The Square Root of God
A failed math prodigy, a made-up number, and the miracle of staying sober anyway
I used to be good at math.
Not “passed algebra without crying” good. I mean good good.
In fifth grade, while the other kids were still chewing on their pencils, I was filling notebooks with logic puzzles and long equations—four variables, maybe five. Then I’d solve for X. And Y. And Z. And AA. Then I’d check the answers. Twice. For fun.
Leaving the homework in my bag ignored and undone.
I liked math because it didn’t lie. It didn’t stutter. It didn’t need applause.
Math didn’t flinch when you got too close.
By the time I hit the SATs, my math score beat my verbal like a snitch in a mob movie—which is ironic, since I’ve spent most of my adult life crafting similes like that.
Back then, numbers still made sense to me. They behaved. They didn’t pretend to be more than they were.
So of course I finished third from the bottom of my class.
National Merit Semifinalist? Sure. But that was all test scores.
My actual transcript read like a slow-motion fire drill in a glue factory.
It was like watching a kid with a broken arm win the field goal round of the Punt, Pass & Kick competition. Technically impressive. Practically useless.
So I did what any overcooked teenage brain might do:
I enlisted.
Two weeks after graduation, I was standing on the scorched tarmac at Fort Knox, boots too tight, stomach flipping like a drunk gymnast.
The air smelled like diesel and sunscreen and military-grade regret. My uniform still reeked of plastic wrap and low expectations.
And me? I kept waiting for someone in a campaign hat to tap me on the shoulder and say, “Sorry, this is all a mistake. You’re supposed to be in jail. Or poetry class.”
My motto at the time?
“I prefer to commit my felonies in a different time zone.”
I started this piece thinking I’d talk about my off-kilter education.
The way I went from math to metaphor. From geometry to jazz riffs about God and grace.
I told myself I’d stay focused.
Like a laser.
Which, fun fact, doesn’t focus light. It organizes it.
You take a chaotic stream of photons, bounce them around inside a mirrored barrel until they’re all moving in sync—like inmates figuring out who runs the block—and then you blast that coherent light through a pinhole.
Straight. Sharpened. Surgical.
Not unlike certain people I know in recovery.
I got sober in church basements that smelled like old linoleum and failed marriages.
The folding chairs were metal. The coffee was burnt. There was always one guy in a Harley hoodie quoting Buddha, and another with nicotine-stained fingers telling us we weren’t in charge of anything. Not our minds. Not our memories. Not even our own shoes.
They told me I needed a Higher Power.
“It doesn’t have to be God,” they said.
“It can be the group. A tree. A toaster oven. A doorknob.”
And I tried.
I really did.
I stared at the doorknob like it might open something more than a supply closet.
I whispered desperate prayers to a fluorescent light.
I begged a rusted coffee pot to intervene on my behalf.
But here’s the thing: I used to be a Baptist minister.
I’d stood behind pulpits. Quoted Paul. Baptized people.
I’d preached about a God who kept spreadsheets of your thoughts, especially the dirty ones.
So no, I couldn’t trade that in for a kitchen appliance.
But my brain—beautiful, disobedient, dropout brain—remembered something.
A math problem from junior high.
x² + 1 = 0
That equation can’t be solved. Not with real numbers.
To solve it, you have to believe in i.
i is the square root of –1.
It doesn’t exist. It can’t exist.
But once you pretend it does, the system works.
Suddenly, problems resolve. Equations balance.
i—imaginary, indispensable, invisible—makes everything else make sense.
MRI machines run on i.
Signal processing. Physics. Digital animation.
All the useful stuff.
i isn’t real.
But it works.
And one day in a meeting, it hit me:
That could be my Higher Power.
Not a guy on a cloud.
Not a lightbulb.
Not a ghost I call God.
Just a necessary fiction.
A made-up number that solves the problem.
That was the first time I believed in something imaginary and called it hope.
Once I gave myself permission to believe in something that didn’t make sense—but made things work—I started to change.
Not all at once. Not cleanly. But undeniably.
I still wonder sometimes:
What if I’d stuck with math?
What if I’d become a chemist?
Or built bridges instead of metaphors?
But instead I forged passports to Clever-Clever Land out of semicolons and subordinate clauses, hoping someone would stamp them “worthy.”
Would I do it differently now?
Maybe.
But then I wouldn’t be the guy praying to imaginary numbers.
Wouldn’t be the guy scribbling equations on the back of a meeting schedule, trying to solve for peace.
Wouldn’t be the guy at 5:17 a.m., tapping this into a glowing screen, still sober.
So if you’re looking back—counting your failures like coins, weighing the gaps in your resume, tracing the cracks in your story—
Pause.
If the face in the mirror belongs to someone honest, flawed, still showing up—
Then you’ve got nothing to regret.
i isn’t real.
But it got me here.
And maybe you don’t have to be perfect.
Just possible