To Love

I was romanticizing pain this week, opting for a life in which loss and pain are welcomed in exchange for a deposit of depth. I said to myself I choose tragedy. Then I went to work…

__I answered the crisis line."Hello, are you in a safe place?""Yes, but I am loosing everything… And you know I would take my life, end this struggle to keep from drowning. I would, except for it’s a sin and I won't get into heaven..." This week she's drowning. All the fighting to keep a home, to be loved, to live, will be over in her eyes. She was sitting in a room without color. In delicate voice that hung like smoke in the air she said "...life is hard. If you have a good life, please enjoy it for me. Thank you mam for listening."
__Later that evening a woman in the lobby is looking for someone or something. "Do you need help? Would you like to talk?" Her story spreads across the tiny room into the hallway. She's crying, her face hidden by shadows and hair hanging like a disheveled nest about her head. As her story and tears reach me, she apologizes "I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I'm going to die...I'm going to die anyway. I'm sorry..." She’s beautiful and soft. She's a mom. She's my age. She just found out that the man she loved knowingly and willingly brought infection into their home. He's been living with HIV for over 10 years and never protected her, never told her. She tested positive just as this year began.
__Down the hall a kindergartener is "playing with toys," showing the therapist how he's been played with. He's only five and has experienced things that old men die never having known. He sat across from me earlier in the evening. His eyes were baskets of hope. I looked at him and considered his simple state. He imagines himself driving through the city in a fire truck, causing the tail end of his truck to sway as he turns onto the next street. He hoses down imaginary fires, unaware of the hellfire in his own home. His mom just tested positive for HIV also. He has a tiny sister who probably carries the same disease. His father has abdicated every function of his role.

…where people show up at our door many times carrying only their pains and losses. My decision to welcome pain came from a place of seeing how we fiercely deny our pain and avoid the pain of others, unable to live deeply because we are escaping reality. I was wrong to say I choose tragedy. Instead I say, I choose to see the pain, to hear it, and to know it. We are invited to love but we cannot fully love until we are able to look with eyes opened at the victories, the promises, the births, the revelations, the losses and the pains.