Parapono
Sometimes, I can't sleep because I am haunted, suddenly, inexplicably, by an old memory--something I should have done differently, someone I should have treated differently. I will lie in bed and relive every detail--the woman I turned away some twelve years ago who so desperately wanted more than the casual fling we were having; the student who dropped out, the one I hardly noticed in my classes--reserved and detached, not a problem, but also not interesting, so I didn't bother to try to connect; the decision to miss this baptism, that wedding, at times when I felt disconnected from my family; the moment I signed for my first credit card, and the endless debt I grappled with as a result for much of my life. It's strange how real these memories can be, frought with the same emotions I had at the time, as well as the emotionality that would have been there if I'd known then what I know now. In reality, I signed the papers for that first card in the student center of my college without much thought, though I was excited, and a bit relieved, to have some way of getting more of the things I thought at the time I needed--but in the memory, I am trembling with terror and excitement all at once, as if I can see the damage this will do to my life but don't care, sign anyway.
I am having one of those nights. Someone I used to care about a great deal is going to jail for stealing a large sum of money. I helped put him there; although ultimately I didn't end up being called as a witness, I was on the list, I gave the police information; one might say (he would say, and has said) that I betrayed a friend.
This person was not who I believed him to be--and yet, in many ways, he was. I knew from our first conversation behind the closed door of my office, and in other conversations that happened over the next year, that he was broken in some fundamental way. When he talked about the pain of his childhood, he claimed to be "over it, ready to move on," but it was clear that he wasn't. Without going into too much detail, his pain ended up causing a whole lot of pain in a lot of people's lives.
But I never completely believed my instinct, and tonight, as I rehashed the history of our friendship, tossing and turning, I realized why: I see the same darknesses in myself; I am capable of the same dishonesty. No, I've never deceived or hurt people on the level he did, but didn't I, at times, like him, want to be noticed, special, loved, and haven't I done things I shouldn't have done to get those responses from others? Haven't I, at times, used people, cared for them for the wrong reasons and in the wrong ways, or called my feelings caring when they were something else, something much more selfish? I have needed money, desperately, though I've never stolen--but certainly I might have been capable of doing so if, by luck or blessing, I hadn't always fallen somehow back on my feet, even in the periods of my very worst debt. I haven't always been honest, with myself or others, about the truth of my life, the truth of my intentions or my actions.
A friend of mine, a novelist and deeply spiritual person, once said in a public forum that she thinks all of us are capable of the worst of sins, and if we don't believe that about ourselves we can't possibly be writers, can't possibly expect ourselves to love and nurture the dark intentions, the secret feelings, in our characters. At the time, I thought, she is so wrong--I am not capable of rape, or murder, or beating a partner or a child. But haven't we all been pushed to a limit that scared us, and haven't we all wondered what it was that held us back from going just that much further, becoming just that much uglier?
Last night I was drinking with a friend, undoubtedly to escape all of these feelings of guilt and regret and relief at the end of a very long, drawn out process that led eventually to my former friend's conviction. It was a stupid thing to do, but I did it anyway, fully knowing that with this particular friend, this is how the night would go--one bottle of wine, another, way past the limits we should have kept. I wanted to have conversations about nothing, or at least, conversations that had nothing to do with this long, dramatic narrative that kept turning in my head--but instead, the conversation circled somehow to what it meant to each of us to be spiritual, and his response, in no uncertain terms, was that being a person of God meant being humble, recognizing one's place. I disagreed at the time--humility is important, of course, I argued, but love of neighbor is surely what matters most, surely the only thing, in the end, that matters.
But tonight I am wondering if we might not have both been right. I must have expected, on some level, to love the pain out of my friend, that my unconditional friendship would heal this man who couldn't even understand the basic meaning of love of neighbor--don't steal, don't use. But, as with any realization, overthinking this one is terrifying--what does it mean for my daughter, who I know that on some level I'm trying to save, or for the students whose lives in the last month have fallen apart despite my best attempts to help--the ones who left because of unresolved grief, suicide attempts, mental illness? When a student leaves, it usually means that she is far from any influence I could realistically have on her, and that is of course terrifying to me, but only because I truly believe I can have an influence. What makes me so sure?
And so tonight I replayed those early conversations, when something seemed off, and wondered, of course, what would have happened if I had said, you are a dishonest person, so dishonest you can't even understand your own motivations. You need to get help.
Nothing would have changed, you're thinking. One person's intervention is never enough to turn around a life. But sometimes it is--I've been on both sides of that equation, when one conversation has changed me or another person enough to make us believe that there is some good and right force moving in the universe, powerful enough to create hope.
Or what if, later, I'd told him that others had come to me, overwhelmed with the pain that he'd caused them, and that I was angry? Instead, I simply withdrew from him, slowly untangling my life from his, not answering e-mails, not calling him back, not making eye contact when I saw him in town, not asking for his help with housesitting. Even when he tried to open a conversation, I didn't respond. By that point terrified--he was dangerous, he'd hurt people, including young women, and I had a daughter I didn't want him to get near.
So you traded unconditional love for a dishonest, hurtful, hurting person for the safety of your own child, you're thinking. That's what parents do. And you'd be right about that. My house cannot have the same open door it used to have. I have to be more watchful, careful. I have to step outside drama, at least enough so that it does not enter my home.
Oh, but it did. My daughter overheard conversations, arguments. She saw documents. She knew. And she was afraid, and also mesmerized, by him--paying attention always when he was nearby, even attempting to get close to him. She cared for the woman he was dating (and abusing); she wanted to get involved. But she also saw in him, even from afar, what so many hurting young women saw--a confidence, a kindness--the opposite of humility coupled with some strange version of love. It terrified me that my daughter saw this. It terrified me that I, at one time, had also seen it. It terrified me that it would not be hard for him to get her to...to what? To sleep with him? To drink with him? I don't know. Probably those weren't my fears, at least not tangibly. To love someone like him? That's probably closer.
That I once loved someone like him--an abusive woman I was with for about three years--and that I now love a child who has a history not unlike his, if the details of his childhood are true--these things also terrify me. That I misjudged--or at least didn't listen to my instincts--this also terrifies me.
There is a word in Greek that has no translation: parapono. When a person has one, it means she has a complaint--but that's not all there is to it. It is the kind of complaint that gets into the heart and keeps circling back, over and over, throughout one's life, the complaint that haunts, the complaint that seems somehow to color every interaction, every aspect, of one's life. Mine is that I didn't have a mother after age 13, that my father was absent or abusive or angry or suicidally depressed throughout my childhood.
I can say, as my friend did to me, that I am "over it," and in a way, this is true: I live a functional life, I have integrated these losses (with the help of therapy, reflection, etc.) into the whole fabric of my life's story. I know that my propensity to love people who are capable of hurting me deeply is a part of that story, born out of those griefs, and that I have to watch for this. I know that, born of the same grief, is my capacity for loving the innocent hurting, for wanting to help them (my daughter, some of my students) to find a way to integrate the pain of their childhoods into a life story that is hopeful, purposeful, forward-moving. People like me get into abusive relationships and get used and treated badly, but we also become adoptive parents or social workers or teachers of the hardest, least-reachable, least-success-bound students. Or we have ordinary jobs, but we pay attention to the small ways we can help even the most sane people to make their own beautifully, but not perfectly, quilted story. Our parapona circle over and over, and we live within the story.
That is the difference, I suppose: the desire to save the person who does not want to save himself vs. the desire to see, in the person most stuck, most clearly at the crossroads, the path of hope that is possible. Or, put a different way, it is the difference between trying to help the person who wants to BE his parapono vs. the person who is in a complicated, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes painful dance with hers. I understand, for instance, that my daughter's parapono will circle over and back, always new layers of pain, and then healing, with which to grapple. But fundamentally she wants to move forward; fundamentally, even in the moments or days or weeks when she does not, I have made a commitment to remind her of the forward steps she's taken, of her own possibility.
Is it possible that my former friend is stuck in some ugly, slightly more scary, version of his own parapono? I can't say. I do know it is not my place now, if it ever was, to help him find his way. I write that sentence and feel guilt, but it is true: he is stuck, I can't help until he at least turns a new direction, at least moves a new way.
I worry my friend will, upon his release, continue to wreck lives in even more dramatic ways. I think about the people in my daughter's life who did the same, over and over, and still don't feel any remorse, regret. It is hard to be on the receiving end of that kind of callousness--but it's also less satisfying than one might imagine to get a sincere apology. I remember my father giving me one such apology when, after a nervous breakdown, he was lying on the couch, starving himself--he said for the first time words a man with no humility had never said before, that he hadn't been a good father. When it gets to that point, we end up wanting to take it all back, all the anger and resentment and hatred we felt for so many years--or else we want to accept the apology wholeheartedly and just go on. Neither, of course, if truly possible. (My father and I are closer now than we ever were, than I'd ever imagined we'd be, but it was not because of his apology; he has hurt me since, he still lacks humility and judgment and the ability to see the past or present clearly--but I have changed. I have accepted him as he is, found a way to live with that reality. But I can do it only because there is geographic distance between us, because I'm an adult who has been through years of therapy and reflection).
Maybe at some point I'll feel as if this drama, and for that matter, this friend who, in the end, I knew briefly, at least in the scheme of my 37 years of life, doesn't matter so much after all. What is significant in the end is that this drama has made me look again at the way my parapono continues to play out in my life--to doubt myself and my instincts, but also, in the end, now that I've finished writing this, to trust myself. I did what I needed to do to keep my daughter safe, to keep myself safe. I did what I needed to do to have the energy required to be a teacher and parent and mentor to others who were on a different journey, who were working out their parapona in one way or another, grappling with them honestly. I, too, am grappling with mine honestly--and when I am not, I have the dual-tug of humility and love of neighbor and self to remind me of this.
When Jesus said we ought to love our neighbors as ourselves, there was this assumption that we held ourselves in high esteem and cared for ourselves already. And there was also, implicit in his statement, the humility to realize we, ourselves, are never at the center, that we're inextricably connected to everybody else. What we do with those two impulses in our day-to-day lives speaks to our integrity, as well as to our very real human capacity for failure.
I can go to bed now, finally!
I am having one of those nights. Someone I used to care about a great deal is going to jail for stealing a large sum of money. I helped put him there; although ultimately I didn't end up being called as a witness, I was on the list, I gave the police information; one might say (he would say, and has said) that I betrayed a friend.
This person was not who I believed him to be--and yet, in many ways, he was. I knew from our first conversation behind the closed door of my office, and in other conversations that happened over the next year, that he was broken in some fundamental way. When he talked about the pain of his childhood, he claimed to be "over it, ready to move on," but it was clear that he wasn't. Without going into too much detail, his pain ended up causing a whole lot of pain in a lot of people's lives.
But I never completely believed my instinct, and tonight, as I rehashed the history of our friendship, tossing and turning, I realized why: I see the same darknesses in myself; I am capable of the same dishonesty. No, I've never deceived or hurt people on the level he did, but didn't I, at times, like him, want to be noticed, special, loved, and haven't I done things I shouldn't have done to get those responses from others? Haven't I, at times, used people, cared for them for the wrong reasons and in the wrong ways, or called my feelings caring when they were something else, something much more selfish? I have needed money, desperately, though I've never stolen--but certainly I might have been capable of doing so if, by luck or blessing, I hadn't always fallen somehow back on my feet, even in the periods of my very worst debt. I haven't always been honest, with myself or others, about the truth of my life, the truth of my intentions or my actions.
A friend of mine, a novelist and deeply spiritual person, once said in a public forum that she thinks all of us are capable of the worst of sins, and if we don't believe that about ourselves we can't possibly be writers, can't possibly expect ourselves to love and nurture the dark intentions, the secret feelings, in our characters. At the time, I thought, she is so wrong--I am not capable of rape, or murder, or beating a partner or a child. But haven't we all been pushed to a limit that scared us, and haven't we all wondered what it was that held us back from going just that much further, becoming just that much uglier?
Last night I was drinking with a friend, undoubtedly to escape all of these feelings of guilt and regret and relief at the end of a very long, drawn out process that led eventually to my former friend's conviction. It was a stupid thing to do, but I did it anyway, fully knowing that with this particular friend, this is how the night would go--one bottle of wine, another, way past the limits we should have kept. I wanted to have conversations about nothing, or at least, conversations that had nothing to do with this long, dramatic narrative that kept turning in my head--but instead, the conversation circled somehow to what it meant to each of us to be spiritual, and his response, in no uncertain terms, was that being a person of God meant being humble, recognizing one's place. I disagreed at the time--humility is important, of course, I argued, but love of neighbor is surely what matters most, surely the only thing, in the end, that matters.
But tonight I am wondering if we might not have both been right. I must have expected, on some level, to love the pain out of my friend, that my unconditional friendship would heal this man who couldn't even understand the basic meaning of love of neighbor--don't steal, don't use. But, as with any realization, overthinking this one is terrifying--what does it mean for my daughter, who I know that on some level I'm trying to save, or for the students whose lives in the last month have fallen apart despite my best attempts to help--the ones who left because of unresolved grief, suicide attempts, mental illness? When a student leaves, it usually means that she is far from any influence I could realistically have on her, and that is of course terrifying to me, but only because I truly believe I can have an influence. What makes me so sure?
And so tonight I replayed those early conversations, when something seemed off, and wondered, of course, what would have happened if I had said, you are a dishonest person, so dishonest you can't even understand your own motivations. You need to get help.
Nothing would have changed, you're thinking. One person's intervention is never enough to turn around a life. But sometimes it is--I've been on both sides of that equation, when one conversation has changed me or another person enough to make us believe that there is some good and right force moving in the universe, powerful enough to create hope.
Or what if, later, I'd told him that others had come to me, overwhelmed with the pain that he'd caused them, and that I was angry? Instead, I simply withdrew from him, slowly untangling my life from his, not answering e-mails, not calling him back, not making eye contact when I saw him in town, not asking for his help with housesitting. Even when he tried to open a conversation, I didn't respond. By that point terrified--he was dangerous, he'd hurt people, including young women, and I had a daughter I didn't want him to get near.
So you traded unconditional love for a dishonest, hurtful, hurting person for the safety of your own child, you're thinking. That's what parents do. And you'd be right about that. My house cannot have the same open door it used to have. I have to be more watchful, careful. I have to step outside drama, at least enough so that it does not enter my home.
Oh, but it did. My daughter overheard conversations, arguments. She saw documents. She knew. And she was afraid, and also mesmerized, by him--paying attention always when he was nearby, even attempting to get close to him. She cared for the woman he was dating (and abusing); she wanted to get involved. But she also saw in him, even from afar, what so many hurting young women saw--a confidence, a kindness--the opposite of humility coupled with some strange version of love. It terrified me that my daughter saw this. It terrified me that I, at one time, had also seen it. It terrified me that it would not be hard for him to get her to...to what? To sleep with him? To drink with him? I don't know. Probably those weren't my fears, at least not tangibly. To love someone like him? That's probably closer.
That I once loved someone like him--an abusive woman I was with for about three years--and that I now love a child who has a history not unlike his, if the details of his childhood are true--these things also terrify me. That I misjudged--or at least didn't listen to my instincts--this also terrifies me.
There is a word in Greek that has no translation: parapono. When a person has one, it means she has a complaint--but that's not all there is to it. It is the kind of complaint that gets into the heart and keeps circling back, over and over, throughout one's life, the complaint that haunts, the complaint that seems somehow to color every interaction, every aspect, of one's life. Mine is that I didn't have a mother after age 13, that my father was absent or abusive or angry or suicidally depressed throughout my childhood.
I can say, as my friend did to me, that I am "over it," and in a way, this is true: I live a functional life, I have integrated these losses (with the help of therapy, reflection, etc.) into the whole fabric of my life's story. I know that my propensity to love people who are capable of hurting me deeply is a part of that story, born out of those griefs, and that I have to watch for this. I know that, born of the same grief, is my capacity for loving the innocent hurting, for wanting to help them (my daughter, some of my students) to find a way to integrate the pain of their childhoods into a life story that is hopeful, purposeful, forward-moving. People like me get into abusive relationships and get used and treated badly, but we also become adoptive parents or social workers or teachers of the hardest, least-reachable, least-success-bound students. Or we have ordinary jobs, but we pay attention to the small ways we can help even the most sane people to make their own beautifully, but not perfectly, quilted story. Our parapona circle over and over, and we live within the story.
That is the difference, I suppose: the desire to save the person who does not want to save himself vs. the desire to see, in the person most stuck, most clearly at the crossroads, the path of hope that is possible. Or, put a different way, it is the difference between trying to help the person who wants to BE his parapono vs. the person who is in a complicated, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes painful dance with hers. I understand, for instance, that my daughter's parapono will circle over and back, always new layers of pain, and then healing, with which to grapple. But fundamentally she wants to move forward; fundamentally, even in the moments or days or weeks when she does not, I have made a commitment to remind her of the forward steps she's taken, of her own possibility.
Is it possible that my former friend is stuck in some ugly, slightly more scary, version of his own parapono? I can't say. I do know it is not my place now, if it ever was, to help him find his way. I write that sentence and feel guilt, but it is true: he is stuck, I can't help until he at least turns a new direction, at least moves a new way.
I worry my friend will, upon his release, continue to wreck lives in even more dramatic ways. I think about the people in my daughter's life who did the same, over and over, and still don't feel any remorse, regret. It is hard to be on the receiving end of that kind of callousness--but it's also less satisfying than one might imagine to get a sincere apology. I remember my father giving me one such apology when, after a nervous breakdown, he was lying on the couch, starving himself--he said for the first time words a man with no humility had never said before, that he hadn't been a good father. When it gets to that point, we end up wanting to take it all back, all the anger and resentment and hatred we felt for so many years--or else we want to accept the apology wholeheartedly and just go on. Neither, of course, if truly possible. (My father and I are closer now than we ever were, than I'd ever imagined we'd be, but it was not because of his apology; he has hurt me since, he still lacks humility and judgment and the ability to see the past or present clearly--but I have changed. I have accepted him as he is, found a way to live with that reality. But I can do it only because there is geographic distance between us, because I'm an adult who has been through years of therapy and reflection).
Maybe at some point I'll feel as if this drama, and for that matter, this friend who, in the end, I knew briefly, at least in the scheme of my 37 years of life, doesn't matter so much after all. What is significant in the end is that this drama has made me look again at the way my parapono continues to play out in my life--to doubt myself and my instincts, but also, in the end, now that I've finished writing this, to trust myself. I did what I needed to do to keep my daughter safe, to keep myself safe. I did what I needed to do to have the energy required to be a teacher and parent and mentor to others who were on a different journey, who were working out their parapona in one way or another, grappling with them honestly. I, too, am grappling with mine honestly--and when I am not, I have the dual-tug of humility and love of neighbor and self to remind me of this.
When Jesus said we ought to love our neighbors as ourselves, there was this assumption that we held ourselves in high esteem and cared for ourselves already. And there was also, implicit in his statement, the humility to realize we, ourselves, are never at the center, that we're inextricably connected to everybody else. What we do with those two impulses in our day-to-day lives speaks to our integrity, as well as to our very real human capacity for failure.
I can go to bed now, finally!
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