Soundless symphonies, and other things that break your heart...

When I first started as a young social worker, I worked with severely emotionally disturbed youth for a while. These were kids who had lived through horrors that I can't really even imagine.

It didn't occur to me until very recently that one of the things about these children was the seemingly different way in which they grieved. I witnessed it many times...a loosening and spilling of sorrow in the form of tears. At the time, I didn't identify what was so unusual about it. I look back now, and it hits me...like a ton of bricks...

These kids cried quietly. Tears would stream down their faces in total silence. Sometimes if you didn't look carefully, you wouldn't even know that they were crying.

The first thing that might occur to someone is that they had learned to be quiet, for fear of additional abuse. I'm sure in many cases this was true. You don't want to be the squeaky wheel in places where such attention could unhinge your world in the form of cruel words, a belt, or a fist. Or worse.

But, there is also something else.

I grew up in a home where love was given and expressed freely. Not only was it safe to cry, but a good sniffle and boo-hooing would invariably result in someone who loves you coming to comfort you...to put their arms around you, wipe your tears away, and tell you that everything was going to be alright.

From scraped knees, to schoolyard rejections, all I wanted was to get home to my mom or dad and break apart, because they would HEAR ME make everything safe, and warm, and okay again. How incredibly blessed I was. I entered into adulthood with the expectation that this is how the world worked.

I remember the first time I hit that edge of human emotion with someone who really didn't give a sh*t. It was a girlfriend...a woman who had come from a hard place...and she looked at my tears with total indifference. In fact, she told me to shut up, and proceeded to totally ignore me. Looking back, it seems silly...but I was totally shocked.

Well, life has shocked me quite a bit since then, and I have toughened up considerably. It's good. I needed to. I had been sheltered, and, of course, I didn't realize it.

The thing is, now...my emotional life has tipped...into scary places. And, I fear that I am broken.

This really started for me eight years ago. I won't go into details...but it was the beginning of my experience in the brutality of loneliness. It started as a misguided battle for my daughter, and reached its pinnacle when my wife left me for someone else. So profound has that experience been that my life seems actually divided into a "before and after" the moment she delivered the news to me. Rage, addiction, loss, lashing out, driving people off, and a few ill-timed experiences with betrayal later...and I have constructed a life that frightens the hell out of me.

I remember being curled on our bedroom floor of our huge ocean front house, in the darkness of another sleepless night, praying to hear her tires on the gravel of our long driveway as she was coming home to me, wracked with sobs that had no sound. The only sound was of our two cats (our boys) running around chasing each other upstairs, and of the wind driving rain against the windows. Where we had lived was pretty secluded...and any noise I made was met with nothingness. The indifference of the pale walls inside, and the cliffs and the dark sea outside, settled within me a lonely and lost feeling that has never left me. There was no point in crying out loud...and there still isn't.

I am so blessed to have experienced being loved in my life. In the same blessing lies a sort of curse, in that having touched love, it's absence has seemed a terrible contrast...and I feel haunted by the memory of it. I'm also tangled in the fact that the people I ultimately drove away I still love very much. My wife I'm still in love with, my daughter doesn't even know me (or that not a day goes by that I don't think of her, and ache with regret), and my parents are afraid of me and have detached from my fate.

Don't get me wrong...there are a few people who love me vaguely, from afar. And, I'm LUCKY to have that. Still...it is hard to explain how sometimes a hug from someone who is a fleeting presence in my life only makes it worse.

I'm also not unconscious to the other great blessings that I have. I don't live in a refugee camp. I haven't had to witness the slaughter of people I love. I don't have to worry about where my food, shelter, clothing, or clean water will come from. I have all of my senses, and my limbs. I live in a free country. I am blessed in so many ways-as if I know the first thing about REAL pain...as if I would survive 30 seconds in a war zone. As if I would even WANT to.

But, there is this...

I can stand in front of an amazing sunset, or under an awe inspiring night sky with stars falling all around...the beauty burns bright and warm for a few moments...and then slowly, inevitably, if the incredible thing lingers...a transformation happens. It's like a cold stone turning over in my chest. I can't make it mean the same thing that it would if I wasn't alone. The more incredible it is the thing I am seeing, the more I want to turn to someone and say, "Did you see that?" And the heavier the absence and silence becomes.

I could win the lottery tomorrow, and walk into an empty apartment...if I had no one to share it with, I could give a flying f**k. People with fame, fortune, fast cars, designer clothes, jewels...if they are truly alone, that stuff is just a dance without music. The motion and sparkle might feel good...but if you have a brain in your head, that stuff means nothing on it's own. By the same token, I could be wearing recycled shoes-and if I have a person or a family to come home to-I could live in a shack made of sticks and be truly happy. I'd also have a reason to strive for more...for me and for them.

It's amazing how we learn to pretend that something more than love is the thing that really matters.

I haven't been able to safely listen to music for years...because music hits me like a two ton sledgehammer-and I fear it. I literally am afraid of it. The songs that vividly transport me back to happy times lost-times where I felt safe and warm and surrounded by love...those songs are unbearable. The songs that capture sadness nearly kill me. They come without warning, and they take me by surprise. You know what I'm talking about...something beyond mere recollection...you can taste, touch, smell, feel the memory...I can't do it...and some days I don't even want to walk through the grocery store for fear of what their "background/environmental" selections may be.

So...I was laying in my bed a few nights ago...awake at a ridiculous hour...and I thought of someone. I remembered something that left me aching so badly for them, it felt like my heart was going to just stop beating...and then abruptly I had tears spilling over onto my face...which I realized was still and expressionless.

There is no one to turn to, no one to hear...it is an emotion that is so thin and sharp, I have definitely cut myself on the feeling of it.  

The resident cat (who isn't even mine) sometimes comes up next to me on those serrated nights, and watches my face...and sometimes she will put her paw on my cheek. Animals are amazing...

Thank God for the cat.