Ladonna and I stayed up late Saturday night talking about broken people, depression, goals, expectation and hope. All of which grounded on some pretty serious shit that's not mine to repeat. But through it all, watching my friend, whom none of you that read this know, I was struck by her strength. She doesn't know that. Though I imagine she'll read it here sometime. It's not something you can say to a person's face. You are strong. They might be touched or teary. But they don't believe.
My life has been so easy. Only once have I ever had to walk away from the kind of potentially life wrecking disaster she is pulling out of. And it had't eaten my life yet. No years had been spent in the making of the trainwreck. I escaped accidentally, any personal triumph in it should be taken with more than a grain of salt. Any real wisdom was gained after the fact. She, however, managed to make a change on purpose. I think she'd say out of a sense of the inevitable.
So we performed verbal autopsy on the corpse last night and she thought I said some intelligent things. But I didn't say anything she hadn't already said to herself. She just needed to have someone repeat things back to her.
So, Karen, what the hell are you rambling about since you're not going to give us any dirt? Just: I don't think strength ever comes with self recognition. If you spend time self absorbedly wondering if you're up to a task, nothing ever gets done. And the most incredible, life-affirming, hopeful, patient choices often look like they're coming out of complete life wreckage.
I suppose I could go into the hackneyed "Every birth comes only at the price of the death of something" shit. The birth of Reed's and my child will mean the death of a way of life for us. A parting from friends also leaves room to grow new ones. Anyhow, Ladonna probably doesn't need to hear that crap and neither do you. But a reminder that being strong and feeling strong have nothing to do with one another is worth having. We are often strong. We are often admirable. And we generally feel weak and tired when we're doing it. That doesn't change the inherent strength of what we do.
Posted by karen at June 9, 2002 12:00 AM