Picture Perfect Loneliness

I substitute taught for a disciplinary class at Artesia High School today. To give you an idea of the kind of kid’s these were, the regular “teacher” told me that every time she walks in that room “I put on my bitch face.” In other words, the only way to survive with these kids was to be as mean as hell to them, intimidate them, and show them who’s really in control. She told me to make sure they chose a prompt on the board and that everyone had to write an essay.

Obviously, I was intrigued and intimidated by what my day might look like. So the other teacher left and my job was to wait for security, who are actually cops, to drop off students as they were caught.

Because it might be a while I took out a book for a class I’m taking called, “Counseling
Troubled Families.” Within 10 minutes the first and only batch of six students walked in with a cop right behind them. I signed them in and instructed them that they had to write a mandatory essay on one of the topics the teacher left on the board. After some complaining, I thought about it for a second and said, “Ok, you have an option! You can either write an essay, or you can draw a picture of your family and show it to me one-by-one.” At once all six students (5 boys, and 1 girl) laughed and started making fun of the idea of drawing a picture of their family. “what are we in kindergarden” one of them said. “Well you can write an essay then.” I said.

After a minute of silence, I noticed that one-by-one, every student started to draw a picture, and one-by-one, they came up and showed me their family. Of all the pictures I can remember, the one that stood out to me the most was the picture the 2nd to last kid brought up. He handed me the paper, and all that was on it was a stick figure that had the word “Me” above it. Immediately, I knew this was a holy moment. I gently looked at him and asked where his parents were. After looking back at his classmates to make sure no one was listening, he said, “in prison.” “You must feel really alone,” I said. I could see his eyes watering. He felt completely alone. He had no sisters or brothers, and his parents were in prison. I asked him who he lived with. “My grandparents,” he said. “My grandma has mental breakdowns and my grandpa is never around… I don’t know where he goes.” My heart melted for this guy. He truly felt alone in the world and his only family was himself. I was pissed at his situation. Why? Why does a 16-year old have to deal with such deep loneliness. This will never go away. He will deal with that loneliness and his pursuit to fill it for the rest of his life. No wonder he was ditching class, no wonder he was getting bad grades, no wonder he was messing up. He was hurting, lost, and alone.

Unspoken Suffering

I’ve been taking this class on human suffering the last couple of weeks. Today, each of us in the class had a couple of minutes to share our personal stories of suffering/pain. As I listened, I noticed gaps, silent spots, and grimaces with no explanation. I heard people minimize their pain. I heard people spiritualize, triumphalize, justify, redemptify and straight up deny their pain. I heard a lot of words like, “not that bad” and “could have been worse” and “I’ve been blessed.” These are all good things to say, but the fact of the matter is that pain is pain. It does not help us to disguise our pain with silence or to keep it locked up in the unreality of Christian cliché. Pain hurts, and it hurts deep. As I listened, I started to think about all the unspoken suffering. I started to think about all the stories upon stories, details upon details that weren’t being shared. I started to think about all the internal turmoil and battles that have been fought in each person as they wrestled with the implications of inflicted harm and harm inflicted. It is the inner world, the world of the unseen thoughts, emotions, and perspectives that we will never see, even when we "share our stories." No matter how vivid I paint the picture, no one will ever fully know the struggle and the continued heart ache those pains have casued.

After we were done sharing, a couple people realized that they had experienced similar things that others had shared. They had unspoken suffering. And in my heart too, I knew that there were things that I had not shared, there were gaps, stories left untold, experiences unspoken. There were things that were too painful, there were parts of my story that i had forgotten, repressed, denied. I just wonder how often we allow the gaps to exist. How often is what people share just the manufactured conclusion of a messy, unprocessed hurt? How often is pain disguised, minimized, and denied? When is it appropriate to step into the gaps? When is it appropriate to put volume to the silent spots? When is it appropriate to step into the unspoken suffering? I don't know, but as I listened to myself and others, the silence spoke louder than our speech.