I pause outside the front door, dragged out and irritable from the day. I hear the dog on the other side - by some internal clock sensing that I am home and snuffling along the crack along the bottom of the door. Waiting for me to come inside. Needing love, needing care, wanting attention. “What about what I need?”, I ask the door silently.
Inside, the answering machine blinks insistently as the dog dances around my feet, getting in the way. I am in no hurry to replay the messages. It is easy enough to guess what they want: time, money, answers. I no longer have any left to spare and after one last glance, I turn away from its demands.
I feed the dog, check her water, take her out for a walk and step wearily back inside to mix myself a drink.
I grab the bottle of gin and think how strange it is how your hand does that peculiar little swoop when you pick up a nearly empty bottle, expecting it to be full. When did I start drinking so much, I wonder?
I sink into my favorite chair and contemplate the blinking of the answering machine again from across the room. Lately, I know, I have been angry, short with others and have begun spending most of my time in retreat from the world around me.
My friends no longer call me - only the machine. In my mind’s eye, I can see them calculating when I’ll be out. They then call to “say Hi” - the societal equivalent of leaving black roses on your grave. I try to remember how long they’ve been doing that. I’ve only been isolated for a couple of weeks…or have I? I’ve seen them, lately, haven’t I? But when I have seen them, I know, I’ve been drinking too much, and I have no idea what they’ve said to me.
I slouch deeper into the chair, fighting the temptation to gulp my drink, and trying to relax. Realizing that relaxation hasn’t been possible for months. How and when did I move from a position of knowing things are bad but would eventually be alright; to a state of paralysis, in which I felt with unshakeable certainty that I would not survive the next five minutes? And how did that fear become anger, isolation and hostility?
The better things that I believed somehow have been replaced with new laws. An open heart must break. An outstretched hand grasps thin air. The solid ground we walk on is just a frozen sea of lies. Words, kisses, voices: all spring from those lies.
What have I left myself to appreciate, to believe in? Anger is a poor substitute at the best of times, but I’m unable to get back to anything else.
I finish my drink and get up to pour another, irritated by the turn my thoughts have taken. Returning, I flip on the TV to better drown out the nagging of my own mind.
Later, slightly drunk and melancholy, I wander off to bed, setting the alarm and laying out clothes for the next day.
Even the alcohol no longer helps as I lay there, staring into the darkness. It seems that I even sleep in a state of hostility. The dog has taken to spending the night elsewhere.
I find this constant state of exhaustion makes me alternately heavy and inert as a block of stone, and too light, as if I ought to hang on to things and press down firmly as I moved, lending gravity the assistance it seems to require.
I awake, as usual, about 3 am, and go back to staring up at the ceiling. I drift, occasionally jerking upright. Finally, I feel my body start to relax.
In that twilight world between awake and asleep, between my body and the ceiling, I imagine that I can see a sanctuary from this world I have found myself in. A tree-lined lane and gently falling rain. The darkness into the distance is relieved at intervals by guttering torches.
I find myself, suddenly, walking along the lane. The air is warm, despite the misting rain, and smells of night blooming jasmine. Gentle. Quiet.
As I move forward, the sanctuary seems less peaceful, the shadows between the pools of light dance and flicker, reaching out long, wavery fingers to tangle in my hair.
On a high rock near the roadside, I see the figure of a man and I know, in that dreaming, knowing way, that he has been waiting in this place for me to come.
“Why do you wait for me?” I ask.
“You are lost,” he answers slowly, “and I am here to show you the way back.”
“I’m not lost - I’m angry, I’m tired and I’m fed up with myself and other people and demands and sickness and lies,” I snap, “Who the hell are you - the way back where?”
“To yourself,” he whispers softly, “you have only to look inside yourself and go on and not give up and out of the anger will come forgiveness, out of the weakness will come strength and out of the lies will come truth.”
As he pauses, seeming to collect his thoughts, I step closer, and he continues….
“The larger questions are too complicated to decide now. One must live in the world. That means accepting one's limitations, and accepting some of the world's rules. Inside your home, it may be your space alone, but so is the world always outside waiting. And it is in that world that we must live.
Perhaps the decisions inside you are not so balanced. But those decisions are powerful in their own way. They are your commitment to helping. Your commitment to goodness. They have helped others in the past and you can use them to help others in the future. Worry about the larger questions later.
And if your memories sometimes cause you pain, take your self-criticism with a grain of salt. Much of that inner pain is unnecessary. Try to be as good to yourself as you are to others.
But do not allow your own guilt to discourage you when, in the real world, you fail to find a given truth in good time. This is perhaps the most important because your own discouragement can affect those who need you and even more, those whom you need in return.”
“But,” I stop, not finding the words I need, “what do you know about it, how do I do that?”
He seems not to hear me as he leans over to light a cigarette, and in the flare of the match I see something on his palm and think vaguely that the rain seems not to touch him.
He glances down at me, puts his matches away and slowly turns his palm out towards me.
I step closer yet again to see and, tattooed in the middle of his palm, centered within the triangle made by the life and love lines - sits a tiny but beautifully detailed globe.
As if this act of moving closer acts as a catalyst of some kind, my surroundings begin to fade and in a sudden panic, I look up and into his eyes. As he disappears, I hear a final whisper in the air….
“Hasn’t your God promised to hold you in the palm of His hand?”