I am an emotional human. I have big emotions. I care a lot. I do a lot. I live a lot. I react a lot. I love a lot. I give a lot. I can hate a lot. I can be a lot……
Yeah, people have said I can really be a lot.
I was recently visiting someone who is sick. I was struck by how different they are than what I was told they are. This friend sadly is terminally ill. That, in itself, is really a lot.
Her spouse is a friend of mine. The spouse was very dramatic, sharing the current situation of the sick friend and how they are doing at this moment.
When I got there to visit, it was much less intense and extreme than I had been told.
I told my sick friend I was happy to see that they were doing okay and that I had understood that things were much worse. My friend said, “Yeah, she can be a lot,” referring to her wife.
“She projects her feelings about my illness onto my illness.” She laughed. “It’s a lot, but it’s okay.” We both laughed and then cried.
Funny what we make into reality. Our fears make more of what is or what isn’t.
We create unnecessary drama when it is not there.
Maybe we need drama. Maybe it serves something else we need.
Even I, who am a known drama queen, will admit the drama is never really
about what the drama is about. It comes from so many other emotions and things going on.
One of the biggest lessons I have learned from my students is the non-dramatic way they tell me the most dramatic things as a matter of fact.
This is what happened to me. This is what I am doing.
No drama, just “saying it how it is” as my homies tell me. The things they tell me could make me have over the top reactions, major drama, hyperventilate, lie on the floor, not function, reactions.
“Ms., when they took my kids…”
“Ms., I was locked up for 38 years…”
“You know, Ms., at that time, I was strung out on drugs…”
“I was homeless for a few years, living on the streets…”
“They stabbed me and then shot me…”
My students have given me the biggest lesson in humility.
Man, what humility. They have given me perspective. A lesson in what is really important.
In class I was leaning on the table and it broke. Everyone laughed, including me. It was dorky and funny. It wasn’t a big deal. One of my favorite students stayed after class.
“Ms., you really okay? You looked scared when the table broke.” She looked concerned.
“I’m fine. Nothing happened really,” I add laughing. “It was kinda funny.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sometimes when we hurt, we say it’s funny or we laugh, but for real we are in pain. You in pain, Ms.?” she asked me.
I look at this beautiful woman. Her neck is covered in tattoos.
I know for a fact her kids do not live with her. She has suffered in her life more than six people put together. I look at her and I think of a sentence I heard somewhere.
“People should be given tools to manage their trauma rather than be punished for actions they did as a result of their trauma.”
She looked sad, so I asked her, “Are you okay?”
“I got a lot going on,” she tells me. She is quiet.
I wait. I have learned not to push, not to pull, but to wait quietly for them to tell me.
“Ms., it’s a real lot.”
“That’s okay,” I tell her. I don’t know how God is always good to me and gives me the grace of time when someone wants to tell me something.
She shares with me that she is expecting again.
She tells me she is scared.
She tells me she has not been clean long enough to have another baby.
She tells me she cannot tell the father.
She shares a lot with me.
I listen. I am careful with what I tell her.
We sit near my car. I share phone numbers and websites. I tell her she has options.
Thank God we are in California. I tell her that when things are a lot, you need to divide and conquer.
“What does that mean?”
“You divide and separate. You look and process each thing that is going on. Don’t try to figure everything out all together all at once.”
I then tell her, “You know how in English you say ‘one day at a time’?”
“Yeah,” she says.
“Well in Hebrew we say ‘yom yom shah shah.’ That means day by day, hour by hour.”
She laughs out loud. “Ms., that is dope. Nothing can be a lot for one hour.”
“I am not sure about that,” I say. “It took me less than five minutes to fall flat on my ass.”
She smiles. “Yom yom shah shah.” Then she says, “Look at me speaking me some Jewish!”
Sometimes we can deal with a lot by a little diversion.
It doesn’t make things go away, but it can give us a breather. When there is a lot going on, a breather is sometimes all you need to make the “a lot” manageable.
“Tell me another word in Jewish, Ms.”
“It’s Hebrew,” I tell her.
“Ani yecola.” I teach her. I explain that it means ‘I can.’
She says it and thinks that the way we say “c” is funny.
We sit quietly and I tell her I have to go.
She looks at me and says, “You made the ‘a lot’ a little less.”
“Good!” I say.
We hug. I leave.
As I drive into the LA traffic, I think of all the things that are sitting heavy on my heart and I try to make the “a lot” in my life become a little less as well.
