Sidewalk Solace

I kneel down on the hard, cold, grey concrete.
I cannot speak.
My chest feels tight. Feelings parallel to mine shine openly in the eyes of my classmates, whose names I do not know.
Salty tears, shed so freely. Familiar faces; unknown names.
The concrete we kneel on is just to the left of the front glass doors of our high school. A small, clear plastic bucket of colored chalk waits nearby, for any who wish to pay their respects in the same manner as my classmates, whose names I do not know. Red, yellow, green, orange, blue.
I watch them.
“How fast was he going when they hit?”
“I don’t know.”
I do not know his name. I do not know his story. I only know what I gather from words murmured around me.
“I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“Graduation’s only in a few weeks.”
“How could it have happened?”
“Was he just being careless?”
“No!”
“He was a responsible kid, he was never careless.”
“And he knew how to ride- he’s been on a motorbike since he was just a kid.”
I cannot feel them, or their words. They draw sad farewells on the concrete with the chalk in their hands.
I watch them.
I struggle within myself.
It has been a difficult year. Emotional and mental imbalance, stemming from the recurrence of a brain tumor, necessitated my extended absence from school mere weeks ago. Returning is an experiment, to learn if I can handle the stresses of public education. A desire to be free from the troubles of life has required a closer watch by responsible eyes. A hard working father, five hundred miles away, has had to leave that duty in the capable, caring hands of an overworked mother. She takes me to school and will pick me up at its end. The trip this morning is already gone from memory. I live each moment focused silently inward; time is slow poison.
And now this.
A moment before, I saw them mourning. The pressure in my head, my heart began to multiply. I deeply wanted to help them heal, to be a friend. Tears, honest and real as theirs, are locked up inside the tightness in my chest.
I feverishly open my yellow backpack. I gather out my binder of tattered loose leaf paper, then lower it to the concrete and open.
Taking a red piece of chalk from the bucket, I draw a quick line around the binder’s edge. I rise from my knees and turn away. I feel my classmates’ stares. I muster all the self-mastery I have left to not turn back to see whose eyes those looks belong to. Instead, I direct my feet toward the crosswalk. I do not know if I will return when lunch is done.
It is excruciating, sitting immobile with my noon meal before me, bound by the necessity to adhere to the unwritten laws of propriety, whilst the most precious item in my possession, my binder of words, lies open on the concrete mere yards away for any to glance therein- or steal, or deface, or destroy. I had no choice but to give it. I had to give something. It was the only thing that I could honorably have given. Something as emotionally powerful to me as their grief was to them, these classmates who I do not know the names of. Anything less would have made a mockery of their feelings. That was something I simply could not do.
My binder of poetry, with the most private, personal, precious words ever written by this hand, belongs to them now. It will be theirs for as long a time as I can endure. If I return to find its heart gone, so be it.
Lunchtime is done. My quaking body, beckoned by an aching, torn-up spirit, moves quickly back across the muted street. I stop. A painful walk forgotten.
What are they doing to my heart?
I look to the spot where I left it. Too slowly to quiet the dread building inside, I walk only as fast as my body allows me. Students still sit and kneel on the concrete. One of them lies on her side, cheek in hand. My binder, my poetry lies open in front of her.
How many have seen into my heart? What have they learned? What will they do?
She glances up at me as my steps come closer. I see her rise quickly and move away. I am disappointed, that her thoughts will never be voiced. I am relieved, that my heart has not been stolen, or defaced, or destroyed. I shakily gather the binder up and quickly place it back inside the yellow pack.
I have to endure my final two classes. They pass without any response. My mind holds only faces. In shock, it takes in physical details as sweet relief; my fellow children are suddenly so beautiful.
School is done. The front doors are before me, my arms pushing through. My chest becomes tighter. Another girl walks toward me, not faltering, on the very left edge of my peripheral vision. She is radiant, filled with some inner light. I know she has seen deep into me.
I am given no warning.
She reaches her fair, slender arms round me. I am bound.
I cannot breathe.
She whispers three words.
“I never knew…”

Green Exit Sign

The green exit sign looms large before my hazel eyes. It has been days since I saw the last, for I have lost my ability to move from one to the next with any kind of efficiency. The images are still fresh in my mind; the faces and smirks and smiles and grimaces and unveiled eyes burned into me forever. I keep moving in an effort to blank them from my thoughts; the miles left behind me by my own two feet have yet to prove any hindrance to my pain. I have taken the labels off and thrown them away; now I throw the bottles as well. My wings are clipped; it will do me no good to keep the feathers.

I will walk until I have no more thoughts to think. I desire numbness. I desire forgetfulness, of everything but the subconscious understanding of how to move one foot in front of the other and the unending compulsion to do so forever. Physical pain is almost soothing now; mental and emotional pain is unbearable.

I have relived it all, over and over again. The shining implements of pain; the methodical, scientific, unfeeling administrators of that pain; the sympathetic, well-intentioned, unhelpful, pointless murmurings of mouths unversed in the art of speaking balm; the soul windows passing heavily biased judgment on one whose sole purpose has been to fall; the dreams risen and crushed, risen and crushed, risen and crushed, so many times! I was given wings, they were so large and beautiful, yet never while they were growing was I allowed to jump off the smallest boulder to see if I could fly! Now these shriveled up nubs at the high reaches of my back are left to me as solemn, mocking reminders of what would never be but what might have been! What was the point, in any of it? I want to understand! If I am doomed to live unfulfilled, I want to know why! I have made grave mistakes, but so has every other person on the face of this wretchedly beautiful world.

I have not wanted to be here for so long! Where is the balm in my life?! Where is the other half of my soul? Where can I go but ever onward, no place of rest where I may lay my weary head? Even now, if I let myself, I can feel the lessening of my strength as it ebbs away from each limb. I know I cannot go on forever. It would doubtless seem pointless to many, this continuation of motion into oblivion. Why should I not simply lay down as countless others before me and die? The answer is that it is not in me to admit defeat, not permanently. I have given up so many times, being determined to stay down till the glorious end. But I knew then as I know now, that it would not be a glorious end. The only end that has ever been glorious is the end in motion. There is no glory in quitting. I know what I am. I know who and what I was. Who I will be is determined by what I do. As of this moment, I am continuing on.

These are the bloodied facts of my life: I am a two- time brain tumor surgery survivor with four surgeries above the neck and one below. I have relearned how to walk five times; I have walked to the precipice on weakest legs and looked over, wanting to take another, final, step. I have had my heart broken many times and have broken other hearts just as many. I have committed heinous crimes, yet somewhere in the back of my fevered mind I hear the voices of angels as they thank me for what I have done for others of God’s children. At times I wish I could remember what I might have done to help them. At other times it seems to me better that I do not remember, for so many wonderful memories would only be so many more excuses to lock myself in the past. I would not go back into my past and change it, not even my crimes. I will not continue to harrow up in my soul, guilt and shame and fear of recrimination.

I am who I am. I have made terrible mistakes. I have been through terrifyingly hot fire. I have experienced death and heartache and despair. I have enjoyed love, and caring, and joy. I have been attacked by the adversary time and time again. And time and time again, I have been saved by my Advocate. I know from personal experience that this life is heart-breakingly difficult at times, and that we sometimes only wish it over. I know how much it hurts to fall, whether by our own choices or not. It can hurt even more to get back up again. I know firsthand the powerful lure of carnal pleasures. It can be so easy to forget who I am, that I am a son of Almighty God, that I bear the Melchizedec Priesthood, that I am capable of saving lives and also capable of destroying them. I know that God lives and that He loves me enough to let me fall, so that I may learn to differentiate between good and evil. I have learned that my life is precious to God. I have learned that the Savior has walked by my side all my life, and that he knows who I am. I suppose that through everything that has happened to me I have become closer to the person God wants me to be, though I have taken many detours on the road to getting there.

God is kind. He has always allowed me another chance, another opportunity to turn back to Him after I have turned away yet again. The darkness attracts me so strongly that all I want at times is to turn and sprint headlong in its direction. The biggest question for me is “What do I really want?” The problem with asking that question and finding the answer is simply that I want opposing things, things that cannot be had at the same time; things that I must make a choice between if I am to make progress in either. It hurts to think about it; finding something, anything, to numb or forget the pain becomes the subsequent, consuming endeavor. There are many times when all I want is to cease feeling anything at all. At times it is as though I am bound, suspended over a bed of smoldering coals, and someone I cannot see tells me that things will get better. At other times it is as though I am being drawn and quartered, but at an excruciatingly slow pace, and someone else I cannot see tells me that I am doing remarkably well.

I am not doing well! I am being torn to shreds inside!

I will walk on. I will fall. I will get back up. I will fall yet again, and I will struggle from my knees. They are bloody; I have fallen upon them too many times for it not to be so. I have discovered what I want more than anything. I have learned that knowing what I really desire only fans the flames, and yet, I still want to know! I am determined to hurt! It would seem that trials, troubles, tribulations, toils, difficulties, impossibilities, pain, hardship, and every other descriptive substitute for opposition here in mortality are but different ways of spelling out “par for the course.” They are nothing but meaningless words until one actually experiences them firsthand. Here it is a given that a soul- any soul- will feel “growing pains,” whether he or she is striving for greatness or not. For those who ARE striving for such, however, it is a given that all possible opposition will be stacked against them. It is said that only with such opposing forces in operation can one expect to be CHANGED from mediocrity to greatness. When one battles with depression in addition to other challenges, things are made so much more difficult. Though such a one may desire to succeed, the desire to give up each time one falls is greater than it would otherwise be, and the attractiveness of such an option monumental. That the pain will stop if one gives up is the most tormenting thought imaginable; yet another reason that one wishes the numbness to set in. When one has made an unbroken habit of getting up, it is impossible to stay down forever! It is impossible to grant oneself leave to rest for any substantial length of time; it is only possible for someone else to grant such a miraculous thing. The only difference between quitting and grace is whose hand it is that falls.

I know not how many miles I have walked, but I know that many, many hours have passed. I know that my limbs ache, though they ache less now than before. I know not if this means I am at last becoming numb. I know that there are many who would take me wherever I wanted to go if I asked them, but they I also wish to forget. All connections to humanity, all feeling, all understanding; I want it gone. I want to forget who I am; I want to forget everything and everyone I’ve known. It hurts to love. I don't want to hurt any more.

No more signs. No more guideposts, whatever their color. No more understanding. Numbness.