Riding home on a nearly empty J train and a 300 pound, middle aged man sits next to me and starts quietly crying into his hands. He looked towards me and so I said, Im sending you love. He paused and then proceeded to tell me through tears that after 32 years as a marine, hes just left the service. He repeated several times, Im not a good person. Im not a good person. You dont know what I did over there. He showed me a giant bullet wound in his leg. What am I going to do with myself now? Nobody wants me. I tried to comfort him the best I could. Tried to reflect back the human I saw in front of me-- someone who has been through a lot, experienced a lot of pain-- someone who is, like all of us, imperfect, but enough. I told him that the bullet wound was evidence of all that he had survived. I tried to tell him that hes more than his identity as a soldier, hes a person who is alive, who has many experiences still ahead of him. At the next stop he opened the ripped black shopping bag that was carrying his things and took out a long rope. He threw it out the door of the train. He said he had been close to killing himself. A couple stops later, he got up to leave and said, This is my stop. Hope to see you again. His lips turned into a small smile. And then the doors closed and he left. What a crazy world this is.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 00:56:56 +0000
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