Day 21

Halfway done! Today is Day 21 and I have 21 days remaining! I think time has basically flown by pretty fast. Some days are longer than others, and some are shorter, but overall, I'm pretty content with my stay in PPD. I definitely think that I am getting something out of this period besides money.

One of the largest things I might say that has come out of the past few weeks is a realization of the immense pain and suffering that is everyday and usual among the people around me. I am not surprised by the existence of suffering. I have been witness to some suffering over my life, and I feel blessed to have grown up knowing that pain exists. I think here about Ben's accident, about the struggles of Lora and Eleana, about the fiasco surrounding the Science Quest teacher (I forget his name right now), about the separation of my mom and aunt from their parents, about cancer and cancer, and about the unwanted deaths of Jerry and Julie. I am not surprised to find out that there is suffering in the world, but to find that so MANY people are stuck in a foul swamp and have given up on ever getting out.

T., a cool older guy (50s maybe?) here with a highly developed sense of justice and a passion for protecting children, has been allowing a woman to live in his house for 2 years (they are not, he insists, together) with her 9-year old son. He told me about how much his "little friend" matters to him, and how much he hates the boy's father, who is a drug addict and tries to turn the boy against his mother. The mother had recovered from drugs, but T. is afraid that she has slipped back into drugs. He has already sent her a letter saying that she needs to start looking to find a new place to live, because T. thinks he has done a bad thing by providing everything for them. He told me he's afraid for the 9-year old boy, who has recently pulled a knife on his own mother. The situation is more complicated, with two other children from another father involved, but I'll leave that be for now. I mourn for T., who is helpless to help the people he loves, and I mourn with T. for the boy who is on a precipice, about to fall into a pit he may never crawl out of. Unlike Stony, I mourn for the father and mother who are addicted to substances and completely lost sight of hope.

I have already mentioned the situation of A., the 29-year old who wonders whether to leave his children's mother and his children to be with the woman he loves. I should mention I have little respect for A. I truly do understand the tragedy of his situation. He impregnated a woman accidentally, but - out of love for his children - stayed with her. Now, six years later, he's tired of being with a woman he never loved and tired of hiding the girlfriend of two years who he does love. If this were the whole situation, I would commend A. for putting his kids first for so long, and would encourage him to hang in there and not give up now, not as long as his home situation remains livable, even comfortable, as he has claimed. However, he is silver-tongued, a player, and flirts continuously with any female in sight. He claims that when he's with his wife, he wants to flirt with other women, but when he's with his girlfriend, he wants no other women. His actions suggest to me that he is deceiving himself. However, despite my distrust for A., I can see the misery that is his life, all because of a lack of self-confidence and a mistake 6 years ago, and can see that he is in pain. I can also see that he is creating pain for his children and for the women he bruises as a result.

W., another older guy (older compared to the average age here; mid 40s?) that I almost respect if only for his age, loves his daughter a great deal. It is probably this love that gives me what respect I have. He has come out of a nasty divorce and a long hard fight for custody of the daughter, which he won. He has a generally peaceful temperament and is politely respectful of me, but seems to have the fault that most in here have: he's completely uninterested in anything bigger than sex. I would say that his eyes are to the ground, focused only on getting the physical substitute for the love that he has given up on, and getting money to provide for his daughter. He told me today the story of his friend though, who was just divorced. His friend and his friend's ex-wife entered the marriage with one child each from previous parents. W.'s friend's ex-wife's son raped the friend's daughter. When the friend filed with the police, his then-wife filed for divorce, angry that things had not been kept "in the family". She lied to the police then, claiming that the W's friend had molested HER. Her only mistake was to send emails to the friend and leave messages on his machine saying that she planned to tell that lie. Before she lied to the police, the friend had offered to drop the rape charges, because his daughter didn't want it in the open anymore, wanted to put it behind her. Now that the police are deciding whether or not to prosecute the ex-wife for obstruction of justice, W. is trying to convince his friend not to drop the rape charges, because the boy - he says - needs to be brought to justice.

I cannot tell you how many times in the past 21 days I have said "wow, that's a mess..."

B., a man in his early 40s from Portland, has only started to come onto my radar in the past couple of days. He has struck me for some time as having a deep internal sadness. Not an open depression always moping around. He laughs a lot and jokes around, but there's something behind his eyes, a depth that comes only from pain. His forearms are covered in scars that I think are self-inflicted. I'm not certain about that, but the only other times I have seen long gash scars like that, they were from cutting. All the scars are old, but not 20 years old, not from his teenage years, I don't think. I had not been too interested in talking about anything serious with B., because he seemed to be uninterested in opening up, hiding behind his jokes and nervous laugh. However, in the past few days, we have talked politics and he told me today about dropping out of school and his desire to go back to college.

B. is easier for me to understand, because I can see his suffering in his eyes, and - while I would love to know his story - I do not need to hear it to know that he has had a life full of both goodness and evil. In that, he is like people I know, still clinging onto the hope that things can be better. Still yearning to finish school, pull himself out of his mess (if there is a mess). Still hoping.

The others are harder for me to understand, because it took me a long time to realize that they are even suffering. I honestly think that many people, many more people than I ever would have expected once, have no hope for a life without pain. Many, I think, were born into a life of pain so great they can't see out of it, like T.'s "little friend". In fact, being born into it, is the only real reason I can find for being so content in misery. Jesus said that to enter the kingdom of heaven, the good life, we must have the heart of a child. But what if you never had a childhood to speak of? What if that sense of wonder and innocence and faith was trampled on from the moment you were born? I do not know that the people around me were born into a life of suffering greater than the suffering we all face as humans, but it is the best reason I can find.

Let me make sure you understand, these people are not unhappy! In fact, unhappiness is exactly what is missing! That's what made me think at first that they were simply petty, banal, and (looking at their actions) wicked. I saw what looked to me like loneliness and the attempts we make to cover our loneliness, but saw nothing but complete acceptance of those attempts as the real thing, real joy! I think many people have given up hope, or never had hope, for a better life. People have lost the ability to imagine something that doesn't exist. And so they suffer and don't ask why they suffer. They are banal and petty, because without hope, there is nothing else to be. I am afraid that some who gave up the pursuit of life for the pursuit of immediate gratification have nothing left inside them except the banal. Their heart is so frozen for so long that I wonder if it could ever be awakened.

Such suffering... so many children without parents... men and women with ruined lives... and no one cries out for for a life preserver because no one knows they are drowning.

Wow, that's a mess.