This December was particularly challenging for me.  I was reaching a tipping point of discontentment with my work, my habits, and with the kind of person I was choosing to be. On top of my usual familial hurdles, I was facing the end of a relationship with someone who (and I don’t know why I’m surprised by this because this is the toxic self-defense I engage in most frequently) mattered much more to me than I let myself know.  Even though we hadn’t discussed it yet, I could feel the distance building, and it was breaking me.  Also, I was personally witness to the agonizing death of the most important and influential matriarch in my life.  And, my car was struck while parked, and rendered inoperable two days before Christmas.

As I sat in my rental car on the long drive home for the holidays, I spent some time reflecting.  There’s a threshold I reach when dealing with certain people in my life.  It’s the moment when my care for them sacrifices care for myself, when we’ve cycled back to the same destructive behavior I’ve been witness to and sometimes vicim of for our entire relationship.  Most of us have people like this in our lives.  In this moment, as the threshold is breached, I am immediately consumed by rage.  Not at them.  You can’t mad at someone for being who they are.  I’m mad at myself.  Because it becomes apparent that I’ve not yet loved myself enough to stop going down that dead-end road.  This is a large part of the work I’m trying to do, and it’s a challenge.  It’s the challenge of coming to terms with the fact that there are certain people in my life from whom I need distance.  That the strongest and happiest version of myself thrives best without them.  And that, in my case, those people that often cause the most pain, are the ones biology and precedent tell me are supposed to fix it.  So, in light of where I was coming from and what I was heading to, I was determined to set boundaries on this trip.  To never be anywhere if it would hurt me.  To take care of myself.  This IS good work.  But I was less than optimistic.

I felt tired and sad and lonely and lost.  When I got to town, I stopped for a shot of whiskey and a beer.  That was before I even got to my mother’s doorstep.  When I did finally arrive, I put my bags inside and immediately felt the limit of my new boundaries being tested.  So, I left.  I headed to one of a few places still open after 11 PM in my small hometown—another bar.  On the way there, my random song selector chose the song “She Used to Be Mine” from the musical Waitress.  It’s a song about losing sight of yourself.  I sang along and sobbed aggressively the way you do when the right art tracks you down at the right moment.  When I got to my destination, I grabbed a beer and took the last empty seat at the bar, hoping to sit in peace and continue to feel sorry for myself.  Or at least that’s the narrative I had constructed in my head.  But I’m a liar.   Especially to me.  As I write this, I know why I really went there.  The best part of me was hoping for a night exactly like the one I was about to have.  After I sat down, the man beside me, also alone, turned and said something.  I don’t remember what.  I responded curtly and shifted away slightly.  He continued.  Not a line.  Just a pleasantry.  And within a minute, his kindness pierced my cynicism.  Suddenly, two strangers were sharing everything from politics to experiences of guilt, grief, and loss.

My new friend was not just a U.S. marine, but a four-star admiral.  When he was deployed, his field was Medical Evacuations.  And this evening, he was celebrating his remission from cancer.  He told me that he was currently on track to be a doctor, specifically a pediatric oncologist.  That he was inspired by the strength of the children he witnessed while undergoing his own cancer treatment.  That he often felt they were much braver than he was.  And that he wanted to devote his life to them.  I told him I was having a difficult time.  He told me about his year.  He had lost his dog, his wife, and his health in the span of a single calendar.  

I asked questions about his time in the military.  He told me about the system of tagging the injured.  That a red tag means that the amount of time you will spend trying to save this one soldier is not worth all the other lives you could save.  That their injuries are too great. That the goal for a red tag is comfortable death.  He told me about the time a man he knew personally, a man he joked with earlier that day, a loving husband and friend, was tagged red.  That against orders and reason, he tried and failed to save him and has never forgiven himself for doing exactly what his job required.  I cried again.  I’d lost track of how many times that night.  But this time, it was for him. We talked about coping and the gallows humor of those in his profession.  He told me some of their jokes. We laughed together.  We talked about the veteran suicide rate.  It’s often cited at twenty a day.  Everyday, twenty veterans unequipped with adequate mental and physical health services decide the best solution is to take their own life. We talked about the day he considered it.  The eve of his first cancer treatment when his ex-wife, who he still hoped to reconcile with, told him she was pregnant with their friend’s child.  That the dark humor of one of his brothers in combat was the rope that pulled him out of that hole.

We chatted intermittently with the man beside us.  He was watching me; I had tracked his gaze from the moment I sat down. The man shared an anecdote in which he was deeply offended to have been hit on by another man when he “clearly” wasn’t interested.  My new friend asked the man beside us how often he thought the same thing happened to me.  I felt a rare kind of gratitude.  I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve felt that kind of grateful.  We asked more questions.  We learned that the man beside us had a gay brother.  That he had watched his brother suffer from depression until finally, in the late eighties, he took his own life.  I saw a flash of sadness behind his stubborn face.

In three hours, I received a masterclass in perspective. My worries melted, and all I felt was gratitude. My new friend was three years younger than me and carrying everything we discussed with a smile.  His positivity was radiant.  His care for me–a stranger–was evident.  He told me his three rules for living.  I wish I had paid better attention, maybe taken notes.  I only remember the last one:  Leave every person better than you found them.  

At the end of the night, we exchanged a pleasant “see you around.”  And then, I left.

There is no depth to my gratitude for him and that night.  He changed me.  With kindness, vulnerability, and three hours time, he changed me.  He left me better.

The good of this world can change you, too, if you let it.  It’s there so much of the time.  We’re taught to learn from our mistakes and often this leads us to distrust.  To making the safe choice.  To closing ourselves off.  To assuming the worst.  There’s a lot of space between being careful and being closed.  That’s the space of “Letting.”  Letting the good in.  Letting yourself be moved.   Letting yourself go.  Wherever your mind, body, or heart need to go. Whenever you know it’s time.  When it’s very, very hard.  Let yourself go.  Let yourself be changed.