaning things up, pushing away piles of dust and clumps of dirt, making way for newer identities and thoughts, no shower required.