The Kindness of Strangers

I am a Buddhist. I believe in it even when I am so far fallen from my path… And I truly truly am… fallen…

Meet anger with kindness… it is the only thing that will dissolve it.

That is a teaching. Not in the right words, but that’s the gist of it.

I had to see my doctor today, my therapist. I didn’t want to tell her. I don’t cry in therapy. If I had to tell her, I would cry. So I wrote it. I wrote everything.

She read just some of it, got the gist… she said… “Oh, I’m so sorry…”

Dammit! Don’t be nice to me! I was all happily surly and silent and told her I wasn’t going to talk.

I came home. I wrote my professor to tell him what’s going on. I told him I don’t need any accommodations or anything I just wanted to let him know because I might end up dropping out.

He hardly knows me. It’s only the second week. It’s an online class.

He wrote me back that he didn’t want me to have to drop out. I had come too far. He is thinking of and praying for me and my family. He will work with me. Turn in my homework on Saturday instead of Wednesday this week, if I can’t get my observation hours done, we’ll work out a way to do them later…

I crumbled.

I sobbed until I couldn’t breathe, until I was shaking all over my body.

I sobbed and cried and wailed and I’m so so tired.

And I couldn’t find my anger anymore.

Dammit.