I am in Dallas, Texas. God, again.
There is some great soft light pouring in through the morning window. I am in a nice soft bed in a room bigger than some apartments I've had.
I am still sleepy and had the intention of watching a documentary about something I don't care much about so that I could go in and out of sleep for a while before my friend is ready for us to drive to Tulsa. But here I am writing some words down instead.
There has been a pattern emerging in the places I visit. One I wish I could say was intentional.
But so far, everyone that I have visited and especially the people I have stayed with have been, and actually still are, going through immensely hard times.
In New York, my friend was struggling with his faith and relationship to the church, while also worried about his churchy anti-vax covid denying friends who were both in the hospital with covid, on oxygen, potentially making orphans of their two children. Both parents are fine now. They both credit divine healing. My friend felt at a loss as to what to say to them.
Then in Kansas City, a friend who is more pure poet and philosopher than anyone I've met, saddled with existential dread and suicidal daydreams, trying to hold it together for his wife, but still reeling from the preventable death of his mother who believed God for a cancer cure instead of treatment. Still reeling from the death of his father when he was 11. Still processing a step father who would blare an audiobook of the King James Bible night and day through big speakers and all the ways that it has blocked, influenced, and informed his view of faith and the world. A deep well of worry and thought and the slow processing through trauma.
He is micro-dosing mushrooms now. He is writing again. But it is hard.
Then rural Missouri where when I arrived I discovered that my friend's dad, A Branson gospel singer turned methy con-man, was in the hospital on oxygen with covid. Anti-mask, anti-vax, refused treatment for as long as possible until breathing itself was not possible. The tension hung in the air as we ate tacos and watched movies. Not a worried stress or an emotional scene, just a grim reality of what is. My friend was long alienated from his dad, but still used as a pillar of support by his siblings and also addicted mother. The next morning while waiting for a table at Denny's, he got the phone call that his dad had died. We went back home and had coffee. Lots of silence. Jokes when we could make them. I left early to give them some space.
Onto Dallas where I took a hike with a friend who was still reeling from her father's death. Another good Christian man who lost all the family's money in a ponzi scheme right before having a stroke and needing to be placed in a home where he spent the last decade or more of his life. My friend who put her life on hold to take care of her ailing mother, was grieving everything unsaid with her dad. and lamenting that her life was still largely on hold. She didn't understand, she said. She followed the rules. Did everything that she believed God wanted her to do, but was still waiting on the promise of restoration. I can't believe that everything I've believed was all bullshit, she said. I had nothing at all to say as I myself grew up in a faith healing household but was never healed myself. So we just walked in silence.
And the friend I stayed with in Dallas, here at the house where I am staying once again, a pastor when I first met him turned successful artist and entrepreneur. Who had a cheating wife who left and then a business that fell apart due to act of God like circumstances who lost his house and the custody of his kids a week after the covid lockdowns started who spent the pandemic sleeping with his dog in his car. When I got here last time, he was new in this house (this gigantic fucking house), living rent free because the owner bought this house to give a place for people who need it. My friend's first break in like 15 months. He had just secured a job driving a school bus for a charter school. 600 bucks a month.
I took the girlfriend break in Cincinnati, but it wasn't a break really as I was there to help her move and help move her through the difficult inner workings of sadness and trauma. She had to move to a new city in the first place because of her ex who broke into her house and destroyed her furniture and wrote haunting messages in blood on her walls and is in prison now, but who knows for how long, so to feel safe a new place and a new life in a strange city away from everyone she knows and so much of what she loves. And we discussed her insecurities about sex more than we had sex (which is fine and good and healthy. I have many hangups myself. But we didn't discuss those much.) I left to her sadness of my leaving and a feeling of wishing I could be what she wanted but knowing I am not. Or maybe I am but am afraid to admit it.
A midnight train to Chicago found me with another friend who is dealing with divorce and has lost almost everything he owned, apparently only four days sober after another relapse, reeling from the death of his father (causes unknown to me), unable to do much but sit in a dark room watching Star Trek. A very relatable situation to me as that is how I spent most of the pandemic before becoming an ad hoc counselor and witness to the results of trauma.
In all of these instances, I have played the part of listener. I have no advice. No magic solution to anything. But God, it has felt important to just listen. To make space. To be present with these people and the immense stifling suffocating suffering. It is the best gift I have to give to the world. I don't know how much it helps, but I hope it helps some.
Here in Dallas, the friend I am staying with just had an interview for the most perfect job for him imaginable that will pay him enough to actually live again. No one else is in the running.
My other friend, who sacrificed her life savings to save her family, just closed on a house of her own.
After a brief stop in Tulsa to get the van and another brief stop in girlfriendland, I will be in Maryland with one of my oldest and closest friends (and the only IRL friend who still writes on Diaryland. I don't actually know if they read this though, hello if you do). They were struggling hard when I spent a few days on the Maryland coast with them in October. They were struggling when we happened to be in Dallas at the same time as me last time I was here. But they closed on a new house with their beautiful family yesterday and just took a new job that also seems almost designed just for them, and from their last post on here, seem to be doing better than they have in years.
I hope that represents a turn in the fates and fortunes of the rest of my friends too. And though I recently haven't given much energy or attention to my own fate and fortune, I also hope there is a turn in my own circumstances.
We have been through hard times. I know it doesn't mean that good times are necessarily on their way. But I have hope.
Though I also have no real complaints. I am nearly penniless but almost always in a nice bed with good food all over this beautiful country.
I am grateful to bear witness and be present with everyone the Universe deems I should meet. It feels right and good and peaceful for me to be where I am, doing what I am doing. I close my eyes and release my grip and allow things to be whatever they are.
Onward, forward, to whatever awaits.
8:31 a.m. - 2021-12-10
Recent entries:
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