Life.

I live my life in such a way that I try to share love...I try to love anyone I meet. I feel compassion and love daily. I try to be as understanding as possible. There are times when I can love and be loved. I love so deeply and purely--I cannot even begin to explain just how deeply...

The mere sight of someone suffering can send me reeling. The thought of someone being alone or in pain makes my soul ache. I see a homeless person and I weep. I see pictures of children in third world countries and wish I could just give every one of them a home, love, food, an education...everything they need. I read stories of heroism and sacrifice and again, I weep. When I worked for the Church, not a day went by where I didn't weep. I would weep for the women who came in hoping to get help paying a bill, help with food or diapers...or the elderly man coming in because he needed help to pay for his wife's heart medication...I'd see the light of hope in their eyes and I was desperate for a way to avoid snuffing out that light. There were days I succeeded, and days I failed. I couldn't be trusted to have my own cash on hand because I would have none at the end of a day--I likely gave it to a young mother to buy some formula for her newborn baby or to a man who needed a bit of gas just to make it to work the next day. I once used money I had set aside for my wedding to buy a tombstone...obviously it wasn't my own. I knew a wonderful gentleman who had died. His wife could not afford a headstone for him...she got the bill and just couldn't pay it. She had come in about a year or so after he died...and looked really down...I finally got the story out of her. She was too ashamed to tell anyone else. I wrote a check to the cemetery company right after she told me. I couldn't bear the thought of someone being buried without being remembered...what if it had been my David buried without a headstone...the very thought of it made me weep for hours. Father Andre once had to take me aside to lovingly scold me over lunch, because I loved so deeply and cared so much that it was affecting me emotionally and mentally. He said I had the "gift of tears." With that gift there is a responsibility to keep yourself in check, because you can get too carried away.

The thing is, I absolutely love humanity. I love humanity so much, in spite of itself. I try to look beyond the worst bits of humanity. I want to see the good, but sometimes, sometimes I can only see the bad.

I can carry love in my heart for just about every living creature, even the lowliest of criminals, but for a select few, I cannot feel anything in my heart except revulsion and anger. There are things I can accept and many things I can and will forgive and forget...but betrayal and manipulation are two I can never forgive. The worst part of this is feeling so conflicted. I don't want to hate anyone. I just cannot bring myself to do otherwise when it comes to certain people. It hurts, but something inside will not allow me to forgive or forget certain wrongs. These grudges, I’m afraid, I WILL carry forever and a day. I will not forgive anyone who maliciously uses others to get what they want. I will never forgive betrayal of trust or betrayal of love. I will never forgive manipulation and malice. I revile pettiness and shallowness. I loathe falseness. I hate that which is not borne of truth or love. This may not justify my feelings. This may make me, in the eyes of some, the smaller person. I don’t care. I will not be moved.

Perhaps this is the downside of loving too deeply. The opposite abyss is just as deep and infinitely darker. In my struggle is reflected humanity--at its best and its worst.