April 13, 2016: No Words

No words.  I am still reeling from the death of one of the characters in All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr.  

The book is small vignettes - the chronology initially out of sequence, but moves forward and backward in time until they meet and move forward from that point on.  The words were so strong that I kept seeing them play out in the way a foreign art film might: images, few words, but images that appear, stay, and then move to others.  The flick of an eyelash, the color of a dulled sky, descriptions that made my heart pour open and left me weak with no thoughts present.  Only emotion.  A sad heart.  Weeping for my fellow humans and the atrocities that are committed.  How can we be so?  It left me aching for those who are victims, and aching that it seems so difficult for us to draw lines in the sand, offering excuses rather than saying no.  And then aching for those who did say "no" and suffered the dire consequences, but perhaps died feeling like they had lived.  I don't know.  I simultaneously felt sick and empowered at the same time.

This left me vulnerable in a way that was good, for I had to meet with a student who verbally went off on one of my faculty in front of her peers in the classroom. 

Oy.  She was so upset and out of control that she really doesn't seem to understand how she was perceived, nor does she remember it the way that the teacher does.  I don't know how her peers perceived it.  All of them victims - her peers and teacher victims of her unharnessed and unregulated tantrum, and she of herself - victim of her inability to reign herself in.  

And yet, her tears...her distress...her anxiety did not sway me.  "I sort of lost it," she said.  "No," I replied.  You did lose it.  No sort of - you lost it."  I wanted her to know that this pattern of losing it, apologizing, feeling ashamed and embarrassed and disappointed, and then moving on was not going to happen this time.  The pattern would stop - or at least not be functional - in this situation. 

I know it was right action.  For me to have smoothed things over - to have accepted her apology and feelings of remorse - was to be less than honest.  It reminded me of the "abused" forgiving the "abuser"...the abuser's remorse is so strong, and they are so busy beating themselves up, that the abused feels there is little left to do but forgive the one that hurt them.   And so goes the pattern...

I know not yet what will happen.  I will be reporting this to the Student Affairs office.  Her behavior broke at least 4 of the 20+ behavioral guidelines for students on campus.  It needs reporting.  All I know is that the book somehow prepared me to stay in an open, vulnerable place - and that coming from "there" was what gave me the strength to say "stop."  

With all of the work that I have done over the past several many years...with my learning and practice in avoiding "idiot compassion" and naming what is there with true compassion...well, I feel like I passed a final exam of some sort today.  And while I still feel the emotion of it all - am still living in that soft tender spot of being human - I feel proud and humbled and human.  I can't think of a better place to be.

And this morning?  My daughter called.  The bunny that lived in our yard last summer, and looked like some sort of adolescent, seems to have had at least one baby, which peeked at my daughter from behind the kyak that leans up against the fence.  

And are you seeing Simba standing on Pride Rock,

lifting his new born baby for all to see?...With the "Circle of Life" playing in the background?  I know I did...it brought me to tears this morning, hearing the joy and wonder and thrill in my daughter's voice at her discovery of the new bunny.  And can I say?  I'm not overly fond of bunnies - yet I still got a lump in my throat when she told me.

And now, I am tired.  Zzzzzzzzzzzz.........