I see you all the time. You probably think I don’t notice you, because no one else in the world does. But I do. I see you on the fringes of the schoolyard, just after school’s let out and you’re hoping no one will notice you don’t have any friends waving at you for the see-you-tomorrow. I see you walking alone down the neighborhood sidewalk while those others are laughing ahead of you, the way you turn to look behind you and drop your head when you meet a person’s eyes because those ones who should be friends aren’t waiting up or inviting you to share the sidewalk with them. I see you standing at the bus stop, fidgeting on your feet while the teens in front of you snap their gum and talk about what they did last night.
But mostly I see you online. Mostly I see you commenting on threads, adding little or no value but only finger filth, lining up your figurative shotgun and pulling the trigger because it makes you feel better to get it all out there like that. They wouldn’t like you, anyway, if you tried to be someone other than this.
Mostly I feel the wound your words turn red.
And for a while I felt angry about you and your shots. I felt angry that a girl could put herself out there on the Internet, this place with so much potential to build community between different cultures and age groups and genders, only to be ripped down to the floor and gifted a black eye or a swollen mouth or just a bruise on the gut no one can see. At first I wanted to lash right back out and hurt where you had hurt and punch where you’d pouched and knock asunder like you’d knocked asunder.
And then I remembered something I’ve learned in my life so far, mostly because I’m a wife and a mother and a friend and a sister and a daughter.
We hurt when we are most hurting. We need love when we are most unlovable. We need kind people when we are most unlike a kind person.
There is something mysteriously powerful that happens when kindness meets cruelty, you see. I’ve seen it in my marriage. Those moments when I most want to strangle a dream in a man’s heart or throw out those words we sorted through last time or become the ugly person I feel balled up inside, those moments when I’m just so angry the heat of my head might burn the whole house down, and I would gladly watch the purge, those moments when hate meets love, are some of the most life-changing moments I’ve ever experienced. If I’ve failed and become that ugly person I really don’t, at the heart of me, want to be, and my husband meets that person with open arms and an understanding heart and overwhelming love, all those walls come crashing down.
So I started looking at your profiles. Not in a stalkerish way, but in an I’m-really-interested-in-knowing-you way. And do you know what I found? You are different, but you are all the same.
Not despicable, just passed over. Not overtly cruel, just doing what you know best to do. Not trying to be hated. Wanting to be loved.
Some of you didn’t grow up in homes with a mom like I try to be to my boys, and so you come out in droves when I’ve written something celebrating mothers, because you want to make sure I know there are a whole lot of sh*tty mothers out there. And I know this. There are. I didn’t have one, thank God, but I’ve walked with friends and family through the healing of their own traumatic childhoods with their mothers. And fathers.
Some of you don’t understand the beauty of true relationships, and so when I write about my big family, you come out to tell me that maybe I should have had an abortion or two or six, rather than populate this planet with more awful humans, and I’m so sorry that you’ve had such a hard time finding what we are all meant to find in community and friendship and love.
Some of you just don’t know what else to say or how else to say it, because you never had a model of good communication in your life and, in fact, only had someone berating you and criticizing you and making you feel like less than a person at every turn, and do I possibly know what that feels like? Could I possibly know how hard it is to recover from trauma like that? Could I excuse you for trying?
You come from different places, but you are all the same. So I want you to know the freedom I have uncovered in my life so far: There is somewhere you belong.
But the thing about belonging is you have to accept it. You have to believe it. You have to know it’s yours. And if you don’t, there are no words in the world a person can repeat often enough in just the right tone that will make any difference at all. You will never feel like you belong completely until you accept that gift.
It’s not easy to accept our belonging. I know. It’s scary to get involved in relationships, to open up enough to let people see the real us, all the way down to the deep parts we would rather hide away because maybe they won’t like us anymore if we open that door, the one where child abuse hides or where an unplanned pregnancy hides or where alcohol addiction hides or where homosexuality hides.
Belonging is a fundamental need. We need it as children, and some of us, tragically, don’t find it then. We need it as teens, and sometimes that’s the season when it’s most elusive. We still need it when we’re all the way grown.
I know how lonely it gets on the fringes. I used to keep myself there, because I was hurt badly by some important people in my life, and I just didn’t know if I could trust any of the other important people in my life. Because of the shield I wrapped around myself, I never really felt like I belonged anywhere. And because I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere, I didn’t let love penetrate my heart the way it’s supposed to. I didn’t let it beat my heart tender. I didn’t let it soften the hard.
I hurt people in that strong, stoic, unaffected place. I hurt them with words and looks and ill-aimed shots of my own. So we are not so very different, you see.
Every shot we take is just a cry for help. Help me become better. Help me know love. Help me belong.
When I see you now, bleeding on the Internet, hiding behind your anonymous comments, more often than not, I stop and I think and I observe. Most of all I see. I see you. I see your value. I see what you could be, if you let belonging crush that metal shield you’ve put on.
So please. Open wide. Let us see you. We won’t laugh or point or run away. We will show you that you belong.
We don’t have to be like anyone else to belong. We just have to be ourselves.
Just be you. And let us show you just what love can do.
