The People Who Will Catch You
I’ve written about the pain of losing so many of the people I once loved and worked with in Mormonism, losing so many family in the divorce, losing so much of my old life as I’ve moved toward a new life. It frightens me sometimes because I’m worried that it will keep happening, that I will keep having to remake myself and the circle of people around me. It takes a lot of energy and I don’t think I have energy to do that again. And again. And again. Not that life seems to give me a lot of choice in the matter. Not conscious choice, anyway.
It's not wonder that I kicked and screamed my way out of my old life, that I held tight to all the things that were so toxic and so dear to me. I couldn’t see how I could do everything that has had to be done over the last five years of my new life. And I couldn’t possibly know how many people would step in to take the place of the people I have lost, both figuratively and literally. This is a thank you to those people and a reminder to the people who are still on the other side of the chasm: there are people who will catch you. I can’t tell you who they are. You can’t know who they will be. You would never guess. It is an unlikely, somewhat motley crew. And they are also the best people you thought you could never be friends with. Let me tell you about some of mine.
A Facebook only friend who writes poetry that comes straight from the heart and who struggles with all the same things you do, and who someday you will meet in person.
A writer I knew only from a distance who wrote me a note one day that took my breath away about a grief only they knew about and who keeps me updated on random occasions, often on my hardest days.
A mother who invited me one day to visit and then lent her whole family to me, fed me, nurtured me, and never made me wonder why I hadn’t encountered this kind of enveloping acceptance and love before.
A divorced woman who was two steps ahead of me and talked me through the hardest parts, the paperwork, the decisions, and the way back (maybe) to my kids.
A heretic who would not stop telling the truth no matter what it cost them, and just keeps speaking the truth again and again and again, and weeps with the pain of the truth, then gets up and keeps loving the world and the people in it anyway.
A runner who doesn’t run anymore because of injuries far worse than mine, and yet has passion for so many new things in their life that you’d never guess they missed anything at all.
An attorney who is the strongest person I think I’ve ever met, and also gracious and kind with a mean sense of humor that makes me laugh hard enough to pee myself on their own furniture (sorry about that!)
A friend who was so fierce in defending me that they made phone calls to nasty people to yell at them for me.
I don’t believe in a god who sent these people into my life. I don’t really believe in a universe that is conscious enough or compassionate enough to care about little old me and my silly need and my tiny little dreams. So I can’t really explain how this happens, this miracle of being loved again after a shattering fall that you didn’t really want to survive. But these people just keep showing up in my life. I think this is the way humans are.
Look, humans can be shitty. There are so many terrible things that humans do to other humans.
And yet . . . this goodness that comes out when we share our hearts with each other is real and good. It isn’t fake. It isn’t from God or from religion. I don’t think Mormonism deserves credit for the goodness of its people. I give that credit to the people alone, the ones who see pain and ease it, who see a need and fill it, who simply show up with hands wide open and catch a heavy weight falling from the sky even when they didn’t know it was going to hit them. Just because they are humans who know how to human in the most human way.