You’re 3 years old and sitting on the floor of a dingy carpet, stale-cigarette smoke cakes the air, with the buts and burns littered across the carpet, trash and left over plates stack over each other in the corners of the room and on coffee tables. Then there is your single mother, too mentally, emotionally and physically drained of life to clean up, after already having worked a full & part time job plus dealing with the ends and outs of you and your 3 siblings? You sit there dirty smudges across your small innocent face, and the hunger in your stomach you’ve become more than familiar with. You look across the small, dirty, lifeless apartment to your mother. There is that glazed-over look in your mothers eye’s, tears ever so softly making there way down her face as she stares off into nothing-- trying to remember a time when life was even manageable. It hits you again, this begining awareness of how life is not all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a hunger you can’t place, a hunger worse than then the one in your stomach. A pit of despair, lacking in the nutrition of hope, a hunger for attention in which your mother, your once lively mother, has a hard time giving now, given she’s all but empty herself. She is young, only about 22. Some girls her age would just be graduating college but she never even made it through high school. Having to work at a young age to help around the house and take care of the babies she had prematurely. A women, who despite her own lack of education, lack of support, guidance and love... did the best she could with what she knew. It was still not good enough. She... like you, hardly ever stood a chance. She never learned, in or outside of school, how to best love or be loved by somebody, how to communicate and lead effectively, how to control her emotions or how to walk away from someone or something. She never learned how to manage her stress or deal with her problems. She never learned what her gifts or strengths were, or what would best fulfill her passions and dreams, or even that she could. She never learned what most people really need in life to be happy or make it. The things most people take for granted and are too quick to ridicule others like her for not "getting it." She...Your mother, like most mothers, only wishes the best for you and her siblings, but sees no way out of this cycle. You see it in her, the same feeling your young mind can barley comprehend at the moment. You see your own reflection of despair in mothers eye's and begin to weep.
"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones
..............Flash forward. You’re now a teenager walking the halls of your school, a hall full of people hoping someone notices. Wishing someone actually cared enough to walk with you. Cared enough to get down in the trenches with you and pull you out. Too sick and tired of empty quips and quotes people tell you. Things like “you can do it, life will get better or you can be what you want.” They holler these from the top, like it's a substitute for them reaching their hand down and helping you up. Never bothering to meet you at your level and stay with you through the thick and then until you make it. Do they not realize the pat on your back they give you to send you on your own way is really just a reflection of their own self indignation, a patting of themselves on their own back. A form of teaching out or preaching out but rarely actually reaching out. Though good intentioned, they often lack the action and support needed to mean anything to you. And because of this You’re a teenager who’s now withdrawn from the world. Too many times have you reached out for comfort as a child to a mother who was withdrawn, a father never there and the men that cum and go from her house as quick as they "came". Like ghosts, empty with no names. You see this pattern over and over again, its becoming wired into your brain. No one cares enough to help, You realize by now that working hard and doing things the right way get you nowhere and the only way to deal with life’s problems is to retreat.... why would you believe anything else, it’s all you’ve ever seen. Doing things the right way leaves you broken, physically, spiritually and finically. Always a reminder that you’ll never be enough, never be enough which is again reflected in the high standards of high school politics. The other children, and some teachers who are too quick to point this out too you, as if you don’t already accept it with a loathing, with an unfairness. This fear of forever not being enough is too passive to take idly by, so it turns to anger, an anger in which you act out in, an anger which gives you a fake sense of control in a world which seems to have little if any of care for you or the ones you love. A world in which lets you fall in between the cracks and then walks all over you wearing the shoes with the slogan “you can do it.” a play on words, The left offering help, but only from a distance, never personal... never really there in your life with you. The right offering more stern advice to "pull your self up by your boot straps" or an I'll be praying for you. Both sides happy enough with themselves to sleep at night, all the wile you feel their help or advice though may be good, to you it's unrealistic, it's unpersonal. They often don't understand you or really how to reach you. They more than often offer, advice or maybe even food... but never what your really need. So that's when you stop looking up, and look down into the crack you've fallen. You notice you’re not alone and concede to this life between the cracks accepting your fate you find a solace. You find it with the others living down here with you. You find it in sex & substances. It's something that becomes your life, and you belong. You finally hit bottom and you know who you are, because you can't go any lower. When you find... a friendship that you wouldn't have found anywhere else. Still and all, there's a kind of intimacy with those that can go the distance. Sometimes you see the world so clearly...but you only can see it from the point of view of being invisible.
“Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.”
― Mother Teresa
...........Flash forward again. Your in your early thirties, though you look like you're about 40. Drugs, alcohol and a hard life has taken there tole on you. You think to yourself much like the late great Edgar Allan Poe did. “ I have absolutely no pleasure in the substances in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.” You're emotions are numb, thoughts of sorrow, and misery cascade through your head on a regular, but they don't penetrate too deep, they can't. You've become an expert in numbing, an expert in turning away from life, turning away from the lovers you've had when the relationships required even the smallest amount of work. turning away from the kids you had and gave up. You can't hold your kids or relationship together, you can't hold an apartment or a job....because you can't hold you life together. Because.... to you.... there's never really been anything to hold together. Nothing you can see anyway, beyond the pain, beyond the veil of numbness you've turned to. Numbing not only numbs the pain, but also our ability to experience and see joy or genuine help. Your mind borders on mental illness, paranoid you can tell no difference between the hand and heart that wishes to give, from the one that wishes harm. So, again you turn away from those who would have genuinely helped you because your trust has been diminished, and not only in them but of your self. You have by now tried a couple times to get help, been to jail, to rehab...but it's too much for you to deal with. Almost 30 some years of problems, pain and addictions un-dealt with all come crashing in on you and its RAW. It's more raw than anything you've felt. Its Battery acid to the brain, sand paper to the soul, fire to the flesh.
Thus the way to your spirit you seek, is paid through the gnashing of your teeth.
To see your spirit cleansed of the veil, Requires thee to walk through thine own hell.
But in thy hell, when thous seeks help within it's brethren, it shall find and create it's own bit of heaven.
And when thy spirit unites with "we", thou shall know heaven & hell is what "we" choose to be.
“What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
............Flash Forward some years later. Someone, a stranger comes up to you, sitting on the sidewalk wile you're leaning against the wall of some building holding a cup with some coins. They ask you. Would you like some change...you nod your head ever so lightly. The feeling of shame rises after all these years as you extend your cup a little further out. They just reach out their hand and say "alright then lets go grab a cup of coffee. there is a place just around the corner." You query about their intentions, old flags of mistrust go up and at first you want to dismiss them, but they seem harmless enough and you could use a good cup of coffee, to counteract the substances in your body leaving you feeling a little drugged down. You accept their offer and begin the walk. As you reach the building, head inside snd sit across from each other, this person tells you to get what you want and to not be shy, wile they themselves order some coffee and a piece of pie. You think to your self, this is even a better than the the change he first mentioned and you even offer to give them a little bit of your change from the cup. They tell you just to pay it forward. "Pay it forward?" you ask..."Yea,you know, what you would have given to me, give to someone you meet in the future who could use it." You've never heard of this idea but you like it. "By the way my name is...... it's a pleasure to meet you. They say! What's your name?" The conversation then continues for the next two and half hours. You guys talk about life in many of it's aspects both good and bad, the family and friends, that is until it's gets pretty late and the restaurant waitress start giving you the eye that lets you know you're overstaying your welcome. As you guys get up and make your way out side, they tell you they had such a wonderful time talking with you, that you have quite a strong spirit, though you feel it's broken. They insist on meeting you again over lunch, or something sometime. You guys agree on a time & date to meet up again at this dinner and they hand you their information and ask you how to best get a hold of you. You walk away that day feeling a little different you feel a little bit of a change from your usual mood. Well Months go by and you guys are getting together on the regular, something you always look forward to. You guys are meeting up for coffee among other things, like the movies & local attractions, even their house to meet their family over supper. They introduce you as their friend and mentor, that you've been teaching them about the perseverance of the spirit and humbleness of the heart. You blush at this, thinking their is no way you are their mentor, you have given them nothing and in fact, if anyone is helping it is them that is helping you. But they won't accept this, but decide to meet you in the middle by agreeing that you two are mentoring each other." You can't remember the last time you've had a friendship like this, if ever really. They ask you for help with things like putting their daughters club house together and shopping for the right gift for their spouse. They help you with the things you need like going to N.A. and A.A. meetings with you for support and getting good start up job with them at their company until you both figure out what it is you're passionate about. They have no special degree or high status, they just want to be your friend, to walk with you, together in each others struggles and achievements with out judgment or a sense of superiority. They without telling how or what you need to do to get better just ask what you want out life and offer suggestions when you ask or when your ready to hear it. They have no, though well intended, superficial superhero complex with an objective of fixing you. They just wish for your well being and to help you help your self when your ready. They knew you hand no need for coins but that when you reached out your hand what you were really wanting was some change. Who is this person, this person is you as well, no matter who you are, how much money you make, what you know, what your status is or what you pasts is we all walk with others. Though where are we walking with them? Is it on a path of love and development? Because that's what it takes. If you leave out either you may not get far or worse get to far in the wrong direction.
“Hungry for love, He looks at you. Thirsty for kindness, He begs of you. Naked for loyalty, He hopes in you. Homeless for shelter in your heart, He asks of you. Will you be that one to Him?”
― Mother Teresa, In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories and
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