Last night I spent one hour for my voluntary service at this center, somewhat like The Good Samaritan, where people come in to seek comfort from their troubles. People come in with problems from all walks of life: anxiety, depression, identity crisis, relationship and marital problems, abuse, addiction, the list goes on. I had signed up as a volunteer since last month, but I had not really clocked in much hours.
A volunteer was looking for a replacement because they had been on duty for five hours and desperately needing some sleep. The said volunteer was handling an on going conversation with a guest who still needed someone to talk to. In some ways, the volunteers are like counselors, except the fact that we are not allowed to give advice (loosely termed) since we are only laymen with no professional background. The available volunteers were notified of this need via our Communication Line. Volunteer-Guest conversations are confidential, so we are only allowed to make notification in ten words or less. The words came in as: need female volunteer; depression from bereavement, sexual abuse, and divorce. I took up the beeping sound, and the guest was referred to me.
I sat there and listened to this terribly brokenhearted young woman. With a story that is all too familiar to me, the same anguish and void I had until not too long ago, and a sweeping wave of grief. It is the same story that also hit my closest friend Fay, six years ago, and I wish I could do to this young woman what I did to her when I found her trying to cut her wrist open. I held her. I held her so hard and as we sobbed together I could not stop saying, "I'm sorry. I am so sorry this has to happen to you."
Instead, I did as I was trained to do: validate their emotions, reflect back, and ask open ended questions.
Before I closed our session, I decided to say something to her. Something I told myself when I was feeling completely worthless and undeserving of life. "I want to say something to you, and I understand you are in complete shock and pain right now, so what I will say may feel untrue and perhaps even offensive; but I hope you will take time in considering this thought. So, you know how you loved the people who have now left you, and the care you gave in the work for those unfortunate children? If you could give all that to them, you most certainly can give that much love, patience, and kindness to yourself. Because you are the one most deserving, most needing, and most capable of giving and receiving it."
There was silence.
And it made me think.
I did not learn all that until I was left with no choice to be that. Going through a long period of abuse that left dark crevices in my mind, which, can sometimes feel like a funeral home, and catapulted me to endless series of toxic relationships. Culminated in me marrying (and leaving, thankfully) a man who felt it was completely normal to hold me with love in one second, and then hurling me with curses and threats in another.
I did not know how capable I was of loving myself, until I learned to set up boundaries and feel okay to not go home to my parents during holiday because I needed, I wanted to be with myself. That pain is not a punishment, and pleasure is not a reward, as Ani Pema says. To learn to enjoy whatever is in the present time, and not cling on to pleasure out of fear that it will change, or resisting the unpleasant out of fear that it will always stay; because they will, change and go away.
And I did not learn enough about impermanence, until I made my own garden and tended to it. Every morning when I wake up, I go over to the flower bushes and I water them. I spotted the buds forming and watched them bloomed, changed colors, and eventually wilt. New buds come again the next term, and the same cycle repeats. I even had a chance seeing a grasshopper molt its skin (had a near heart attack thinking it had died and turned white).
A lot of my problems came from the fear of being alone. That my aloneness would be evidence of my unworthiness of making people stay. That it is proof that I am unlovable. Oh the lies we tell ourselves! So I learned to love myself a lot. And that is not only enough to keep loneliness at bay, but I actually now find joy and blossom in my solitude.
Having said that, I am still trying (hard) to be okay with my stretchmarks. Still learning to cope with anxiety attacks when memories of the past make a sudden visit and shrivel me to a tiny wrinkled paper ball. Still fear that if the person I hope to like me read this story, that they will look down at my fragility. But I am learning to just be. Gently. Kindly.
And I wanted to write more on this post (as much as I wanted to tell her), of how just when I was not looking for love, it came in a dashing six feet tall--wrapped in blue shirt and khaki pants, with glasses. I wanted to write that I am experiencing the type of romance I had no vocabulary of. Uncharted adventure where I find mutual enjoyment in shared solitude.
But that story will just have to wait.
And she finally said, with a trembling voice that had waited years to be allowed to surface, "I know I have to do that."
A volunteer was looking for a replacement because they had been on duty for five hours and desperately needing some sleep. The said volunteer was handling an on going conversation with a guest who still needed someone to talk to. In some ways, the volunteers are like counselors, except the fact that we are not allowed to give advice (loosely termed) since we are only laymen with no professional background. The available volunteers were notified of this need via our Communication Line. Volunteer-Guest conversations are confidential, so we are only allowed to make notification in ten words or less. The words came in as: need female volunteer; depression from bereavement, sexual abuse, and divorce. I took up the beeping sound, and the guest was referred to me.
I sat there and listened to this terribly brokenhearted young woman. With a story that is all too familiar to me, the same anguish and void I had until not too long ago, and a sweeping wave of grief. It is the same story that also hit my closest friend Fay, six years ago, and I wish I could do to this young woman what I did to her when I found her trying to cut her wrist open. I held her. I held her so hard and as we sobbed together I could not stop saying, "I'm sorry. I am so sorry this has to happen to you."
Instead, I did as I was trained to do: validate their emotions, reflect back, and ask open ended questions.
Before I closed our session, I decided to say something to her. Something I told myself when I was feeling completely worthless and undeserving of life. "I want to say something to you, and I understand you are in complete shock and pain right now, so what I will say may feel untrue and perhaps even offensive; but I hope you will take time in considering this thought. So, you know how you loved the people who have now left you, and the care you gave in the work for those unfortunate children? If you could give all that to them, you most certainly can give that much love, patience, and kindness to yourself. Because you are the one most deserving, most needing, and most capable of giving and receiving it."
There was silence.
And it made me think.
I did not learn all that until I was left with no choice to be that. Going through a long period of abuse that left dark crevices in my mind, which, can sometimes feel like a funeral home, and catapulted me to endless series of toxic relationships. Culminated in me marrying (and leaving, thankfully) a man who felt it was completely normal to hold me with love in one second, and then hurling me with curses and threats in another.
I did not know how capable I was of loving myself, until I learned to set up boundaries and feel okay to not go home to my parents during holiday because I needed, I wanted to be with myself. That pain is not a punishment, and pleasure is not a reward, as Ani Pema says. To learn to enjoy whatever is in the present time, and not cling on to pleasure out of fear that it will change, or resisting the unpleasant out of fear that it will always stay; because they will, change and go away.
And I did not learn enough about impermanence, until I made my own garden and tended to it. Every morning when I wake up, I go over to the flower bushes and I water them. I spotted the buds forming and watched them bloomed, changed colors, and eventually wilt. New buds come again the next term, and the same cycle repeats. I even had a chance seeing a grasshopper molt its skin (had a near heart attack thinking it had died and turned white).
A lot of my problems came from the fear of being alone. That my aloneness would be evidence of my unworthiness of making people stay. That it is proof that I am unlovable. Oh the lies we tell ourselves! So I learned to love myself a lot. And that is not only enough to keep loneliness at bay, but I actually now find joy and blossom in my solitude.
Having said that, I am still trying (hard) to be okay with my stretchmarks. Still learning to cope with anxiety attacks when memories of the past make a sudden visit and shrivel me to a tiny wrinkled paper ball. Still fear that if the person I hope to like me read this story, that they will look down at my fragility. But I am learning to just be. Gently. Kindly.
And I wanted to write more on this post (as much as I wanted to tell her), of how just when I was not looking for love, it came in a dashing six feet tall--wrapped in blue shirt and khaki pants, with glasses. I wanted to write that I am experiencing the type of romance I had no vocabulary of. Uncharted adventure where I find mutual enjoyment in shared solitude.
But that story will just have to wait.
And she finally said, with a trembling voice that had waited years to be allowed to surface, "I know I have to do that."
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