You Might

You might know a boy who seems like trouble, who drives wrecklessly and punches walls.

You might know a girl who thinks she is too fat, or too awkward, or too uncool, and it bothers her more than you think is realistic.

You might know a man who drinks like a frat boy though he’s ten years too late for it, who is running from some pain or anger over a deep hurt.

You might know a woman who struggles with fears of inadequacy, who has scars that she tells lies to explain, who seeks attention in inappropriate ways, who laughs to cover the damage from something she can’t even remember.

All these people are around you.  Sometimes you see it, and sometimes you pass it off as being irresponsible, slutty, childish.

Those are just words meant to hide from the truth of what life and people can do to someone.  Life is so hard.  Trust is shattered, spirits are squashed, bodies are damaged, relationships are forever broken.

But these people are not broken in any way that is unfixable.  They might just not understand that they are worth fixing.

A few years ago, a group of people became determined to help a friend who needed it. They began a story, a movement, that is still playing itself out in our world.

The movement is love, and it goes by the name  To Write Love on Her Arms.

There’s nothing I can say any better than they say it themselves.  Many of you know why this organization is so close to my heart.  As a surviving friend of more than one suicide, and someone who has tried to make an early exit herself, any group that recognizes how much people hurt and how much they – how much we all – need help, deserves my support.

Every single time I see one of their tshirts, or get a Facebook message about their recent activities, I tear up.  I see those words and I think – someone understands.

To write love on her arms. To write it on her arms, where she used to write the hatred and fear and brokenness.

So I’m asking for you to consider the people around you. Is there someone you know well, or maybe barely know at all, that you think is suffering?  Can you see through the craziness and outrageous behavior to what is the heart of the matter? That we are all people, inadequate and struggling without always knowing how or why?

Reach out.  Tell someone you love her and she matters to you and why. Tell someone you appreciate the value he adds to your life.  And if you simply can’t, consider supporting a group that does.

Sometimes Words Are Everything

Sometimes, late at night, when it’s dark and quiet and I’m completely alone at last, I think:  maybe I should never have had children.

And my heart clenches and I start to cry and I want to argue with myself that it’s not true, but there is some little, hard, honest place inside of me that knows it.  I am a bundle of psychoses, neuroses, maladaptive coping mechanisms and personality disorders.  I am an addict; a temper tantrum prone, emotionally labile woman with more problems than she has years left to sort through them.

When I look at these children, whom I love more than life, I cannot help but think there might be better out there for them.  If I could somehow remove myself from the equation, they might stand a fighting chance at something like a quiet, happy life.

But I can’t.  In fact, it is only because of them that I am still alive at all.

I am acutely aware of the myriad ways parenting can go wrong.  I might never know if my makeup is the result of years of slights and invalidation or one major event that broke a girl and made her grow into a caricature of a woman.  Or maybe it is a merry mix of biochemistry and environment, a perfect storm of serendipity.  Or it may be that nothing happened at all.  Maybe I was just born broken.

But my children are not broken.

And all too often I find myself saying something that could take just the smallest little chip from their health, their potential.  How many chips does it take to ruin a life?  How much work does it take to put it all back together when it’s already halfway over?

I constantly battle with the voice that tells me I am not good enough.  Not worth anyone’s help or love.  I must be so much better than, just to measure up at all.

I’ve mentioned before my thoughts about God and Jesus, and why that kind of love draws people in.  The love!  Oh.  You should see it.

“I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, to give you a hope and a future. I will restore to you the years the locust has eaten.  I have loved you with an everlasting love.  I have drawn you with lovingkindness.”

Aren’t these the words we long to hear from our parents?  Maybe not so flowery or poetic, but the idea is there.

“You are good.  You are precious to me.  I love you and nothing you do can ever change that.”

When we don’t receive this from our parents, we might just spend our whole lives searching for it elsewhere.  And those places we look?  Trust me.  They are overwhelmingly not good.

I just discovered that a woman I know writes exceedingly well, and might have some things in common with me.  Some difficult things.  I read a blog entry she recently posted, and I sobbed.  And sobbed.  And every time I have recalled her words since then, I’ve bawled again.

I wanted to be able to tell her why, but I think I’ve just sorted it out.  It’s not the sad things she tells that make me cry.  It’s the very ending, where she shows that somehow, despite everything, she figured out the right words to give to herself, and in the process, to me.

I might not believe them yet, but at least I know which words point towards healing.  Towards belief.

I really want to know how she learned them; how she forgives herself for falling short.  I know we all do.  But some of us mind more than others.  She has found a way to love herself anyway, to believe in her intrinsic worth.

I have yet to learn to handle truth.  I take it and turn it into something dark and skittery; I turn it into a weapon to use upon myself.  I can’t imagine finding that place of strength in me that will allow me to see my weakness and faults as a parent and still believe that I can love my children well and keep them whole.  I do not yet have the courage to see myself clearly.

But when I do, I want to remember these words my friend wrote.  So here they are:

“It’s hard to struggle through your own feelings of inadequacy to muster up the courage to ask someone else, “Am I okay? Am I good enough? Do you think I’m pretty only skin-deep, because I know what’s up inside and I’m pretty good in there? Do you like me? Do I please you? Will you love me? Could you? Just love me?” And I guess that’s what we’re all looking for; an honest answer to that question and also the reason the blanket notion of Jesus’ love is so very appealing. Because, I tell you, it’d take the son of God to love some of those people out there.

But I don’t mean you. Because you are okay. You are so beautiful. I do like you and you are pleasing in every way to me. How couldn’t you be? I love you. I love you. I love you.

And I mean it.

Honest.”

Now excuse me while I go dry off my keyboard.