When she called me to say she was leaving – tomorrow – and didn’t know when she’d be back, I honestly never begrudged her. I knew it was good and right for her, to do this thing, and my initial response was surprisingly magnanimous, something like being deeply and selflessly happy for her.
But god, it did suck for me.
In a short time, she’d become my constant; my link between there and here, my sanity amidst insanity. We just got lucky – as I told her over coffee when she came back to visit – lucky that our paths overlapped for that sliver in time when we were both lost and faltering and needing someone. And when she suddenly wasn’t there anymore, some small section in me shut down.
She came to town and we set up a time to meet and for days I looked forward to the sweet relief of reunion with a kindred soul. It was both glorious and disappointing.
Disappointing because I felt like I hate to feel: pitiable and lonely and in perpetual limbo. I felt left behind in the face of her update. But her report was indeed glorious. It was full of health and hope and the success of making the right decisions day after day; of courageously opening her life to the touch of others.
I could see something different in her – a sense of peace, of contentment – and I was proud and grateful and happy. I found myself wondering if she could see anything different about me. But I know that she couldn’t, because the truth is that nothing is different, and that when she asked me why I’ve become so isolated, I should have said, “Because I’m not as strong as you”.
But my turn is coming, and one day soon I’ll have a report as hopeful as hers. And in the meantime I’ll celebrate with her the victory of taking a step, and sticking it out, and coming out on the other side a shade closer to the divinity we were made for.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
Kelly Corrigan: An Excerpt
Today was a slow day at work, and as I perused the internet for interesting items to entertain myself with, I came across this passage in an essay written by Kelly Corrigan and published in O, The Oprah Winfrey Magazine (May 2008). It gave me goosebumps.
If there is a God, he knows how much I want there to be more to human existence than a series of discrete physical experiences that start with birth and end with death. I want all of us—and all of our lives—to be meaningful. But small. I’d be elated to learn that this go-round is only part one of something that has a thousand parts. I’d love to laugh at this life from a distance. As it is, I relish the fact that I am one of six billion people the way my mother revels in Pavarotti’s recording of the Ave Maria. Being one in six billion means my life can’t possibly matter to anyone but me and my little flock and that means almost everything on my mind, all my mistakes and failures and anxieties, is utterly inconsequential. When I forget my place, things begin to matter too much and I find it hard to get a good, deep breath. When that happens, I close my eyes and imagine flying over houses, lifting off the roofs and seeing all the people whose lives are happening concurrently with mine—arguing, dying, cooking, begging, hugging, losing, building, stealing, suffering and laughing, people learning that their adult son shows signs of schizophrenia or their mother is bankrupt, brothers playing air hockey in the basement after a fight, couples listening to music on the sofa, holding each others feet. Each of us a little bitty fish in an inconceivably large pond, swimming in circles, nothing to do but enjoy the water.
But maybe that’s a foolishly incomplete picture. Maybe there’s something between and around and inside of all six billion of us and maybe that something knows every hair on each of our heads. Maybe we are not anonymous. Wouldn’t that be outrageous? And beautiful?
The entire essay is brilliant. You can find it here: http://blog.kellycorrigan.com/2008/05/doubt-inside-my-doubt.html
If there is a God, he knows how much I want there to be more to human existence than a series of discrete physical experiences that start with birth and end with death. I want all of us—and all of our lives—to be meaningful. But small. I’d be elated to learn that this go-round is only part one of something that has a thousand parts. I’d love to laugh at this life from a distance. As it is, I relish the fact that I am one of six billion people the way my mother revels in Pavarotti’s recording of the Ave Maria. Being one in six billion means my life can’t possibly matter to anyone but me and my little flock and that means almost everything on my mind, all my mistakes and failures and anxieties, is utterly inconsequential. When I forget my place, things begin to matter too much and I find it hard to get a good, deep breath. When that happens, I close my eyes and imagine flying over houses, lifting off the roofs and seeing all the people whose lives are happening concurrently with mine—arguing, dying, cooking, begging, hugging, losing, building, stealing, suffering and laughing, people learning that their adult son shows signs of schizophrenia or their mother is bankrupt, brothers playing air hockey in the basement after a fight, couples listening to music on the sofa, holding each others feet. Each of us a little bitty fish in an inconceivably large pond, swimming in circles, nothing to do but enjoy the water.
But maybe that’s a foolishly incomplete picture. Maybe there’s something between and around and inside of all six billion of us and maybe that something knows every hair on each of our heads. Maybe we are not anonymous. Wouldn’t that be outrageous? And beautiful?
The entire essay is brilliant. You can find it here: http://blog.kellycorrigan.com/2008/05/doubt-inside-my-doubt.html
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