Compassion

Today I went shopping for a small book case at Big Lots, the one near my house. I didn’t find my bookcase there. I ended up getting a tall skinny bookcase from a Goodwill later in the afternoon, but I did get a couple hula-hoops for Sabrina and I from the kid’s section. It says the hula-hoops are for ages 3+ but there’s no way I believe 3 or 4 year olds could manage that size hoop. I barley could. Actually, maybe little kids can do it, and I’m just getting old and loosing my hula-hooping abilities. Anyway, it was an interesting trip. Well the parking lot was. Interesting because I saw someone who once accused me of following them to stores and such, which I never, ever did. Funny thing is, never did I actually see them in public besides school or church or when invited out to lunch, until today. I don’t know if they saw me too. I don’t think they did, but the beautiful thing is, I really don’t care either way. I use to have a multitude of sometimes intense, conflicting feelings surrounding this person because of past events, both good and bad, and very hash words exchanged between this other being and myself. For years I had thought we were close friends, but later it seemed that was never the case, or either, maybe at one time we were but it just wasn’t lasting. Now I know, I know, I’ve been wrong many, many times in my life and made many bad choices, one after another. I am aware I have also hurt people, but I do my best now not to hurt myself or others. I’ve been very sick in my past without know it at the time. The not knowing what is true of yourself is the worst part. It’s not an excuse really for things I did or places I went, but it is, I think, a reason. A reason that a lot of people do not seem to understand. There is a time where drinking and drugging is a choice, during this time it is fun, but there soon becomes a time where it’s negative fun, and for many people it is no longer a choice. Some people think that’s BS and it’s always just a bad choice that selfish people make who don’t care about themselves or anyone else. Well, I’ll tell you this is not the case for everyone. It is not the case for most people. When you’re so sick you can’t care about yourself and you can’t stop using and you don’t even know who you are or what day or week or month it is, it’s no longer a choice, and when it was a choice it was a choice made out of desperation and ignorance, not out of vengeance to hurt another or cause more chaos in a world already full of chaos. It’s a choice made by someone who needs help, who needs compassion. A lot of compassion. I’m not saying human love can fix addiction and mental illness, it can’t. Oh, God, how I wish that’s all it took. If so, I’d be just fine, absolutely amazing all the time. I’m well loved and I know it now and I’m infinitely grateful for this, but this isn’t what makes me “cured”. I’m stable, but I’m not cured, nor do I believe that there truly exist cures to things like eating disorders, other addictions and depression, except by way of a miracle, which, yes, I do believe happens sometimes. More often than not though we seem to live with afflictions such as these maybe and in someway, some good ends up coming out of them. Actually, maybe, this is even more of a miracle, if miracles can have hierarchy. I think when we humans think of being “healed” we think of our affliction just leaving us completely and we can go on and live happily ever after. If that were true it would be so nice and so easy for us, the individual, but what greater good is that doing for others? I think that’s why God seems to more often leave us with traces of how we’re afflicted and traces of our pain. Annoying, yes, totally. However, without these flaws and this pain would we have such great capability of empathy? I dunno, maybe not. Still, if things like this, like great depression, grief, addiction, whatever, if it could be healed with human love, I believe in the goodness of humanity enough to believe a lot less people would be sick, addicted and hurting. But depression and addiction are so mysterious and, I believe, straight from hell. God’s love helps us get by and live. It heals. But our flawed human love and friendship will never be a match to such destruction. It helps of course, but these things we wish we could heal, they destroy the best of relationships and the best if intentions. These things that only leave destruction and devastation in their path, they don’t make sense. They have no easy answers, no explanations, or cures. They can become manageable (with like, A TON, of work) but they never disappear and they threaten to resurface constantly. When you’re in the pit, so sad and you don’t know why and no medication seems to help,when nothing at all seems to help and you question “the point” and the existence of God, and you think that you are going to die, there is no logic. During this illogical time in my life, when I made little to no sense and the world and others made little to no sense to me, I guess I damaged this particular relationship beyond repair. And I guess I have to accept this, which I do now more than I ever have. I love myself but not the sickness which once took over and sometimes still creeps into my life. Yes, there have been times in my life where I beat on myself for destroying what I thought was a friendship and there have been times I truly missed knowing this person as a friend so much that it absolutely ached my heart and I felt so much regret and shame for my feelings, words and actions, which always seemed to be the problem, sometimes even when I was trying to set things right. Which in those cases were utterly disappointing and painful times. Mostly because I felt so misunderstood by someone I thought understood me so well and loved me. I was so confused and not accepting of this rejection. Sometimes people don’t understand why it’s still somewhat painful to have lost this friend who was, still is, in a way, loved like family. The loss in anyway of a loved one is never good, but I think especially when you often feel you have little family, or just feel alone altogether, it’s harder to “get over”. It would be easy if I could say fuck them. It would be really easy if I wanted to say fuck that person, but that’s never what my heart has told me. It’s always been hard for me to trust so the experience of feeling so close to another at one point in time and completely estranged later made me more hesitant to trust and allow my heart to be known to others, since others can hurt hearts so easily both intentionally and unintentionally. For a long time my need was to withdraw and protect myself and nurse a wound which I thought I was so sick for having, because I thought loosing a loved one through estrangement, although sad, I should not have grieved the way I did and sometimes, at night and alone, I may still again. However, the interesting thing is, now, it doesn’t seem to matter anymore and today I only felt one emotion when I saw this peculiar, yet loved person in passing. Compassion. I did not say a prayer for them like I often have in the past, and I do not mean a prayer for them to forgive me or understand where I’m coming from, I mean a prayer for their happiness, health and general well-being. I don’t know to explain God’s workings on this one, but today it seemed that feeling of compassion devoid of all other conflicting feelings was both, a prayer in itself and surely and answered prayer too.