Wednesday nights at the temple were Zazen: sitting meditation. There was also kinhin, walking meditation. Walking had three speeds like my old Schwinn. My teacher, Sunim, would ring the handbell to signal each change in activity. Bow. Prostrate. Sit. Walk. Walk faster. Jog. Sit. Think of nothing. Think about work. Drinking. Not drinking. How much I hated X and Y. Nothing. Work. Nothing. The color of the sky. The tinkling bell.

My Zen name was Bopnim. Sunim said it meant something about forests and strength. Mostly I think that’s bullshit. I can’t even find it on Google Translate. But at the temple, I was Bopnim. A monk in training. Not a disaster. I hid myself in the temple as a means of imprisonment. I could limit my self-destruction. I didn’t need guns or rope or nuclear weapons. I was a nuclear weapon. But at the temple, I was Bopnim. Devout. Robed in grey. A teacher with training wheels.

The temple was always cold. Sunim said it was good for training and that the cold shouldn’t bother us. But it was Chicago. I think it was more about the cost of heat than training—the place was huge—an old schoolhouse that’d been converted into a temple. It was a four-story maze: a big, wide staircase in the front entrance with orange carpet and metal switchback stairs in the back. Sunim lived on top. The third floor was carved with a slew of rooms for students: makeshift with thin plaster walls. There was a gymnasium with wood floors reserved for retreats. On the second floor was the temple and business office. The first floor was a living space with scattered mismatched couches, a tiny practice area with a shrine, a kitchen, and a huge table where we ate in silence. Everything was silent except that bell.

When I joined the seminary, I lived there part-time. I picked a room behind the gymnasium at the back of the building on the third floor. There were two loft-like rooms nestled back there that were mostly hidden. It was perfect. A futon on the ground. That was it.

It’d been a few years, so you would think I had the practice down. I didn’t know it then, but I’m dyslexic and have less than 10% working memory. So, if I’m doing something and try to do something else simultaneously, I’ll immediately forget that other thing. I have stickies for stickies and notes in my phone numbering in the thousands. I plot my life in Outlook. I make jokes. If it isn’t written down, it doesn’t exist. But it’s true. My mind is a black hole. I can do something or say something without remembering it five minutes later. No recall.

For years, I thought I had a brain tumor or early-onset Alzheimer’s. Something was very wrong. So, at Zazen, I was always confused. What comes next? Sitting? Prostrating? Walking? Which direction first? Clockwise or counter? I could never quite remember. I was the perfect Zen monk.

I remember it was spring because I wasn’t quite frozen but not really warm either, and we were sitting in the temple on the second floor. I took off my glasses for practice. I was sitting there. Thinking. Not thinking. Breathing. Losing count. 1. 2. 3. 3. 1. 2. 3. 5. The blue blue sky. The bell. I got up to walk. I went the wrong way; everyone was coming at me like cars on the 95 going north on the south exit ramp. But I kept going. I couldn’t tell you why, but then the bell went off again, and we were jogging, only I was jogging the wrong way, and I ran so hard into another student that I knocked us both over.

And Sunim, who was always a bit terrifying, was at the front holding that silver bell. Glaring. Detached. Angry. Not angry. Shaking his head without actually shaking it.

I am seven again at that swim meet, where I dove before the bell went off. Butterfly 150 meters. I swim as hard as I can, and there is so much cheering, and I swim and swim. And I am leading. I am so far out ahead. I am gliding perfectly. Every breath. The glimpse of sky. I am flying. My coach is crouched down by the pool’s edge when I finish. He has the kindest smile I have ever seen. I pull off my goggles thinking he’s telling me I won, that I was so great. But something about that smile made me realize I hadn’t won. That maybe those weren’t cheers I’d heard. My mother was there too—crestfallen or ashamed.

I am twelve, playing soccer deaf. I had an earache that summer, and no one knew I couldn’t hear. It was all wax. The whole canal had filled up and my world was fishbowl sounds. Muted. Like a silent retreat. And I was dribbling the ball down the field to so many cheers. Everyone was yelling me on! And the sky was cerulean blue. The bell of the whistle chased me as I ran and ran. And scored. The perfect kick. The perfect score. The perfect child. But I’d run in the wrong direction. Scored for the wrong team.

Sunim didn’t cheer or yell. He just glared and rang the bell, and everyone went back to sitting. The guy I ran into muttered a silent apology as if he’d done something wrong, but it was me. I’m so sorry. I say that a lot. Like a mantra. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I had a job once where I apologized so much that my boss yelled, Stop it! She hated me. But she also fired a pregnant woman on maternity leave, so I figured it was her, not me (it was me). It was not long after the “crash” that I quit Buddhist seminary.

Sanha, Sunim’s wife, said I’d lost my way. So did Kosu, the head student. Sunim asked me why. For some reason, I thought of shoes. Designer shoes. Ferragamos. Balenciaga. Lofty, expensive things I could never afford or even want. Bopnim. I remember him repeating my name. Asking me again and again. I remember sitting in that open living space on that couch. Him next to me. The thick gray robe’s material unyielding. The cold. And for the very first time in three years, Sunim was gentle. Yielding. I’m not sure I answered him. I can’t remember. What I remember was a feeling. A collision. A sort of freedom. No path. No hiding.

I didn’t know much else.