Life is Indeed Strange
By: OriginalClevelandTeabagger
Published On: 10/5/2007 12:02:43 AM
As I was strolling down the avenue yesterday afternoon I spotted a woman who I had previously met in AA. She looks very similar to my brother's girlfriend Bridget. Moments after seeing this woman who previously listened to my wailing and heart-felt, multiple regrets spaning literally decades, my mind raced back to the night of my father's burial. I was beside myself with grief; more so, I think, because I was mourning a relationship that never was. I was berated for years and abused physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually by my father and ended up the classical product of a bad environment. I was filled with hate of all kinds as a direct result of my upbringing but had a change of heart when I had the gall to take a black man home to me the captors of bodies and spirits. That was years earlier and I was now a new man with new beliefs. I reached for Bridget's arm and she turned away. I remember feeling that Bridget was cold, if not selfish, with her emotions. But, as I was recalling that night, I thought of my father no longer angry and enraged for the indignities and brutalities committed against my siblings and I, but actually had empathy for him for the first time. What had happened to my father that made him so violent, distant and angry. Had I been any better than he? And then my cerebral cortex awoke and I realized my new feelings of empathy was probably a result of a poem that at first glance seems consumed with anger but ends up with a rededication to fight the voices in my head that just say "give up all hope." By the end of my performance of the same poem last night, I was crying and sobbing and the healing began anew. A black man was sobbing and although he was straight and I queer, we hugged one another and felt and soothed each other's pain. It was truly a magical evening...
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