My Beautiful Enemy

The night time sky was repeatedly fractured with tremendous bolts of lightening. I was sitting on my back deck last night watching with my feet propped on the railing, thankful that I had replaced the umbrella. The old one had a mental stem and this one was wooden. The last thing that I needed was to be sitting under a lightening rod. I've had enough going on in my life.

I was pondering the weekend which had been filled with family and friends and serendipity. On Sunday evening Goddess and I are alone. Well, I am alone. Goddess is hiding at the bottom of the stairs from the lightening. And the kids have gone home. My friends are all at their places. And serendipity can disappear at a moments notice in the same way that she comes in the first place.

One of the things that happens to many of us is that Monday steals part of Sunday and we find ourselves gearing up for work already. I was because I know the things that I will be dealing with today. They began last week with desperate phone calls and meetings from families who were watching loved ones be repossessed by their demons. These were heart wrenching conversations full of desperation. They were asking me to work miracles.

But mental illness is reclaiming one and the other is reclaiming his allegeance to crack cocaine and there is little that anyone can do. I heard from both families over the weekend and could hear the hope draining out of their voices as I mostly listened and said that we would be there for them when the time is right.

So I am gearing up already because I know that the time will not be right any time soon and the families will need help managing through replacing hope with loss. I've learned all about loss. The trick is replacing it with better things than before.

It's not that there isn't anything that we can two for these two repossessed people, just that they have to be the ones asking. Not their families. And the allures of a crazed mind or highs of crack cocaine make for beautiful enemies.

Over the weekend a friend I adore told me that it took her two days to read a story that I had written about three little blond haired girls whose lips were stained with Kool-Aid as they sat in the lobby of Unionb Mission and witnessed their sobbing mother and sick brother begging for help. She asked me how I could keep doing what I do?

Well, that Mom and those three little girls and their baby brother are all doing fine today. They live in our permanent supportive housing program and are thriving. Sometimes we can work miracles. So we get high from these moments and they help us get through the devestation of the losses.

All of these images are in my head as I run through the fog this morning. Like the lightening was perfect for the conclusion of an emotional weekend, the fog is perfect for a Monday that is likely to be sad business.

I am still thinking these things as I climb into my outdoor shower and wash away the thoughts so that I can take the weight of the world on my shoulders for a little while longer. Then I notice that I have forgotten my towel. I will have to streak into the house.

Christ! It's a Monday.