Missed Door Knocks

 

Where Does Sadness Go, after it leaves? Does Sadness ever leave?

 I will say emphatically, “No”. No, sadness never leaves completely. It’s that we cover it up, like we do at other times with happiness, anger, remorse, joy, along with other emotions to protect ourselves and perhaps many times to protect others.

Sadness that underlies ‘everything’ in our lives, even those of great faith and/or Eastern mindfulness thinking. It’s that we work our way around it.  Most of us, to socialize, to work, to be acceptable—most of us most times adhere to an unwritten code of conduct of hiding how we truly feel. Some are better at it than others, for whatever reason. It truly doesn’t matter why. Then we have those who are unabashed, unfettered who decide to dump with no apparent remorsefulness, because they feel they are owed. I’ll tell you this, maybe we are all owed. Something somewhere, some answer—but maybe not.

Maybe we don’t need the answers we want. Or we will receive them when we’ve cut off communications with receiving those answers unwittingly—in turn we don’t receive the answers when they are offered to us.

Many times, I’ve wanted to cut off communications, yet the most important communications I have not. Those communications are from within and perhaps of a divine nature.

Sometime in the last two weeks I’ve attempted to reach out to people. I do this here and there, as I’ve done since I was aged eleven. That’s now well over fifty years of such practice. I’ve asked myself why I do this, when I know no one will reciprocate. But you see I have hoped that the phone will ring, and I’ll hear another person I know on the other end of the phone.  However, nearly 99% of the time, no one calls me back.

When I was aged eleven, twelve and thirteen, I really needed some form of communication. So, back then in the early to mid-1970’s, I’d ride my bike back three or more miles to our old home that we’d moved from to find a friendly face. Nearly 90%, it wasn’t there. I’d knock on doors to find my old friends not home or moved or sometimes no one answered the door as I’d heard a dog bark. I’d ride my bike around town looking for someone, anyone in a town of nearly 20,000 residents, having 2.3+ square miles of land—Most times there was no one I knew in sight.

After an hour or two searching for old friends, I’d ride my bike back home to our new town of about 4,500—where much of the upper middle class and the wealthy resided. Something I wasn’t. Our family was of a lower-middle class income. And if today were yesterday, my mother would have had benefits, and the ability to keep her home, even after my dad walked out. My mom would have had the services for her mental and physical illnesses properly handled or at least handled by some professional who cared. My dad would’ve had to pay for proper, on time child support. What a world it would’ve been for her and my sister.  Oh, they would’ve had other problems, but those would’ve paled in comparison to the ones they were inflicted with.

I digress, this is about caring, and connectivity.  I’ve learned that when I reach out, there most likely will never be an answer. So, I have learned to reach out less and less throughout the decades. It’s less painful that way. You learn that people will always disappoint you, betray you and find fault with you in front of you, and behind you.  That’s just the way people are. I’ve begun to learn repeatedly that people have excuses for their actions and inactions. Just like service and faith in something greater than ourselves—people make excuses to not give service, to not have real faith. I had a physical therapist who was a friend tell me so, one day years ago in my office.  It was after I’d had major surgery without anesthetics, I used prayer instead for eighty minutes. I did not think too much of it, for I’d survived the un-survival here and there prior to that. I’d had people who wanted to murder me, I was threatened more than a couple times. I just did the right thing and kept moving forward. I was asked last year by a former US Marshall if I carried. “No.” He was stunned. He told me that I should.  Months later I had a private conversation with another federal agent in my backyard he asked me last year, “Wait. You’ve not been in ‘witness-protection’?” I replied, “Nope.” I continued, “No one really cares anyway.” You see it’s those unopened door knocks, those phone calls.---Jody-Lynn Reicher