I’ve spent too much of today thinking about someone who can’t find their way out of the darkness. Their darkness.

Oh, not really depression, although it may very well be adding to the situation. But a cornucopia of physical issues and chronic pain have come to define them and suck all joy out of life. They’re totally self-focused on everything that has befallen them and will return to those subjects again and again…and again, because this IS their life. Their ailments.

There is nothing else.

Then I saw a post from a FB friend who is suffering some of the most horrific physical plagues that can befall someone. Not just pain but all sorts of other issues.

And it’s clear to me that she is probably dying sooner rather than later. Her post was all about her gratitude for the multiple ways people are supporting her and how blessed she feels. The smile on her ravaged face brought tears to my eyes.

Person 2 lives in the light, despite their very dark circumstances.

I look at her image, read her story…

and I don’t see the blessings. Or the light.

But what really matters is that she does. And that THIS is HER life: her gratitude. Her appreciation. Her ability to stay positive in a very dark situation, indeed.

These two people are opposite ends of a continuum labeled “how to handle pain & suffering”, and while I hate to judge, I’m only human. So I judge.

Maybe Person 1 can’t find their way out of darkness because of undiagnosed clinical depression. Maybe Person 2 is delusional, I don’t know.

Chronic pain torments those who suffer it.

Depression is also a scourge and a killer.

I ask myself how I’d be in this situation? Maybe not like either of them. Maybe more like my late girlfriends, who didn’t play their health issues out on social media. Who didn’t have a poor pitiful me outlook. Maybe I’d be more private about it. Maybe I’d find a therapist. For sure I’d be grateful for any support directed my way.

Who am I kidding? I don’t know what I’d do.

Everyone is fighting a battle, that I DO know.

And it’s almost impossible for me to watch how people cope without wondering how I would cope.

I care deeply for Person 1 and I know there is nothing I can do that they will be able to receive in any positive way. God knows I’ve tried, over and over.

Person 2 is an online acquaintance but has impacted me more deeply  than decades of knowing Person 1 ever has.

Social media are a scourge at times and my honest feeling is they do more harm than good. But without them I would not have been inspired by Person 2.

I will be gutted when Person 1 dies, and they will, maybe even by their own hand, never having come out of the darkness. My tears will flow for what might have been in a river that may never stop.

When Person 2 dies, and she will, I will celebrate her soul’s freedom from the chains of her affliction and know that the important work she has done here will continue on the other side or maybe in other lives.

Person 1 has some remedial work to do on the other side.

Tears are falling as I write this.

The human condition is sometimes just so hard to bear, isn’t it? The things we see, the things we must endure, the anxiety in the world.

No, I’m not a depressive. I’m just an observer trying to make sense of what I see around me.

Which might just be some kind of sad simulation experiment for a more advanced society.

I know this much: we have to give from our heart-space to those in the darkness, those in need, until it feels like spitting in the wind.

That is our signal, that we must release it to our higher power whose infinite wisdom knows what to do.
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