April 25, 2014
I lost my little Lesley.Sometimes it helps to have someone in your life a little more f�ed up than you are. Really puts things into perspective. Makes you feel a little less sorry for yourself or a little less sad for the time being. But that�s not why we were friends. We were friends because she got it. She knew what it was like to be where I was, where I sometimes still am, where I know I don�t ever want to truly be. We were also friends, most especially, because I thought I could make a difference.
I�ve always been that way.
Thinking I know something someone else doesn�t, thinking I can do something someone else cannot.
Look at my history with men and you�ll see the fact of that plain as Rodman chillin� in Korea.
I always had that little spark of something special that I could never define. It�s a spark I think we all possess, perhaps most when we�re young and naive and still seemingly believing in magic or fairytales or pots of gold. We cannot dismiss the possibility so we seek it out to define definitively. And when we finally grow up and get a clue, we realize, at last, that we won�t always garner the answers as easily as we once thought. If at all. People leave you hanging, loved ones leave you puzzled, passion doesn�t always move mountains or charge a river to turn direction. Rarely does it, in fact. Harsh imposition, maybe, but not passion.
We are not the moving phrases we see in movies. We are not the happy endings we see in books. We do not win acclaim just because we�re different and, if we did, none of us would be so scared to be just a little different, would we? Nope. We are selfish and so we see things a little bit tunneled. We see what we have and what we have held. What we know and what we�ve been told. And rarely does it expand very far beyond that.
That little something I thought I had, that I thought was special, really only makes me, as far as I have seen, indecisive. At least to others. But to me, it�s special and a little magical and a bit thrilling. Humbling, too.
When everyone else saw the crumbling crack-head that couldn�t find his way out of a jail cell if it were unlocked, I saw my cousin. The kid who played Blind Man�s Bluff with me in parent�s bedroom at parties that went out a bit too late for those rated PG. His mother was all but lost, too, and still I thought I could make the difference, despite her influential ways. Like mother, like son. The sweet boy who couldn�t speak up so the world thought him clueless, when in reality he was the most bright star in the sky with a sharper tongue than most. The fumbling geek looking for his keys so he can drive someone home and, to me, he was a knight in shining armor. The married man was all you could see but I could see the death and decay in his eyes and all I knew is that I could make a difference.
Was it right or was it wrong?
Of course it was wrong but can you see the right?
You cannot see both sides, can you?
A person who�s only been skinny can�t have the compassion for someone who once was and now isn�t. Men, and only men, picketing at an abortion clinic cannot know what turmoil rests in another�s soul as they stand outside, screaming, without an ounce of �what if?� How can you know? How can a person who claims to never want children possibly understand that absolute perfection of having a child if she never does? You may empathize, you may get close, you might even see the spark that no one else can quite see but you won�t know it until you just do.
Can you judge welfare before you�ve been on it? But can you really? Based off of the cases you know firsthand, you think you do, but you do not. Do you know welfare? Do you live it? Do you know unemployment or treason? Do you know? Poverty. Homelessness. Disaster. Destruction. Hate. Love. Belief and disbelief based off of what we have or have not read. Tranquility based off of where we have or have not been. Do you know what it�s like to lose a child?
Yes and no. Not everyone knows and unfortunately and fortunately some do. But we cannot truly judge this or that if we have not lived it. We cannot take such firm stands until we have SEEN someone for who they are, for what they have done or for where they have been because it�s only then that the story changes. It�s hardly black and white. Sometimes it�s not even a color that is definable.
And that�s what I saw in Lesley.
She was f�ed up. But I could see just how beautiful she truly was, how caring she could be, how ordered things could have been and how trusting she might have been if only things had turned out slightly different. If only she let people in. And I know what it is because I have kept people at arm�s length as well as I have let people in. Both are scary as all get out. Both can be amazing and horrible. But nothing is as easily defined as we�d like it to be.
It�s not so easy to stand on one side of the fence. No matter how much we should or someone else should. And I know that. Sometimes, five years down the road, you find yourself on the other side of the fence in disbelief. It�s not who you were, it�s not who you are, it just� is. This new thing.
You cannot know what it is to be a Grinch if you�ve never despised Christmas music and now, somehow, you truly love it. You cannot know what it is to be homeless until you�re genuinely without a home. You cannot know how much the job meant to you until, after fifteen years, you�ve been told not to come back. If someone told you you couldn�t, you�d want to�
So it�s hard to see the good side of Lesley right now because she�s working overtime to show off her dark side but, I also know, that�s what sorrow does to you. That�s what out of control does to you. It can swallow you whole. It can cause irrationality to take over. Desperation, desire, hope, fear � they can turn you into something you�re not.
It�s not because you�re weak. It�s because you�re human