Our professor reads us a classmate's letter, gently-accented voice catching on the rawer phrases as the room sits, collectively still. We, together, are breathing in this broken author's pain. His words weave their carefully chosen way into every listening heart, and in me, at least, they lodge just behind my eyes, burning. I lick a salty drip from the corner of my lip where it lands and pat at my cheeks with a stained sweater sleeve.
No class member moves until the letter is complete. Our professor asks for comments.
A few hands go up. One guy says stories like these make him very sad. A girl says they are familiar to her. She is crying. I sniff up my running nose as quietly as possible.
I cannot say to the man who wrote this letter, "I understand." I don't. I cannot know what it is that he goes through. I am not as he is. That is not what he needs. What I can offer, though, is something I cannot say aloud.
The last speaker offers it for me. If, at any point, we have said or done anything to hurt you, we are sorry, he says, and calls for a show of hands. As each person in the room lifts an arm, a voice from the center just says, "I love you, man. Wherever you are."
I know it isn't enough. I just want you to know, wherever any of you are, that you are loved.
That is sad and sweet and eloquently captured.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you feel you cannot say such things, though?
Scratch that. Most people I know feel the same way. But I think there is power in overcoming that feeling.