Healing

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I'm reminded of a conversation I once had with a very troubled young lady. She goes by 'R.J.', but I know her as Rachelle.

Rachelle has had a rough year. She started it off happy, with plenty of friends, a loving boyfriend.. and a great family. She lived with her younger sister and parents, who had been married for nearly eighteen years. All of her friends were jealous.

But after she turned 17, life turned sour. Her sister and mother fell victim to a terrible highway accident and were killed instantly. The shock took grip of her health, and she spent the rest of the school year in bed with a fever. Moreover, the news media took no rest but to remind her that she was now alone.

She desperately searched for comfort wherever she could. But daddy was taking it even harder than she was- he vented his pain by molesting R.J. every night, calling her by her mother's name all the while.
The only person she managed to come clean with about the situation was her boyfriend, who wasted no time in dropping her like a bad habit when he found out she was no longer a virgin.

An unfortunate situation, wouldn't you say? Rachelle needed an outlet- but it was no surprise to me that her poetry and sketchbooks wouldn't begin to describe what she was going through. It wasn't long before her ink and graphite just wasn't loud enough, and she couldn't pick up the diary without the pages ripping under her pen. Her wrist and forearms became a more satisfying alternative to the colorful blank pages, and a blade was her pen.


One morning, she was feeling especially desperate. She saw that her skin was growing more and more sparse under the pink scarring protrusions along her forearms, and death had become an increasingly desirable alternative to pain. She began screaming my name from her bedroom floor, her red eyes dry and empty.


Typically speaking, it's not how I do things.. but I felt the need to visit her in person.


She didn't bother wiping her face or attempt to lay flat her matted, frizzy hair when she saw me scuff lightly into her room. She just flashed a pitiful look of relief for a brief moment, and promptly burst into tears again.
"I'm a tool to my father and a spectacle to the rest of the world," she screeched at me. "My life is a carousel. Everything hurts. I can't see colors anymore. I'm not beautiful."

Each word she spouted cut deeper and deeper, and my heart skipped a beat with every tear I caught blossoming under her soft blue eyes. She continued to allege that I didn't understand, that I couldn't understand.. that we were too different. That I didn't understand the urge to destroy, that I couldn't imagine the pain she felt.

But right now, and in this dire situation of my own, I can't disagree more.


And to be completely forthright, I can't help but relate to her plight at this moment. The rusty steel axis to my own wrists scream her name, louder than any pain I feel. The half-inch splinters that litter my back every time I attempt to rest my pierced ankles seem to bring Rachelle's words back to their full brilliance...


"'I have come that you might have life,' you say. 'Just as the father loved me, I will also love you.' Well I've got news for you, Jesus. You're perfect. You always have been. You were born perfect, and therefore you have no idea what it feels like to hurt this much, to hate this much. To crave death. Don't talk to me about love and salvation and puffed-up lies. You don't know me."


'Perfect.' What a joke.

I've seen heaven. I've seen spirits still bare of their skin. And let me tell you, no one was made to be perfect. No one was created to spend a lifetime in afflicted pursuit of rules and godliness. Perfect doesn't quite describe the anguish I'm feeling now, draped on this cross, taunted like a criminal and beaten like a dog.

I wish I knew on that day what I know now. I wish I could've told her how lovely her tears were; how radiant the stains of eyeliner that freckled her cheeks and jawline. I wish she knew how perfect she was in that moment.



Rachelle. The name comes from french, it means "lamb." You may look at her and see an impossible circumstance- but she's my secret weapon.

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