I’m wondering….what does one do when they feel at the end of their rope?
I’m thinking of someone I am very, very close to….I’ve known her all my life. She’s a most complex, emotional and passionate person. When she’s scared, feels misunderstood, is lost in hopelessness or cornered, she gets angry, an anger that certainly no man has been able to tame or sit with. I however can. I’ve known her for years and her fury, when tapped, is unmatched. It boils sometimes for months even years, but when that geyser is ready to blow, stand back. Only later do her endless tears and sobs bring a refuge. When channeled creatively, she can set the world on fire. Though tonight she was both angry and something else which I’d not seen before. Frankly, it was a little scary.
She asked me some things this evening. She’s typically a very bright and positive person but tonight, she was filled with disdain, dark, anger covering a helpless sadness. I could see she felt terribly, inexorably alone. I felt it in her hollow eyes. With big movements and gestures, a furrow on her brow, ‘What happens,’ she asked me, her voice high pitched yet commanding, ‘when your options seem out. When your money WON’T stretch any more, when the risks are beginning to outweigh sense, your ability to swing with what’s coming at you in terms of not just resources but possibly your sense of self, your flexibility is challenged and you feel at the end of that rag tag filament’?
‘I’m clearly being tested as every day there are not one, but three challenges which a year ago would have made me completely crumble.’ She sat down for a moment, in thought, her head down, ‘I have you’ a slight smile, ‘but’, (and she meant no offense), ‘I need something more.’ She stood again, began moving about, ‘I feel too exposed, too vulnerable’, she stated, ‘I have holes of exposure that I can’t control and they’re beginning to significantly wear me down.’ At that moment, she looked entirely dejected, very unlike herself. ‘People and my safe zones are disappearing. I need to rely on JUST me more. My money just won’t service my obligations any longer. Taxes are due, bills are mounting, I’ve taken on perhaps more than I can handle and the cost of everything feels as though it is cascading out of control. I need to get smarter, more independent, self sufficient, faster. I’ve lost my healthy perspective BB’.
She then sat down next to me and looked me dead in the eyes, as though I were a mirror, her face so drawn and terribly, relentlessly sad. She looked older. I did not know her.
She said calmly, ‘I’m at the end of my rope’.
As her friend I just sat with her, unsure what to do myself except breathe.
As we listened to the huge silence between us, my thoughts of how to help gone, my encouraging bits of wisdom vanished like a mist and I too then, felt at the end of mine.
BB Webb