I take pills to help me sleep at night. It’s not anything crazy. My doctor recommends them, and they are not habit forming. I take them almost every night.
The crazy thing is though that I don’t suffer from insomnia. I don’t lie awake at night for hours, restless, fatigued but awake. My problem actually occurs before I fall asleep in the hours after the kids go to bed but before I do. The jitters strike. Well, I guess they are there most of the time, but they are most noticeable in the quiet hours. I can’t get settled. I can’t get peaceful. I can’t shut the shakiness off.
Lately, however, this has started to bother me a little bit as it reminds me of a conversation I once had.
See years ago, someone told me that I didn’t have any armor. He told me that most people have a protective armor around their hearts. It lets some of the good in, but it keeps the bad from stinging so much. It’s a boundary between a person and the world. It’s important.
I still remember the moment I was told that because I felt like finally, finally someone was seeing me. Someone saw the pain and the wounds and the raw heart. I felt like I no longer had to scream quite as loudly. I no longer had to profess so strongly. Because finally I was seen.
But on the other hand, I didn’t necessarily like this. I didn’t want to be sensitive. I didn’t want to be empathetic. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to be the person who put goals first. I wanted to be the strong person who didn’t need anybody else. And I surely, absolutely surely did not want to feel the pain and the anxiety that comes with living without a shield. It hurt too much.
It hurt way too much.
I’ve been thinking about the Sandy Hook tragedy lately. I’ve been thinking about the first responders who ran into the school not knowing if they would be sprayed with bullets. I thought of the administrators who tried to stop the gunman. I thought of their bravery and their sacrifice and their nerves of steel.
But then I also thought about the story of one teacher. She had herself and her kids locked inside a bathroom or some other small room, and she said he just kept repeating, “I love you. I love you” over and over again to her kids. She said she did this because if they were going to die she didn’t want their last experience in this world to be violence and fear. She wanted it to be love.
And then I realized, the world needs us all. It needs those of us with heavy armor. Those who are able to keep their cool and make solid, important, crucial decisions. And it also needs those of us who are able to keep to our hearts. Those of us who are able to experience pain, both in ourselves and in others. It needs people who are willing to make space in their hearts to experience the suffering of others and to react to that suffering with compassion and with love.
For as long as I can remember, whatever was shot in my direction hit me straight in the heart. Joy was glorious, pain unbearable. And also for as long as I can remember, I have tried to muffle it. I’ve tried to make the joy and the excitement and the pain and the fear and the love and the passion and the sadness all more quiet. I tried to numb them so that I could live in a world that seemed just much too loud and much too scary. I saw these emotions as weakness. I feared the vulnerability. I saw it as a pathology that needed to be stilled.
But now I’m starting to wonder…
If those of us who feel that we live with slightly less armor were to suit up, wouldn’t a bit of the glimmer fade? Wouldn’t a bit of the kindness be hardened? Wouldn’t a bit of the humanity be lost?
Maybe the rawness isn’t good or bad. Maybe it just is. And maybe it just is me. And maybe I don’t need to hide it or apologize for it or run from it.
Maybe I just need to accept it. After all, ’tis me.