dead weight

Have you ever watched a documentary on television with really disturbing subject matter? One, in which, you see an ugly side of life, where the sadness and misery is so thick that is has a weight. A story with no happy ending, but you continue to watch, knowing that the circumstances will never improve. Have you ever witnessed a home with no joy and no peace? Have you see a couple tear into each other with no regard to their children, who are absorbing every single insult. Have you ever walked into a home where the ugliness and misery is palpable? Ever find yourself being the one bright light that a person clings to in the midst of all that sadness? Have you ever been part of that person’s day that they “live for” and it doesn’t involve their spouse or their children, but rather disconnecting from their horrible life thru drugs? How may hours did I spend sitting in that filth counting the minutes until I could return to my own safe home? The tighter her grip on my time the more my resentment would grow. What the true mystery is why I put this person’s life before my own. What was it that kept this dead weight around my neck? What I saw in that house made me want to come home and take a hot shower. How can a person live like that? With no love, no respect, no joy, no sense that things will ever get better. And the truth is that they won’t get any better. Is it that realization of this fact that keeps one person down in the mud, living in the filth, one day of sadness blending into another?

When I was a girl I wanted to adopt a 3 legged dog, blind in one eye, with only one ear. I knew that if I didn’t take this dog home and love it that no one would, but the truth is that sometimes a sick ugly dog needs to be put out of his misery. As adults we need to pick ourselves up and make a fresh start. In my case, I needed to go home and be with my own children, and revel in their happiness.