The Invisible Man

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 1,000^th 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 

wanted to give the man food, yes; but beyond that, I wanted him to receive an important message- one that everybody needs to hear, and few people stop long enough to communicate. The message is “I see you and I care about you”. This is a simple message that I suspect this man hadn’t heard in a long time, if ever.  I left the bag of fruit at the feet of the invisible man and walked back across the highway with tears in my eyes. For the next few kilometers, I thought about the man and with each question that popped into my head, my heart broke a little bit more. Does he have anyone to take care of him? Where is his family? Does his family see him like this? Has he hurt anybody? How long can he live like this? Will anyone ever help him? Has he ever experienced happiness?

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

Another man among the rubbish under a bridge

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.

 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.