The cold glass truth

No more is there a rolling with the current. There has to be more than the struggle. There has to be pain. The path of least resistance is parked just down the path from me in a little maroon car. 

Where was she when this turn happened to her? Left turn into permanent residence on the road. From a distance it all looks very well thought out, but sometimes at night she cries alone.

There is a pride in which she knows that she is doing something the average person would fold in one night in her shoes. Electricity, heat, and living spaces, she reasons often that they are excessive. She thinks about it long enough to genuinely feel sorry for those who need those things, as she watches raindrops fall on the cold door glass.

Photo by Cole Keister on Unsplash

She is winning and honestly, she does not know it. She is one incident away from being the richest and most resourceful person in the world. At three AM though, it does not feel like she is winning in any way.

She knows that soon she will have to move on. October is now less than two months away. There is a mighty reckoning coming and she has not figured it out yet. It rides with her at every moment in the corner of her eye. As she sleeps at night it is just beyond the trees that surround her. Despite the symphony of nightlife of owls, tree frogs, crickets, and squirrels, soon, it will all silence and there will be no accommodation.

Was this a decision? Was this her fleeing from something awful in which anything would be better? Was this a slip on a wet ladder rung that she imagined would be all resolved tomorrow or in a day or two? I won’t know because she will not speak.

A man once told me as he spoke from the most ironic place ever; “There is a whole lot of love in this world, you just have to have your eyes open to see it.” With eyes shut, we do not see that. We see the darker side. It is because of that she cannot tell the story. Everything becomes vulnerability. 

It makes me sad. Not because of where she is, because I admire her strength and determination. I feel sad because everyone has something to give in so many ways that could lift another person up. Many of those acts of help and kindness would not even make a blip on the givers radar. But it won’t happen because the giver is afraid, the receiver is afraid. The better something seems, the more treacherous is might be.

So we walk, our giving hands bound by fear. So we sleep in a cold damp car never trusting what could be a genuine act of kindness. The only thing we can do is fight. Fight against the small darker possibilities and for the greater possibilities of making a friend.