Thanks for helping. This has been hell for years.
I know I never wanted to hurt anyone, and at the same time, it’s not that difficult to see that nobody really wanted to hurt me either.
What I was missing was friendly outside perspectives.
I could sit here and write stories for years. Of the pain I felt, of the pain others felt. How it all went on and on and around and around.
But I’ve always been seriously into music, even when I’ve walked away from it for years.
This’ll do for a start
Dave Matthews, Typical Situation, 1995
I’m going through some rough personal stuff. It’s been going on for a very long time.
And nobody really did anything to me other than be confused and sad and upset and reacting badly.
And yeah, sometimes mean. And I probably was mean too occasionally, though I’d never admit that.
Not me. I’d NEVER ever be mean.
Well, I wouldn’t ever see it that way.
But what if I was mean and didn’t see it that way?
When I was in my early 20’s, my stepbrother took himself out. He was in his late teens. I loved him, it ripped me to shit.
We all loved him. He was about 19. It killed my mom’s marriage to her long-time friend and then husband.
It wasn’t anybody’s fault, though. It was so complicated. There was a history of early death in the family. Maybe hidden suicide. Who the hell knows.
How can you blame anyone for that? It would be so wrong.
My mom told me something about how fragile it all is, then. After the funeral, which she described as a really bad party that she wanted to be over ASAP.
I don’t really remember exactly what she said about human social fragility. But I remember how what she said felt.
Our human constructs are so fragile. They are so easily destroyed.
We can get angry and start pounding on each other’s constructs. We can do that because we think or feel we need to protect yourselves.
But really, we are all just fragile and scared, and trying to stay alive to help each other, no?
Best we can. Best we can.
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happy thanksgiving.
Y’all have been kind. I didn’t expect that. I’ve learned not to expect that.
So, thanks.
All of you.
I’m glad there were people here who could help you and were kind to you. This is a very caring community here. Take care of yourself today and be kind to yourself, too.
life can be so rough on us. We need to just keep growing and surviving and try not to look back and dwell on the hurt.
Take care my friend.
Hope you’re feeling better.
Sorry I missed you in the pony party last night…went to bed early (for me) b/c I’m looking at a long night at work. Overtime, but still…a long night.
you just have to take things one day at a time.
is that there are a lot of people like this here…
acquaintance. Tangential social acquaintance, yet we were in each other’s homes a few times. She was a single mom, bit older, didn’t have a lot of $$. Her sister had married a guy with quite a bit of family wealth… so the disparity in their lives was, well, palpable.
She’d married a guy who turned out to be a con man or some such, that marriage had to go. Then lived in Mexico for a while, I believe married another fella, who was the father of her son. Nice kid.
She sewed. She could sew anything. Incredibly creative, earned a living working at home that way. Small earnings.
At any rate, stuff about her life had been hard. And here’s the quote:
“I’ve appreciate every little kindness that comes my way. Because I’ve learned that life doesn’t have to be kind.”
It knocked my sox off, so much so, that I wrote it down later that day. And I still remember it.
So — yes, life doesn’t have to be kind. And inevitably, life isn’t fair some of the time, and we have to cope with that.
But against that backdrop, kindness shines all the more worthy of notice.