Bad for me

Over the course of our friendship, M. has lent me several books. The Viagra book felt vaguely slimy in my mind (and I never finished it). The Hunger Games trilogy twirled me around and swooped me up and down, and after several months of suspense, set me down in a sunny, spacious place. And now I've read the first book in a new trilogy: Life as We Knew It.

Like Hunger Games, it was hard to put down. The novel is written as the journal of Miranda, a Pennsylvanian sixteen-year-old whose name inevitably reminds me of the ravaged planet in the movie "Serenity." This is a fitting association for a book about the disintegration of life on Earth when a stray asteroid strikes our own Luna, sending her a shade closer to the planet. The moon looms grotesquely and menacingly large overhead, as though it is about to fall out of the sky. It is a relief to Miranda when the vast quantities of ash from the volcanoes that spring up everywhere on the destablized planet obscure the sky entirely. When the ash is thick enough, she can't see the moon's threats. Meanwhile, there are plenty of more direct physical threats wreaking havoc all over the planet: tidal waves, earthquakes, epidemics, food shortages.

This is a book about the narrowing of a life, the shrinking of the known world. This is a book about deprivation and death.

It's also a book about appreciating the little you have. But that appreciation comes only through resignation. Joy sprouts from accepting that things can't better, and in fact they are going to get much worse, so now is the time to extract the little life you can out of the shriveling, withering world. This is a book about hope that comes through blindness, about stripping away false faith, about salvation through asceticism.

Reading this book felt like drowning. When I rose to the surface--when I closed the book and opened my eyes to the clear blue sky and the sunshine streaming down like it would never ever run out--I gulped reality, gasping and heaving, and coughed up despair like water from my lungs. Drowning makes you appreciate air, but that doesn't mean almost drowning is good for the soul. I don't intend to read the sequels to Life as We Knew It. Despair is enough of a temptation in my own world of abundance and faith; living in the head of a teenager in desperate circumstances that cannot improve (in her world) does nothing good for my emotional stability. Distant as the moon is, I am enough of a lunatic.

3am Despair

The party is raging outside my window, a few stories down. Whistling and shouting mingle with the insistent background pounding--drunken drums, throbbing like a heartbeat from a car stereo.

I can't sleep. I am so frustrated. I shouldn't be awake right now, shouldn't have been awake for the past several hours. But I can't make myself go to bed because I haven't gotten anything done. It feels like a waste of the lost sleep if I give up without figuring out what is broken.

I pin my identity on every problem. Then the problem runs away from me, and I chase after it, because I am tied to it. I grow weary of running, but cannot stop. The problem pulls me onward... When the solution eludes me--slipping through the shadows, dancing in the darkness (like the smokers partying outside)--I feel abandoned and lost. I've come so far, but arrived nowhere.

Meanwhile, the music outside ebbs and flows like the tide, like the ocean. It washes over me, but I can't swim tonight. The pounding waves of sound break over my head. I gasp, and breathe in saltwater. Choking, I kick myself to the surface, just in time for another wave.

The person I wanted to be stands on the shore, silently watching. Is she smiling, laughing even, as I flail? Impossible to tell from this distance, with the water spraying in my face, the salt in my eyes. I want to scream, but the sea rots my voice. Only a gurgle escapes me.

Another wave comes, and another.

Maybe one of them will sweep me, kicking and coughing, into sleep.

M.

Scream to me, wave your hands. Grieve out loud about the injustice of it all. You apologize for being upset and I tell you: No, you should be upset. This is wrong. They are not being fair to you, they are wronging you. This is not the way the world is supposed to be.

Stand up and reach out for me. I'll wrap my arms around your thin body and hold you tight, as you cling to me, collapsing, bent. Your head is heavy on my shoulder. You shake in my arms, in this storm of sobs. I will hold you as long as you need. . . Come, sit with me.

Tell me. Tell me your sorrow, your dreads, the grief that stalks you even in the sunshine, the fury that throws you directions you don't mean to go. You end up on unfamiliar paths, unsure of your footing. I don't know where to turn, you say. I feel so stuck. All I can do is listen, twine my fingers through your hair and hold your hand. Lean on me, cry on me, hide your face in me: I'm here with you.

I want to say I'll always be here for you, but only God can do that.

And God, where are you in this? If your eye is on the sparrow, why does the sparrow fall in the first place? What good is it to be watched by your loving eye, if your hand doesn't reach out?

Dear one, cry, it's all right. Selfish? You? We all are, I suppose, but to rage or grieve over injustice and brokenness, over betrayal of someone you love, over betrayal by the ones who are supposed to keep you safe, that is not selfishness. Grieve. Let it go. . . Release the guilt, please. It's not your fault. You're not in the wrong.

I want to rescue you but only God can do that. But I can hold you and love you and whisper truth to you as God gives it to me, and that is enough. The best I can do is enough. The best you can do is enough, I tell you, and you cry some more. Eternity is in this moment, when we cling to each other. Touch is the most fundamental language, and I am telling you: It will be all right. I am with you. I will not abandon you. You are loved. I love you. (Is this enough?)

There is hope. But how can I make you see it?

I can't. Only God can do that. But I can love you, and that is enough. By the grace of God, we are both doing enough.