March 2022: On the Unexpected Result of Writing a Column

As a result of writing this column, I made a new friend. Actually, I’ve made a couple. What’s more, sometimes, a person will recognize me in public and stop to tell me they like my writing. Who doesn’t love to be acknowledged?

            My newest friend has taken her appreciation to a whole other level. We’re from different generations. Some of our experiences overlap but most are spread far and wide across the years. In spite of this, we connect in important ways that mark the beginning of a true friendship.

            I’ll call her Joy. She first reached out to me by voicemail left on my office phone where she said she had a story to tell and felt I might be the right person to help her tell it. I don’t get a lot of these types of requests, but when I do, I am always hesitant. What am I getting myself into? Can I truly help? Am I really the right person for the job? I have so much of my own work to tend to, do I even want to respond?

            I didn’t answer the call right away. In fact, it wasn’t until a few days later that I played the voicemail for D, and he said, “You have to call her back. Listen to her voice. I’ll bet she’s been sitting by the phone waiting for you to call since leaving that message.”

            I knew he was right, and I didn’t have a good excuse for why I hadn’t yet picked up the phone other than I had a feeling that calling back was going to tacitly commit my time and energy to a new project, and didn’t I have enough to do?

            The next day, however, I dialed the number. It rang several times before Joy picked up and when I explained to her who I was, I could hear the shift in her tone go from one of uncertainty to one of gratitude.

            Her story isn’t an easy one. Over the next few weeks and the course of several visits, she’s unwound it out of her, a decades long tale of sorrow and hurt that just won’t let up. I’ve listened and taken notes. I’ve asked questions and pondered long on her answers. Our friendship has grown. She might see herself in me; I might see myself in her.

            I don’t yet know what this story of hers will ultimately end up looking like, but between the two of us, it’s going to make it to the page. I’ll see to that.

            In many ways, it’s an old tale that’s been hashed out many times through the ages, one that goes something like this: I have come through this awful thing, and here I am now, completely altered and unrecognizable even to myself. Yet, in spite of what’s gone on I want to make good of it, to share it, to use it to help others and maybe help light their way through the awful thing visiting them. I don’t want others to suffer as I have.

            Once, a friend said to me, “I don’t know your experience, but I understand your pain.” Sad to say that pain is a universal language, but most anyone who has endured it cannot ignore it in others.

            One facet of our shared human experiences, if we choose to not ignore it, drives us to make good use of our heartache, to, in spite of the hurtful ways we get carved up, take what remains to make the world a better place than the one that smashed us against the rocks.

            I cannot fathom Joy’s depth of sorrow. She puts on a good face most of the time, but in the hours that we’ve sat alone, working to get her story down into language, she’s dropped her guard to expose the raw flesh of wounds that, in spite of their age, refuse to heal.

            How do you measure pain from invisible wounds? You know the Wong-Baker chart on the doctor’s exam room wall, those images of faces in degrees of distress that patients point to as a means to approximate their level of suffering, can only go so far. Pain is subjective and relative. I can only imagine yours. I can’t adequately express my own. Truth be told, in spite of broken bones and giving birth, the worst pain I’ve ever felt was not physical. That’s Joy’s situation too.

            I’m working on Joy’s story, determined to help her help others, because it’s helping me too. Funny how shouldering another’s burden lightens my own.

            I want my words to heal, to make her situation better, even as I know I’m not that powerful. But I can do a little, and maybe in doing a little, much will come of it. One can always hope.