the bearable heaviness of hearing

Though I've alluded to this before on these electronic pages, it is something that I hesitate to talk about, for fear that I might sound as if this is something I resent. In fact, I invite it. I am a magnet for people's stuff. Perhaps because I face head on and embrace my own happiness and pain, I feel deeply the happiness and pain of others and this presents me as a trusted ally to many who cross my path, someone who understands. I even have a symbol on my desk at work, as you enter my office, of my recognition and embrace of this. So if you're someone who regularly or who has ever shared your burdens with me, don't you dare hear what I'm not saying. If you were to stop, you would deprive me of a major part of who I am.
Usually though, people have to get to know you before they begin to tell their deep stuff, their pain, their struggles. I often hear it from complete strangers. Maybe everyone does, I don't know. But some of the things I hear weigh heavy. And the lightness of the things that we often try to fix for people betrays our ignorance of the weight of what is actually broken. As a faculty, at work, we discuss in meetings how to deal with issues that are so outdated and insignificant in the lives of our students. When I suggest that these are not the issues the students are dealing with, I am met with skepticism. When I say what some of them are, disbelief. Why would you think that? Because they've told me. What?
Recently a student, after sharing something with me, said, "I could never tell that to my psychiatrist, she wouldn't know what to do with it." Once, when I had a lunch meeting with a visiting perspective student I'd never seen before, he sat down across the table and immediately began spilling his deepest, darkest stuff. I just sat and listened. We never talked about the school, the major, or anything having to do with his visit.
But really all that is not the point. The point is, tonight I'm thinking about all this because I'm heavy. About an hour ago, I was craving a Dew so badly that I jumped in the truck and drove off to find an open store. I found one, went to the cooler, grabbed a Dew and carried it to the cashier. When I walked up to the counter, she didn't even look to see what I had, rather, she looked me straight in the eye and said, "today I found out that the woman I thought was going to be my new stepmom is not going to be my new stepmom, and she's having an abortion to get rid of the little boy or girl that was going to be my baby brother or sister. I even offered to take the baby." I felt tears begin to form in my eyes and she said, "Oh, I'm so sorry I just told you that." I didn't know what to say. Usually, I don't know what to say. I'll just allow it to weigh on me so someone will pray for me and the Spirit will know for whom it really is, and where to apply comfort.