303. The Fullness Of Your Humanity

When I first met you, you didn’t seem real. Before me was the outline of a person, the behaviours of a person, but not the substance of a person.

You always did what you were expected to do. You always talked how you were expected to talk. You didn’t seem to care about anything except what was expected by others. When no one expected anything from you, it was almost like you stopped existing altogether.

Even so, you never seemed especially sad or depressed. You did everything with a cheerful disposition, and you looked happy when I would talk to you. It was as though you were living a perfectly adequate life, completely free of both struggle and excitement.

Then one day everything went wrong. There was a great disaster, one no one could have anticipated. You suddenly faced not just struggle but also suffering and loss. You seemed to weather the storm for a time, but then it must have become too much. You broke down in front of me in screaming howls, tears flowing down your face.

When I tried to comfort you, you told me you felt alone, you felt scared, you felt it was all too much. You told me you couldn’t bear it any longer, that you simply could not do it. I was shocked, for I had never heard you say anything before with such intensity and conviction.

I told you that everything would work out, and you denied it. I told you that you were strong, and you denied it. I told you that we would get through this, and you denied it. I kept talking despite your refusals, trying to offer what little support I could.

Finally you told me you wanted to sleep, so I left. I was able to think more clearly then, and I realized the source of the hollowness I’d seen in you before. You had constructed so many walls, so many layers of defences, that your true self never made it to the surface. Your sadness and your worries were buried so deeply that they were visible to no one, perhaps not even yourself.

It was only when the extraordinary happened that the walls collapsed and you showed yourself. In that moment, I first encountered the truth of you. I did not see you as less because you were weak and scared. On the contrary, I saw you as so much more than ever before. I saw your complexity and the fullness of your humanity. And I knew then that I loved you.