The Bottom.

(For your reference, it’s 2:38am.)

I love my 2nd grade teacher. She was one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met. And At 38, it’s amazing that I still have a connection to her. As a prior foster child at the time, meaningful connections were few and far in between. I cherished them.

These days, I find myself subconsciously making connections to anyone who will listen to me, because, well, no one really listens to foster children. No one (It must be ingrained in my subpar DNA). In high school, undergrad, and grad school, I made connections to girls who depicted shadows of womanhood, to men who portrayed statues of fatherhood, and to friends who stood closer than brothers.

But life always, always teaches us that time slows down for no one. No man. And those people eventually move on. They have lives. Families. They do their part in your life and they move on to the next phase of life.

And they’re still beautiful people. Just no longer beautiful in your life. So, the pieces are left for you to pick up. The pieces were left for me to pick up.

And I picked up those pieces. and they are pieces indeed.

..

I pick up pieces at 2am, when I have nightmares.

At 6pm when the work day made no sense and people make it obvious that your struggles are of no concern to them.

At the bottom of the bottles that numb the genetic cycle of drunkenness and death. And anger.

At the intersection of inquisitiveness and selective ignorance.

The tumultuous times in life always force a recollection and a misery of not having those significant people who no longer dwell in their significance to you. They’ve moved on.

But, I need them. I know that. But YHWH uses them. And that forces them to move on. Because he has his thing - and his plan that never makes fucking sense to mere, mortal humans like me most of the time.

But here I am. At the bottom of the bottom.

And that’s ok.

And for you, it’s ok too.