I stared at the numbers steadily rising on the meter as I pumped gas. Such a loose expression, pumping gas. The grip of the nozle did all of the work while I glazed over and roamed Planet Nothing in a dark corner of my mind. Somewhere between $20 and $40 on the digital read-out, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. An ambulance. No siren. Lights on. Driving circles through the gas station parking lot.
I glanced around and saw, about 60-yards away, a clearly agitated man hailing the ambulance as though it were a taxi.
As the man stepped toward the slowing emergency vehicle, my eyes landed on a motionless figure lying on the ground between two sedans.
The image came into gradual clarity. A pink jacket. A body face-down on the rain-wet pavement. My heart sank and I turned away. Noticing the situation was unhelpful and left me feeling impotent. I wondered whether my awareness of another’s tragic moment wasn’t somehow harmful? Some voyeuristic salt in a newly gaping wound.
I felt small. There was nothing to be done. Emergency responders were on site. Even my most noble inclinations would just get in the way.
I felt grateful. I sympathized with the man I’d seen. The frenetic calm in the face of calamity. A feeling I knew all too well. Grateful that it was no longer me and mine needing emergency medical support.
As these thoughts raced and feelings swelled, somewhere inside my brain, I lost the thread. My consciousness retreated. I unplugged. My brain tried to rescue me by powering down the integration between the details I was seeing and the pain stored deep inside. I thought of my daughter, assuring myself of her safety. Before I walled myself off, I caught what was happening. I intervened on behalf of my own humanity, took control of my reaction, and I began to write this.
I forced myself to connect with my own painful past in the face of another’s tragic present. Instead of running from integration, I allowed it to happen. I did some breathwork. I aggressively managed my self-talk. And I stood there, using the tool of writing as a vehicle for my own mental health.
Now that it’s been a few days, I realize that this may seem like a selfish response to another human being’s tragedy. I feel some of that and I hesitate to share this moment but I believe it can help someone. As much as this was a painful installment in someone else’s story, this was also a triumph for me. It was a hallmark moment of my mental health journey.
Part of living a fully present life is acknowledging that two seemingly competing details can coexist simultaneously. We are not required to reconcile the two or to broker a deal on behalf of either.
At that moment, I caught myself going down a well-worn path of avoidance and the repression of uncomfortable feelings and I traded those for acknowledgment of the present and to honor my discomfort.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: José de Azpiazu on Unsplash