Sunday, June 20, 2010

The street

I came to slowly…it was a Wednesday afternoon.

The man told me that I should be dead. I struggled to compose myself and to remember, but my last recollection was of lying on the wrong side of a locked door, at a time when I thought everyone who knew me would be gone for a while. The rest was fuzzy.

After three bottles of antidepressants and a handful of blood pressure medication, this was my punishment. This man with a wilted mustache and a bad haircut was going to remind me how lucky I was to be alive, and he was going to fill me in on the true meaning of life.

I was hooked up to machines. My motion was restricted, spare left and right movements of my head. Regardless, he implored me to look out the window. Our view was of a congested east Memphis street on a gray winter day.

“Don’t you see, don’t you SEE?”

“See what?”

“Don’t you see that life is ugly and meaningless? Without the Lord, Jesus Christ, life has no meaning. Life is ugly and dark. Life is shallow and petty. If you don’t find strength in Christ, you will be dead by this time next year.”

Though this was nearly eighteen years ago, I sometimes wish I could find that guy and shake his hand. Though his reverse psychology was unintended, I remember thinking that perhaps there was more to life than the bleak vision that clouded his perception. As the days progressed, my resolve to straighten out my life grew stronger, yet this man’s determination that my only route to salvation was a spiritual one never faded. I tossed aside a Bible that he left on my bed, and I was sentenced to another month of treatment as punishment. Though I began eating again and faced therapy with an air of determination and resolve, he still offered me only one prognosis…damned…and dead.

Oh, little man with the sad mustache, do you still see only crowded, lonely streets?

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