Where do I begin? How do I take that first step? I don’t even know where to start.
Every bridge around me lays in a heap of smoldering ashes that once kept me warm in the cold loneliness of heartbreak. My hands show the charred and scarred memories that will never let go from the rope around my neck I tied over and over again. I watched you kick the chair out from under me time after time and I couldn’t help but pick up the pieces. Maybe all those years of playing with LEGOs didn’t help me in the ways I quite thought they did. Sometimes you need to learn to walk the fuck away and know that it’s not your job to reassemble everything. And certainly not your job to fix other people.
I had to learn that last one the hard way. And then learn it again. And then a few more times because that’s how the loop goes. I always believed that it would get better.
This is the time we get it right.
Sometimes there isn’t a getting it right. Sometimes shit is just fucked and there’s nothing you can do to change it. You can’t force someone to love you. You can’t force someone to see you. You can’t force anyone to do anything that’s worth having them do.
There’s something powerful to be said about having the courage to allow the vulnerability of asking someone for help. Over the last few months I have come to understand this in a way I had long since forgotten. All you can do is ask. And they have the right to say no without fault or blame. “Help” is a conversation not commands and obedience.
Say you’re stuck at the bottom of a well and call out for help. Someone comes by and agrees to help you. At that point it is up to both of you to find an agreeable solution to the situation and problem at hand. The person in the well cannot demand that the helper use only the finest silks and threads in the rope he throws down. Similarly, the helper cannot throw down razor wire and expect the person to accept the offer with the utmost graciousness.
Having to acquire expensive items to help is unreasonable to ask of someone as it may put them into a well of their own. Likewise, the razor wire may in fact get the person out of the well, but the cost may outweigh the benefit down the line.
Sometimes there isn’t anything to be done about a situation. Sometimes to give the help someone needs, that means allowing them to wholly inhabit a space where they feel safe. They don’t need, want, or expect you to fix anything. Look, we know that there isn’t always something to be done. We get that.
For fuck’s sake we get that.
You think we don’t lay awake at 0200 having that existential crisis? And I don’t mean 2 am suicidal thoughts or What is the meaning of life? Not that sort of basic bitch shit. What I mean is providing a space, environment, and opportunity for someone to express despair, pain, loneliness, heartbreak, and vulnerability without judgment, or comment, or opinion, or even comfort.
Sometimes you just need to let someone have the chance to be. It’s hard. God damn is it hard.
Our job isn’t necessarily to ever fix anything. And yes, that sentence is supposed to be confusing and cyclical. That’s the point.
I’ve been at points in health or happiness where I needed nothing more than to be able to openly express my thoughts to someone in a safe, trusted environment. It’s the ability to confide everything in someone that goes beyond a typical late-night conversation. Sure, you get to know people when you stay up until 0300 talking. It’s different when you’re holding their hand during a crisis knowing that nothing is in your power. Or theirs.
Nothing you say will make it better or take away the hurt and that’s okay.
