Earlier I volleyed a few text messages with a friend, wherein I shared that I had just caught myself sort of instinctively grabbing my phone to send a mundane text to my dad (most likely something to do with the correlation betwixt it being payday and Dixon wanting a burrito right now).
My friend said that that was sort of sad, but also beautiful in a way, and I agree. (He also said I should expect plenty more experiences like that. Good call there too.)
It brought to mind the Sting tune embedded below:
If I’ve got anything resembling an overarching philsophy of mental health that seems to be materializing (somebody will have me choke out a paper like that before I walk spring 2013; they always do), it’s that people are fragile.
Not that people are wimps or can’t do heavy stuff-how about, that people can get broken, and the sorts of events that can break us are everywhere in our world.
Say, losing a parent.
Getting fired.
Hearing just enough of some sermon at some church to kick one’s conception of God, people, and reality entirely off the tracks.
One thing that a dear friend (a friend with a great deal of experience dealing with hurting people, as a former hospital chaplain) said to me more than once in the immediate aftermath of Dad’s passing was, “be gentle with yourself.”
The past week or so, it’s materialized in my mind that what she meant was, “you’re hurting enough as it is; it’d sure be easy to make things worse on yourself right now. Don’t do that.”
What everyone’s saying