Round Here

This morning I had the privilege of meeting and talking with a woman who has had, by all accounts, a very difficult life. A life plagued by alcoholism, abuse, poverty, profound depression, periods of homelessness, heartbreak... As she shared openly about her life, I felt compelled to do the same. In so many ways, I am more fortunate than she. I've never known poverty, and I've always had a home. But alcoholism? Abuse? Depression? Heartbreak? Those I've known all too well.

I'm grateful to be in a place now where I'm largely liberated from all that heartbreak, and I think I'm at the point where I no longer wish my life had gone differently. In Tibet, the monks and nuns are said to offer up this prayer: "Grant that I might have enough suffering to awaken in me the deepest possible compassion and wisdom." Sitting at the table with this woman, and really hearing her story in a way that only a person who had lived a part of it could, in a strange way, I felt grateful for my suffering. Without it, I don't think I could have offered her what she needed in the same way: an open heart, empathy, and compassion.

The song that came to me on my bike ride home was this one, which was on repeat for me when I was wrestling with depression both in a low grade way in college, and in a big way, after the birth of my second child.

For me, this was always the most compelling part of the song, and when my internal jukebox played it tonight, I sent up a little prayer that someone, or something, will catch the woman I met today when next she's falling, because it seems inevitable it will happen again:

She says "it's only in my head"

She says "Shhhhh I know it's only in my head"

But the girl in the car in the parking lot

Says "Man you should try to take a shot

Can't you see my walls are crumbling?"

Then she looks up at the building

Says she's thinking of jumping

She says she's tired of life

She must be tired of something

Round here she's always on my mind

Round here hey man got lots of time

Round here we're never sent to bed early

and nobody makes us wait

Round here we stay up very, very, very, very late oh

I can't see nothing... nothing round here

Will you catch me if I'm falling

Will you catch me if I'm falling

Will you catch me cause I'm falling down on you

I said I'm under the gun around here

I'm innocent, I'm under the gun around here

And I can't see nothing

Nothing

Round here