Today I bumped into you at the train station platform. We’d only met briefly before, a short introduction of names and then a ten minute conversation on a bus ride to school previously. I smiled, but wasn't in the mood to talk, so I politely shifted myself.
You came over, and spilled your entire life story to me.
I listened, I always listen, like how I listened to
Hideo,
Joy,
Chloe,
Prakash,
Saleem,
David, Bos, May. You said you were physically tired. And then you told me you were tired of this, that last week you ran away from home because you couldn’t take what was happening, that a few days ago, distraught, you planned your suicide. Then I saw bloody slits all over your wrists and I said, you need to get help.
“I’m seeing a psychiatrist,” you said.
Good, I replied, it’s a good thing. God can send us people to help us.
My insides froze.
We talked. Or rather, you asked me questions, and I answered them faithfully. Why did God let this happen to you? Were you a bad person? What if you decided to give up, let go, enter into the other side? Why were you born into a family like this, and how long more would you have to wait before you could be free of this? Where is God? Did you deserve this? Sometimes you felt you did, you said.
I stood very straight because I was horrified. Your eyebags were bruised with heaviness, and you slumped against the metal pole in the train carriage, will-less. Tears flowed continuously, and you kept asking me, “What if I decide to give up?” I looked at your wrists and I was horrified.
Just this morning, a friend shared with me that she had had it with her family, and had moved into a hostel. The unexplainable madness of home was something we both understood.
So I talked to you, and your eyes were fixed upon me like a hawk’s. I was afraid, because your eyes clung on to my every word, in desperation, clinging. You never broke your gaze, hardly even blinked. Your eyes dug into mine, and as I said a prayer for you, you reached out to clasp my arm, and you held onto me as a man from the edge of a cliff. I was afraid, somewhat.
I reasoned, but I was losing you. Even at the last moment, you still asked me, “Why? What if I chose otherwise?”
I told you my story, that I had to see a psychiatrist, too, when I was twelve, and I hated the anti-depressants. I told you that I understood. I told you that God has a purpose for everything that happens to us, that if we chose to stick it out, search and press on, we would see dawn, light and joy, that if we did, we would see how beautiful Life is. All our experiences happen for a reason, I said, and one day, they would help us to reach out to other people and help them, like what I was doing now. If it weren't for the fact that I'd been through what you were going through, I wouldn't have felt justified to tell you all that I did. It is brave to die, but it is far braver to live. Hold on, I said.
I left you in the train carriage, slumped against a metal pole. You smiled before I left. I still worry.
Why the many random encounters with strangers, why Prakash, why Chloe, why Saleem, why Hideo, why Joy, David, Aaron, Bos, May and you? Strangers spilling out their sorrows.
That day on the train, I lost my balance when the train jerked forward and as I fell, I reached out to grab someone’s arm. That arm belonged to Aaron, and he started talking to me immediately, told me about his occupation as an officer at the airport, his home in Malaysia, and the finally, his problem with lust, drinking, debauchery. “I can’t help it,” he said, “I really shouldn’t, but God understands right?” No, I said, it isn’t right, and with your attitude, no, God doesn’t understand.
Bos, you text messaged me a week ago and told me you were struggling with unforgiveness. I had only met you once at a hawker centre in the city district. Your colleague striked up a conversation with me first, and I was bothered because I was feeling very down and I remember saying to myself, “Not again, please not another Encounter.” But an Encounter it was, because I asked you why you stopped going to church, and you gave me a superficial answer. I probed, the way I do with strangers, because I knew you were lying. And before I knew it, you, a grown man in your mid-thirties, were stuttering and I saw the tears build up behind your eyes, as you said to me, “You are the first person who has ever brought this up to me. You are the first person whom I’m sharing this to. Yes, I need help. Please do help.” After twenty minutes, we exchanged contacts.
Two days ago I received your text message to inform me you had returned to church, returned to the place where your heart and spirit met, where you could find peace in your struggle with hatred, vehemence, unforgiveness. Thank you, you said.
L, I met you at a bus-stand. You had recognised me from somewhere before. I had never spoken to you before, perhaps we exchanged smiles. Then you spilled to me about your struggle with severe bingeing and your problems with anorexia. I looked at you, stick-thin, with the sharp edges of bone jutting out from all your joints, and sallow, orangey skin and lent you a book. You said it helped. I was happy.
Over dinner tonight, my parents broke to me news that a fifteen year-old had jumped off the 18th storey of an apartment building just yesterday-my ex-apartment, the place I used to live in, my old home of 18 years, the apartment building I had contemplated jumping off from when I was a child, during the time I had clinical depression. We lived on the 20th storey, above a swimming pool.
Why God. Why send me strangers? Why all these random Encounters? None of these Encounters were initiated by me. And each one held a profound sadness, a sadness I am too small to cup.
Why.
We are like accidents on a freeway. Sometimes, in the darkness, we can’t help it but crash head-first. We lose control, get hurt, burned, injured. From the burning trash, sometimes we can’t help but lose the will to climb out from a overturned vehicle already up in flames. But please do, please try. We think this road is the end. We think we can't see the end. But this road is not the end- it leads somewhere, surely it does.
Sometimes we lose direction. We lose middle ground. In our drunkenness, the steering wheel loses control, and we spin into the opposite lane, to the left and to the right, against the grain of traffic. Why is there chaos? Why are there accidents? Sometimes, why do we feel we don’t belong?
When you do decide to climb out of the trash, the glow of the street lamps will soothe you. You become supernatural. You walk to the middle of the road, right at the middle, in the midst of crazy, honking, angry traffic, and find peace. It only takes a decision, a simple, Brave one. With one decision, you can make all things right, find the place which you miss, and find the Life you deserve. Right there in the middle, there are no cars, no maps, no lane arrows. It’s a place called Life. Just a safe place, with only one direction to face.
Upward.
Can you see the glow of the stars, glowing for you, waiting for you to Climb out?
To you today, you're Brave enough, I know. Climb out, be Brave. Live.
Lights are waiting for you.
It's a beautiful road ahead to a beautiful place, I promise.
" A road is nothing in itself. Nobody ever built a road and fenced it in both ends and planted posies along it and beautified it and said, "This is a road." They said, "This is a way, a means towards somewhere."
-Attributes of God, A.W. Tozer
*photo taken by Oy.
