What would you rather hear? That six or seven or twelve times or more I actually had ideation, or that I walked away, instead, unharmed? That I downed a bottle of prescription poison, drowning my story in another tale of tragedy and loss, or that I picked up a pen and wrote between thunderclaps, each word its own kind of torrent? That I suffered in the silence I had inherited, kept the tape that genes and a hateful world had slapped on my young face, nodded in frightened-eyed acquiescence at every lie declared in absolutism? Or that I birthed my own truth, had carried it for decades, feeding it tenderly through my own familiar lips, passing on whatever slices of fresh fruit and wisdom someone kind had left out for us? You see, the real problem is, no one ever asks what’s going well in your life. What good things have happened. If somehow, in the shadow of early morning, you happened upon a random earring someone dropped in your bag. Whether it was pink or purple or a splendid shade of teal, or perhaps some other vibrant color with a name you had yet to learn. No one ever asks what happened at the end, skipping to the part where everything turned out all right, how some stranger helped you find a comfortable bed and gave you free water after days of you being too far away from home. They don’t want to hear how you landed with the love of your life, the way you run your fingers gently down the back of what otherwise would have been another sleepless night, lulling you both into dreams that made you wake in laughter. How you earned your freedom to use every morning to create something more beautiful than any anxiety could ever come up with, a kind of hope that overgrows charred and barren land, how you could now offer something besides another sad narrative, one more account strengthening an innate bias of negativity that no longer serves anyone well. And I think if people started conversations with, “Tell me about something good that happened today,” instead of, “How was your day, dear?” in that kind-hearted attempt at understanding (but still with that tone of, “Go ahead and unload the bad stuff”) we might all be a bit better off— not that we’re ignoring those awful things gone wrong, how every bite or sting of some other person’s stupidity really got to you, or sitting in traffic and bad memories when you really have to pee isn’t a part of everyday living, or war or famine or fire or worse is killing everyone off, but that somewhere, hiding amid suffering, there were the human helpers ready to lend a hand. So please, for the love of all you think that’s holy, for once, tell me a funny story, how someone inspired you to keep going when you really thought this time would be the final chapter. Tell me about the light you saw edging daffodils in gold, how you snapped that picture to make it last, to return to it in your hours of need. Tell me what made you decide to stick around, and I promise. I’ll tell you why I did. Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, copyright March 23, 2024, all rights reserved
Posted in Katherine's Coffeehouse
