Only you would understand

“You’re probably the only person in this room that actually knows what this song is about.”

I hear you say it slightly lowder than a whisper over the loudness of the gym floor in the middle of an explanation.

I try to hear it clearer.

I just finished lifting something really heavy, so my brain is occupied elsewhere.

All the energy I have focusing on the words coming through the speaker.

I can’t quite make out what the words are.

I try to force my ears to hear better.

It just feels further away over the sounds of the coach yelling and people talking around us.

“Reincarnation” you say.

And you look at me with disappointed eyes.

You look like you really hoped I would know what the song is about.

I listen a little longer and the lyrics start to come through.

You’re right, the song is about reincarnation, and I do in fact know that.

Because I think about what song lyrics mean.

And it’s a connection that we have.

The other connection we have is that we are two of the few people within the gym that seemingly don’t believe in a specific religion.

Or at least that’s what we’ve been led to believe.

It doesn’t bother me as much as it does you.

I know this because you are the one that pointed it out.

You said it to a friend.

“I think I am the only one here that isn’t religious”.

And she corrected you and said, “Well, Heather isn’t either.”

And it’s become a little camaraderie between us.

This secret little thing that bonds us.

Our lack of devotion to a deity.

It means that I’m a safe haven for you.

Someone that you can made jokes with and it feels safe.

And I am glad to be that safe person for you.

The thing that I don’t tell you is that you remind me in a weird way of my dad.

The irony being that my dad is an extremely religious person.

He hides all of his personality in the god that he holds to.

And I don’t truly know who he is.

And I feel kind of the same about you.

You hold so strongly to your lack of religion and vehement disdain for so many things that it’s hard to get a sense of who you actually are.

So in those moments when you reach for me with a “only you would understand”, I want desperately to understand.

Because I feel like it would heal something in me.

From my relationship with my dad.

And I don’t know how to feel about that.

Because that relationship feels unwaveringly broken.

There is a depth of pain there that crushes down on me like the floor of the sea on the denizens of Davy Jones’ locker.

I find myself wanting to help you.

And unsure how to.

And the truth is that I probably can’t.

From what you have told me, your lifetime has served you pain is so many ways that I am not sure how you are still standing.

Your walls feel like they could crumble at any moment if you don’t keep holding them.

I picture you like Sisyphus, pushing the stone up hills for eternity.

Except your stone is an ever crumbling wall.

And you are constantly running from one section to another, trying to hold the pieces together.

A bandage here, a stone there.

Your wrist brace.

Your taped knuckles.

Every time you tell me you are in pain in the gym it hurts my heart.

Because I think it is an outward expression of how you treat yourself on the inside.

That you see yourself as unworthy of love and care.

And so you do things to yourself on the outside that cause you harm.

I don’t think it is to seek pity from other people.

In fact, I think that other people’s pity drives you mad.

I think you wish that it would stop.

But you do want someone to see you.

And you want someone to comfort you and to say that it is all going to be ok.

Because you have been trying to convince yourself for so long that it will be.

And you want to believe it.

And I just stand here watching you.

Because I don’t know how to help without seeing my dad.

Without conflating the two of your anguish.

Without applying the lifetime of pain that I have experienced due to his absence to your presence.

I don’t know how to just show up for you as a friend and let you be exactly you without trying to fix you.

Because of how I always had to fix him.

I don’t know how.

And so, in those moments when I can’t hear the lyrics to a song that you want me to understand, I feel like I fail you.

In those moments when I don’t understand your joke, I feel like I fail you.

In those moments, I feel like I fail.