I'm telling you, I saw it! I'm telling you right now! This is what I saw! I saw the guy in the backseat of the police car, handcuffed, breaking legs with his steel toed boots. I saw his eyes spit in the dark. I heard his breath and breathed his stench. I felt his crazy emanating from the vehicle.
I went out for coffee yesterday, brought my book, and stared absently out of the window at the cherry blossoms. Heard a guy talking with his pastor or something, just a normal sort of conversation, about looking for jobs, restoring family relationships, starting fresh again every day. I thought, this guy sounds alive, ready, just down for anything, charactered, seasoned, and earnest. I glanced over, my spirit stirring, and saw the steel toed boots. And his parole officer.
I don't know if he just got back on his meds, or if his family finally decided to show up and support the guy, or if he'd always been that eager, sincere, and alive, and just got exploited by substances or circumstances or chemicals in the brain gone mad. But now I wonder. I accept. I hope as never before. And I'm frankly terrified. I am terrified of myself and of humanity and of the thing that burrows inside the hole in my pain. I don't want to be reminded of what lurks beneath the new walmart jeans and thrift store shirt, the jail haircut and the strangely calm eyes. I know that place in me, and I hate it. It's so easy to hate him, the pariah, the abuser, the other that is too close for comfort.
Will I mourn for him? Will I allow him to mourn for me?
But his hope terrifies me the more. If he can start, and feel, and rest, and work, and breathe, and know, and believe, what does that mean for my end, my death, my delusion, my disillusion? Where's my escape? What happens when I outlive my end, when I overextend my resources and find I'm still here, working, trusting, breathing along with him? What if the same thing that gnaws at me gnaws at him, this hope that points and directs and shapes?
Will I let it in? Will I let him in?
