We
took a rest day today. Ann and I sat in our dingy little hostel room and did
nothing all day until we were too hungry to stay put and we had to go out into
the world. Though, I didn’t really do nothing. I
watched ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ for the 1,000th time and
talked to my family for an hour. I’m also re-growing skin on my toe (which is hard work,
believe me). I’ve never seen a blister this bad. When it first developed a few
days ago, I looked at my toe and almost immediately threw up. So, needless to
say, it was nice to not walk on my zombie foot again today. It is healing, and
today is the first day since the blister developed that I can walk without
limping. As Ann
worked on her daily blog (Annimal is much better at writing every day than I
am. Consistency is a virtue that I lack) she turned to me and asked me a
question. She asked which experience was more difficult for me: this past week,
or the second day of the journey when I was emotional, tired, and hung-over.
After giving it thorough thought, I decided that this past
week was more
miserable because it was actual physical misery. Picture this. On the cold day
that my blister started, we walked 26 kilometers in the rain. As I outlined
in my previous post, we couldn’t find a hotel or even a warm restaurant to sit
in while we figured out what to do. I was drenched, freezing, and saw no relief
in the immediate future. Beyond that, I didn’t have the language skills to help
the situation. The best thing I could do was sit shivering in my wet clothes in
the dark, chilly, concrete restaurant and wait for Ann to sort it out. There
was literally nothing I could do to help my situation improve. What an awful
feeling that was. Through my misery, I gained more of something valuable. It’s
something the world needs more of; it’s empathy. On the morning of the really
bad day- before my own misery set in- I saw a man whom nobody else saw. He was
crouched on the side of the highway opposite us. At first I
thought he was a pile of rubbish, as there are many of those near the highway.
Contrary to this belief, he wasn’t rubbish. I saw the man with a dirty blanket
draped over him, his head hung low and covered by long, dark hair that was
matted over his face. I called ahead to Ann, who stopped for me to untie our
bag of fruit from her trailer. I crossed the highway and walked up to the heap
of a man. He didn’t lift his head when I approached. Without knowing a thing
about him, I could see that this was a human who was defeated by life. As I got
closer, I saw that under the blanket the man was completely naked. I began to
feel afraid. I have enough experience with people with mental illness to know
that you can never be too sure what his or her next move might be. But I
couldn’t walk away without completing my mission. I One of the invisible people we've seen |
My last course in college was a shadow-ship at a
psychiatric penitentiary for the ‘criminally insane’- a state hospital in
California. When I saw the naked man on the highway, I was reminded of the men
I met that summer in California. Many of the men at the penitentiary wanted so desperately
to get out of there and to go home. But there were a few who openly expressed
that they had no desire to leave the hospital because there they were provided
with “three hots and a cot” - three hot meals and a warm place to sleep at
night. They had previously experienced the horrors of being homeless, hungry,
and, in some
cases, psychotic on the street. They knew what it felt like to be
invisible and they saw the psychiatric penitentiary as a haven from that. It’s
impossible for me to imagine a life experience so terrible that I would rather dwell
in a prison. It breaks my heart to try. All I can say that I’ve been wet, cold,
and unable to help myself. And I can tell you that it sucks. really. bad.
Another man among the rubbish under a bridge |
When we finally got to a hotel room at
the end of our miserable day, I cried about it. The feelings of helplessness
and despair had shaken me. Thankfully, I have not experienced much of this in my
life, so these are feelings that are both unfamiliar and unsettling to me. I’d
like to keep it that way, if possible.
I’m
not sure why the invisible man struck my heart so deeply. I don’t have answers
or big political ideas to solve this problem. I don’t even have much of an
encouraging message. I suppose being heartbroken sometimes is simply part of the mystery
of this trip…the mystery of life. We can choose to ignore it, or we can immerse
ourselves in the discomfort, feel it, and let it teach us to be more
empathetic. Of course, I choose the latter. Next time you’re faced with this
choice, I hope you will too.
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