Her tears were watery magnifiers – incredible resolve damming a river – making her impossibly blue eyes look bigger and bluer. I hadn’t known when we made our plans the conversation would go so deep, so fast. Right about then my Belgian waffle arrived, gloriously buried under an avalanche of berries and cream. I shoveled breakfast in while her pain trickled out.
Our friendship was still in its infancy. Birthed from circumstance – both of us new to town and starting over at mid-life – we needed one another. That will quicken a friendship like few things can, but the more time we spent together the more I was convinced our circumstances only provided us opportunity–we liked each other and would have bonded regardless of time or place.
Rolling up our sleeves and comparing scars, war stories began to tumble. I had an intimate knowledge of the hurt she described – rejection, and what felt like betrayal from people she had once called friend. Her pain was my own.
These are the things that can bolster a new friendship. They are battle’s redemption.
***
Sometimes I envision satan as this maniacal little man, rubbing his scaly hands together and wearing a wicked, fangy grin. He’s grotesque and wormy, self satisfied and dark, clothed in evil and arrogance and dread. His minions are despicable, too, slobbery and snarly and powerless to do anything but follow the dark. Their favorite taste is defeat of human heart and they know a million ways to take you down.
But mostly, I wonder if satan just wound things up in the garden and then left us to our own devices. I’m certain that’s the case at least some of the time.
How much of your misery lives inside your head?
How much of your misery lives only inside your head? Imagination’s conjuring, born of (mostly errant) assumption and past experience.
Whether it’s the devil’s machination or my own, one thing does me in like few others:
Please click to continue reading T, published there earlier this week. I’m continuing with my plan to offer content for my 31 Days in October/A Parent’s Guide for College-bound Students during the weekdays and link-love and intros to my posts published elsewhere on weekends.
