When Helping Really Hurts and Other Life Lessons

This post was originally written July 23rd, 2019

I got really tripped up in my newfound commitment to writing more this week in an obsessive desire to tell you a funny story about this crawfish and this dog. I wrote and wrote for several days trying to get the story just right to connect it to a deeper lesson, life as allegory, if you will. 

As that post grew lengthier, the point grew more elusive, getting mired down in my laborious explanation. I was doing exactly what I said I didn't want to do anymore- trying to curate the moment, give you a laugh and end it on a high note. 

After several days of this circling the drain exercise, that lightbulb finally went off, the one that shines its damned light on the thing I don't necessarily want to see. But there it is, daring me to look. Sitting at the table under the single bulb hanging from the ceiling, a suspect ready for my interrogation. Who are you, and What business do you have here??

Avoidance. My name is avoidance. I come to offer you distraction. Distraction is a lovely way to pass the time so you don't have to do that thing you're convinced is too scary to do. 

Distraction is what you do to justify avoidance. You look busy, you have important things going on. Distraction comes with a benevolent partner that enables you to keep doing the thing that distracts you. That partner is cleverly covert. It's name is denial. 

Denial, let it have its way long enough and pretty soon you find yourself in a freefall to the bottom of a very deep pit, wondering where the hell the last three days went.

It hurts to wake up at the bottom of that pit, realizing shame is having its way with you. Shame is the master orchestrator of this evil plan. Shame is insipid. It begins its work long before you wake up in that pit. Long ago, it slithered into your life and buried its lies deep into your psyche. 

It trained its voice to sound just like your own. 

Or your mother's.

Or your second grade teacher's.

Make no mistake about it, shame wants to silence you. Shame thinks it is a superhero there to serve and protect. But shame doesn't help you face your giants. It tells you that they are invincible and the only thing left to do is hide. It does anything in its power to knock the glasses from your face, it keeps you from opening your eyes. 

If you're lucky, you'll look up from the bottom of that pit with an unobstructed view and call shame out on its bullshit. See the liar for what it is, and do the thing it wanted you to be afraid of. 

This shame buster came in the form of an innocent walk with the dog. An encounter with a crawfish. Distraction told me I could be a hero. I could save that damned mudbug, whether it needed me to or not. Avoidance played it's part by convincing me I could weave a story about how sometimes helping can really hurt. 

A long story it was. So let me tell you the Facebook version: 

This is me falling face first down a rocky incline into a pond, after getting caught in a fist fight between a crawfish and the dog. My finger happened to be holding the camera button while I went tumbling down. No one won.

The End. Akeru.