I was struck by this week's Ladies of Hive prompt:
Did someone support you during your hardest time? How did they help?
I thought immediately, how sad that that's even a question. I hope no one can answer truthfully "no", and I hope at least half the people answering can count themselves among the people they could rely on in times of toil.
There was a time when I thought life would be divided between the people who saw "real" tragedy, and those who did not. But as I got older, I began to realize tragedy lurks inside everyone, and most children know tragedy in some form or another already. That the division is actually between those who come out and those who don't. I think often about the people who're no longer here, the ones who could've still made something of themselves.
How it wasn't that they didn't have anyone by them in times of trouble. We tend to look at people who get lost and assume life dealt them a dirty one, that they needed someone badly, and had no one. But the strange truth is, a lot of them do. There's a world full of mournful mothers and brothers.
The older I get, the more acutely I realize the real, painful possibility of you not making it. And how it's not always being hit by a truck. How it's sometimes so ordinary, so well-meaning. How the hardest of tries could still prove not strong enough.
I got to thinking, also, about the other kinds of support that might mean so very much to you when you're going through difficulty. I am among those very lucky people who not only had abundant support when I truly needed it, but it also came in the right time, in the right way, and I wasn't too blind or too consumed to notice or anything. Really rather rare. Lucky me.
How people help you in times of trouble is a different story. And for all the words of support, I'd say mostly just by keeping an eye on you. Making sure you eat. That you somehow reach the point in yourself where you can be well again. It sounds simple, but isn't, and sometimes takes a tremendously long time.
Of course, some people show up for you via tough love. It's called for, every now and again, to get your brains knocked back into you, when you start showing signs of malfunctioning. I've been yelled at a number of times in my life, mostly well-meaning, and I'm grateful now for each. Even for when the people yelling were in the wrong, because it showed me a deeper side of them, a side which had perhaps been hurt somehow, a side that they thought unworthy of loving.
However, it's not just people who are there for you in times of trouble, but books, also. I seem to remember Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere breaking through when I was at a very low point. The boy, the fox, the mole and the horse book, but also the new continuation that introduces (like most growing up) a story also, showed up in my life when I needed to be held. Sir Terry, who caught me more times than I remember falling.
But for me, the biggest to show up, other than people, has been music. I've always had a tremendously close relationship with music that a lot of people don't understand. I've many music-related tattoos that some assume mean I like a song, but really, there's so much more to it. It's seeing yourself understood by a stranger who manages to make something beautiful out of it, and perhaps, tangentially, out of you.
There was a time when I just went to the concert, and listened to the song, and sort of let the sadness wash over me each time, but also the grace of being understood in a place that was extremely low. That's also a kind of being kept an eye on. So you're still sad. Ok. But you still show up. And we cry. And we do it again.
Until you're in a place in yourself where you can be better. There's tremendous patience in music that, I think, you need to be a fool not to hear.
It's not for nothing there's a "your music saved my life" cliche, because it often does. And though I've been fortunate enough to never really envision ending my own life, I did (like most of us) go through periods where, in the words of Richard Burton, I didn't much fancy staying alive.
Music helped, which isn't to say people didn't, also. But music reached in in a way people, no matter how close or well-meaning couldn't. There's parts of ourselves we don't manage or wish to speak of even to those who love us honestly and the most, but music can get there even when you try people from doing so.
There's music that helps you through to tomorrow, and if you're lucky, you have people, also. And maybe some people, unfortunately, don't get either, or maybe they get both but it's simply not enough. Who knows.
I've been fortunate enough so far. Thank God. Wherever that may be.
