Life: The Beautiful Struggle (Momentary PR Interruption)

You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time - you are fierce with reality.
~Florida Scott-Maxwell


There is more here than meets the eye. ~ Lady Murasaki


I met a man today. An interesting man; an unapologetically candid and real and visibly wounded man. He took my order at the café I’d settled into this afternoon, when I was in search of soup and a salad. As usual, he asked my name, as to associate it with my order. I told him. He stared at me.

“No. My name is yours as well. How did a woman get such a name? Where are you from?”

By rote, I rattled off the brief history of me and my namesake - which was bestowed upon me by my elusive Pops. My father, whom I could label as many things – brilliant, selfish, creative, womanizer, dope-addicted, unconventional, stubborn, talented, self-destructive – and most of all, absent – though to this day, I secretly applaud him for ensuring that as his first-born daughter, I would enter this world stamped with uniqueness.

But back to Jamal. (Him, not I.)

As we chatted over my food transaction, I learned Jamal was Pakistani and his father was a cook. We’d both lived in Maryland for a time – strangely, in the same city, around the same time. We jokingly claimed to be distantly related, and simultaneously pulled out our government issued identifications, then marveled that our names were the same, no variation in spelling.

He also wore a patch over his left eye. In his driver’s license picture, and today.

“So what happened to your eye?” I asked.

He laughed. “Wow, you’re brave. Most people want to ignore it, pretend it's not there; don’t even ask…”

“Well...What happened?”

“I tried to kill myself,” he answered plainly and without hesitation.

“Really. How?”

“February 22nd, 1997. I was in college and drinking with friends and I downed two twelve packs of beer before hitting the bar..then did a line of shots at the local pub until we got kicked out and I was so wasted on the way home that I drove myself into a tree and then into a light pole and cracked my skull in three places and my eye was gouged by a piece of metal… (he pulled off his cap; showed me the scars on his head)…I’d drank myself to a 3.8 alcohol limit and was in a coma for a month and my brain actually seeped out of my skull and it took more than a few operations before the swelling went down. They thought I was dead…but here I am. And not a day goes by that I don't remember it all.”

I took a second to absorb the story, then said: “Wow. You must have been in a lot of pain...”

“It took about six months to recover..”

“No, not after the accident. Before.”

He looked at me thoughtfully, then said: “You know people always remind me how stupid I was or how could I do that or what were you thinking and you’re lucky to be alive. You are the first person to even acknowledge there’s more to that story. And it’s true. My emotional pain is what led to the physical ones..”

“Well, I’ve learned to look beyond the obvious…and trust, I can recognize pain. I can see underneath,” I half-laughed, as he handed me my change.

He held my hand as I reached for the remaining dollas. “Thank you for listening. I’m honored.”

“Thank you for sharing.” I took my receipt and turned to walk away.

“You have wounds of your own, I can tell.”

“Very good, but yo - we’re holding up the line,” I sidestepped. People behind me were hungry and didn’t give a shit….

“I’m due for my break,” he offered; slamming the register shut.

“I’ll be on the patio.”

And 10 minutes later, he met me there. And we had real conversation. No bullshit, no trivia, no minutia, no whoring off the minutes of God’s creation; but the kind of conversation one could have with a perfect stranger; that was more frank and connected and forthright than with people you'd known your entire life. Free-flowing and unselfish and spontaneous and real.

He studied me. Asked about the tattoo on my foot. "Now see," I told him – "that’s a very long story."

“Please. It's your story. I want to hear it.”

I did my best to keeep it short: My mommy whom I cherished and loved endlessly, who was so very beautiful and at the same time in so much pain and couldn’t find a way to heal all the things that had happened to her in life, and she smiled silently and struggled ten years before dying too young to The Cancer, and then exactly one year later my baby sister was shot in the head by her boyfriend who didn’t appreciate her being six months pregnant with their child, and after losing the both of them I kinda lost my mind and wanted very much to die and like you, was on the way to killing myself via irresponsible subtle suicide but when I miraculously didn’t, I tattooed myself to anchor me back down to the earth as a reminder to never forget yet still have hope for the future. And some days, I still wonder….

And he looked at me and said: I understand.

And I thanked him. For listening.

And he thanked me. For sharing.

And I came home and started thinking about life wounds and battle scars.

About the events in our lives, determined by destiny (or in our minds, damnation), those things that test and grind and break and shatter us and slit us open ‘till our guts hang out; but miraculously for some unknown reason, don’t kill us - the events that become the fabric of who We Are. The shit that, somewhere down the line (maybe waaaay far), helps the flowers bloom. Most of us wear our wounds, (and keep our stories) on the inside. Most times there is no eye patch or tattoo or visible scar to announce to the world: Something happened here.

So I wanna thank Jamal. A man with the same name from across the ocean, who by a chance/destined meeting (?) shared an hour or so of a sunny LA afternoon as we explained and honored our “scars for freedom,” who reminded me that we need to claim who we were and who we are, and the bridge between the two. We need to own ourselves and our entire stories (as individuals, and as a people): plainly, blatantly, humbly, unapologetically, proudly.

We all got a story. We all have wounds and triumphs, beautiful painful redeeming realities, that need to be accepted and acknowledged and shared. Don't hold them in. Write them. Speak them. Shout them. Embrace them...I applaud you.

And maybe these thoughts are just the writer in me. But I think it’s the humanity in us all.

So, thank ya’ll for listening. I'm honored. I’ll be back with the silliness shortly.

The spiritual journey is one of continuously falling on your face, getting up, brushing yourself off, looking sheepishly at God, and taking another step.
~ Aurobindo

If you don't tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about anyone else.

~ Virginia Woolf

It is tragic that some gifts have to be made so costly.

~ Berta Damon

Be blessed, Blogger Fam. Don’t ever hesitate to tell your story. Care to share any of your "something happened here" moments?