I was driving home from work a few days ago and I was feeling low. Not bottom – I guess I’ve never really hit bottom, though I’ve been pretty damned deep – but low. As Esme and I started the climb up the hill-from-hell, my friend Mark rounded the curve on foot.
I pulled over to the side a little and rolled down the window. Mark’s face is always a welcome sight, no matter how low I am. He is a little older than me, about my height (which I like), he has beautiful dark brown eyes and a face that reminds me of my own. He is extremely intelligent (even by my standards) and he likes Funk. His life has also been interesting, complicated and troubled. And he likes me. Before Chris and I started ___ing*, I thought that Mark and I might give it a whirl, but time and tide waits for no man, and Fate has plans of her own. Mark asked me how I was doing and I said “Alright.” He just said “No.” I said “No, you’re right, I’m not alright.” And then he said something that rang in my heart like a gong in a temple – “How could you be?”
I’ve said that same thing again and again to friends and Chris and watched their faces take on the look of someone dealing with a crazy person, or get the glaze of ‘up, here she goes again’ or worst of all, the exasperated, ‘well what am I supposed to do about it?’ But here was another person resonating all of my own pain. I looked into his eyes and there it was, my heart and mind’s reflection.
Last week there was a terrible incident on my road. A young man - on bad, serious drugs - knocked on one of his neighbors’ doors after losing a lot of money at a house across the street from where two men, people he knew well, father and son, were watching tv. When the elderly man opened the door, the man shot him in the leg. He charged in with the gun, demanded money, made the son sit on the couch. He then shot the son at point blank range in the face and shot the father in the chest. The father is living, so far. The son is not.**
I’m ashamed that it took me as long as it did to make the connection but after seeing the deep hurt in his eyes I thought to ask him if the victims were his family. I’d suspected as much, but I hadn’t seen him to ask. He said yes, and began to pour out his heart in his way. His words echoed the ones I’ve spoken (what seems to be) a million times. He talked about his anger at the person who did this to his cousin and uncle, he talked about his anger at the justice system. He talked about the pain of thinking of his own daughter doing time in Iraq and his fear of that imminent phone call or word on the evening news. He talked about his loss of freedom and the horrible price of it, that our government can take so much from us and yet charge us so much for what we have – our sons and daughters, our rights. He talked about taking arms and rising up, using his own military training to take back his rights. More and more people – all kinds of people – speak to me of that every day.***
I said “Mark, you and I are so much alike.” And he said “More than you know.” He said that he had never in his life seen anyone as alive as me. He mentioned again, as he does each time we talk alone, that if it were not for timing, we might be together now, and before we parted he asked me if I believed in reincarnation****. I said “Why?” and he said “Because the next time – and that may be sooner than you know – I won’t let you get away…”
Coming from someone else, this might creep me out or make me laugh, but coming from Mark it was almost believable, and definitely a compliment. It made me want to have faith in something outside myself.
He told me one other thing that was very, very important, though. It was most bizarre and serendipitous timing too, because I’d been thinking a lot on this very subject and the possibly enormous role that it’s playing in my depression. He said that we could not deny our essential natures – he and I and people like us. He said that we were made as warriors and we are meant to carry our swords and shields till the day we die. I’ve been thinking so much about the way that this war has affected my normally, well, ‘scrappy’ nature. I’ve always been a fighter. It’s always been the one thing that kept me alive and whole. I’ve come to see the wrong in it, but I can’t see how to justify those two things. If I continue to fight, and seek violent ends to my means, then I am no better than Bush and Bin Laden and their thugs. How can I continue to support violence when I feel this way? But if I try to remain peaceful, they will mow me and all the others who feel this way down like wheat in a field, and we will be nothing but fodder.
No answers. No solutions. But at least I have another clue. And at least I know that there is someone out there who really knows how I feel, to the bone. I pass his house every day, at least twice a day, and now I make a point to pray each time. For his daughter in Iraq, for his own strength and good judgement, for the successful management of his pain, for justice for his family, for freedom, and for the willingness and ability to do what has to be done when the time comes.
Maybe there is someone else who truly understands and is driving by my own house twice a day, saying the same prayers for me. I hope so. I need them.
-s
*Skwooching? Cohabitating? Bickering? ‘Dating’ just doesn’t seem to cut it.
**please, before any of you judge all of my neighbors and neighborhood based on this horrible thing, I want you all to think of the fact that things like this have happened within my sphere all of my life, no matter where I’ve lived, many times within my own family. It’s not just Markham road, it’s not just these people.
*** The day before, I had a very intelligent, educated, peaceful, sane, cultured young man come and talk to me specifically about this issue and ask me where I stood. He made it clear that he would take up arms, and he – and quite a few others – said that he felt strongly that it might come down to martial law, militia and riots. There is no doubt that this country is clearly divided, and even though none of us want bad things to happen, the thought that nothing might happen, that we might lie down and accept this injustice AGAIN is worse.
****yes andi, second time that day.
