If I start falling, don’t push me the rest of the way over the edge. Please grab my hand and pull me back into a balance, so I can have a chance to change my steps, my beliefs, my hurtful ways, my stupid and dangerous choices. I do not ask for codependency. I will not claim that you do not understand my pain and tortured thoughts. I do not ask for entitlement. I will not claim to be so sick, stupid, ignorant, disabled or lazy that I won’t work to try pulling my own share of the weight in family and community.
I have already seen blind, crippled, maimed, diseased and severely burned people regain their lives independently to become a strong and proud part of their families and communities. They had the right to scream out, “You don’t understand” to many. But they have the love and support of many by choosing to try, to give, to live among others instead of hiding away in a private world of pain. They allowed others to pull them up and forward and into a better place, better peace, better lives of greater joy and hope and success.
It is very hard sometimes to leave the mental room of self pity. There is a false significance, a twisted self-worship in pretending to be the most abused and misunderstood person in the world. There is no competition when hiding away from others. It is easy to make daily dark clouds of ”poor me” statements to sustain a personal package of pain and self-torture; to maintain a dreary, lost, hopeless, bottomless pit type of existence, when being allowed to hide away from anyone who would tear it all down with talk of dreams, gifts, connections of love, personal growth and contribution.
I met a middle-aged lady outside a small town grocery store one chilly autumn day. She stood with her bicycle when I made the mistake of asking her, “How are you today?” She told of her leg pain. I tried consoling. She said no medicines work and no one cares. I offered ideas. She said she already tried every single one of them. She listed more complaints. I offered more compassion, nodding, saying more ideas. Soon I understood that her life will be a constant and consistent package of self-induced misery for all of her life because, for her, it is easier to feel important by spouting off how hard her life is rather then by making any effort to make it better. Sometimes laziness can become a disease. But it’s more than that. It’s a trained and conditioned helplessness. She pushes herself over the cliff every single day. Nothing will ever be good enough. No one will ever be able to do anything well enough for her. Yet she seemed genuinely unhappy, or maybe bragging about misery carries a perverted happiness of its own addiction. When I had enough of her glorifying tragedies to listen to I said, ” hope the day goes better for you”, and walked away.
The encounter led me to think about why I will never become like her. What is it that will protect me from sitting in self-pity beyond a heathy time frame ? The answer is my family and my friends. I have friends because I connected with those people through church, through classes, through work, through creative events like open mic nights and through volunteering. I have a social job, teaching. I also extended my teaching to after school lessons for music and martial arts. I believe in dreaming and forming the dreams into reality. I believe I have talents for a reason. Others have told me I am important to them when they said “thanks” for teaching their kids to be stronger. I felt empowered enough to begin a women’s self-defense class-Level one, as a contribution, to have in churches and social centers and for girl scouts. They said “thank you” for making their lives safer. I knew how to seek out the help I know I needed when life was changing, by talking to friends, by watching videos of speakers on youtube, by reading books by the speakers, by paying attention to the opportunities that appeared and by grasping them and working with them and becoming more of the dreams I want.
Life is action, creative action that leads to certainties mixed with unknown surprises and unknown results. A Successful and Happy Life is accepting two continuous constant facts: 1. You WILL make mistakes often and consistently, in differing areas at different times, because that is part of creating and personally growing in life. 2. You WILL survive the mistakes, learn from the mistakes, be stronger because of the mistakes, and be led by your corrections to becoming a better and more creative person.
There are two types of “falling” : 1. The one where you missed a step, forgot a point, let go too soon, held on too long, forgot to stay in the kitchen when you cook, didn’t think before speaking or acting or temporarily forgot you are equal to almost everyone else.
2. The kind where you give up everything and everyone who loves you, who stood by you, who accepted you as you are–to think of only you and the misery you have, and to handle it all on your own in a pride seeking to prove yourself as a king or queen who needs no one for anything. You give it up to be abused by your own self-world, one of a kind, not of this world, twistedly, pervertedly unique–because this disease of extreme loneliness makes you hate yourself as being not deserving of anyone else, but you want them all to see it because you really do need attention like the rest of us. You give up to be seen. You take yourself out of life to be missed.
If you can see that those actions are pleas for recognition, for validation that your humanness is needed as much as anyone is needed, that you are disconnecting instead of connecting, and that you need to give someone else a chance to hold you, to include you into their lives, to let them be blessed by who you are and what you have to offer to make this world, their world a much better and happier place, you can and will save yourself and save those who would be lost without you in their lives.
Every one of us has loving, good and creative value for others to grow in and with. We were made to be joiners to life, extenders of life’s creative possibilities. So, if you start to fall, fall into someone else instead of away from the world. Fall into arms that want to hold you, that WILL care for you and help you heal, who will give patience and peace. Fall into another chance. Fall into the risk of hope and maybe, instead of into despair and self-degradation. F.A.L.L. Faith And Love Live. The end for now.
I go to dreamland at 11 pm on my sleep number bed set for 5, unconscious for 7 hours, peek at the world at 6 am, use 3 gallons of water for flushing, bathing, cooking and drinking. I pull on my size 36/32 pants, size 15 shirt and size 9 1/2 shoes. I walk down 4 steps into the garage and stroll 15 feet to my 1995 Buick with 230,000 miles on it. I drive 27 miles one way to work, reading 25mph, 45mph and 60mph speed limit signs and license plate letters and numbers LV 0065H. I consistently notice my mph numbers between25- 65 and mentally work through my daily mental drills of 8 multiple intelligences, 5 love languages, 5 master evaluation steps and more numbered sections. I think of the 20 dollars camping as supply money in my wallet until pay day.
I walk into work at the grade school, instantly joining a herd of 300 plus children who roam through four hallways and occupy 15 class rooms during the day. In my class room I consistently look at the clock numbers, to make sure my multi-grade level special education students go where they need to be and on time for music, art, pe, lunch and therapies, as well as when to start and stop my own lessons. I teach math: counting, time and money, the four basic operations, order, sequence and fractions. When grading math, I’m calculating to check and correct, sometimes punching the tiny numbers on my cell phone calculator to speed things up and always to get the correct percentage. When the hour number for snack time arrives, I divide the choice of energy-fix ( cookies, raisins, apples, oranges) per child.
In the grocery store on the way home I look at the printed dollar and cent numbers of what I need, tally my bill before I get to check-out, watch the digital numbers pop up on the screen, and I watch myself hand over a 10 and a 5 and a 3 dollars more. I carry my 13 pounds of groceries to my 1,850 pound car. I sit my 145 pound body onto the 5 1/2 feet long front seat, start the 285. 6 cylinder engine and turn the 10 inch steering wheel back and forth once in a while to take the right roads home. For my enjoyment at home I play guitar and I use numbers on guitar tabs for playing. When I exercise I use numbers to be sure I work out long enough.
I’ve asked my students a few times, “why do we use numbers?” It takes them awhile. I usually have to narrow the question to “where do you see numbers that you know of ?” They come up with the street signs, the phone, the clocks, money and math papers. We add addresses, thermometers, clothes sizes, food amounts in pounds and ounces, measures of sound (decibels), sizes and food portions for their school lunches. After twenty minutes it always feels overwhelming just how much we need numbers in our lives, to calculate for our health and wealth and welfare. Numbers give us a sense of control, a way to think ahead, to prepare, to know how long for any type of change–in seasons, in healing, in anticipating and planning strategies, a visually objective certainty of major differences and powers involved in our lives. Numbers are identifiers, locators, descriptors, determiners, advisors, judges, qualifiers and always have the final say in who wins, right or wrong.
Well, it’s time for me to go now. I say that only with regard to this writing, but someday I will have to say it with regard to being unable to wake for another day. I will be 60 years old soon. That’s not old. That’s perseverance and love of life. So far, all of my numbers, including my IQ, have been fairly decent. They seem to be vastly improving, too. Or is that an illusion ? I wish my mom and dad had lived longer numbers, but I also calculate they had some very bad habits in their youth that may have caused a diminishing of the possible number length. I didn’t have the same bad habits, so maybe I will see a much longer number. The end of this number of words.