Peace for Others

“I never wanted to hurt anyone.” I wasn’t looking at her. If I looked at her, it would hurt as much as it hurt when I looked at myself. She didn’t say anything. I wanted her to. I didn’t want her to. There was the complete kind of silence that happens when stars implode. The space between us had become so unexpectedly infinite.

When I met her, she’d been interviewing for a job at the bank. Her smile that day and every day after, released words and feelings that charged my thoughts. I wanted to know the world that had created her. I wanted to believe that she could heal me; make me believe that life would be what I’d always known is should be and I what it was just outside her eyes.

The fountains outside the bank on Eighth Street played in streetlight, throwing watery shadows along stone walls of downtown buildings. It should have been so perfectly romantic. It should have been.

I felt a not quite trembling hand touch my face. The hand, the face, both too young to know the memory that was being painted all around and within them. My eyes timidly searched the lovely face that had quietly, unknowingly pleaded for honesty. Silent tears had drawn thin paths across her cheeks. I curled my face into her hand. My whisper came with the muted amplitudes of pain of an exhausted soul. “Sarah…”

She pulled me into her and pressed against my chest. “It’s okay.” We stood there for several moments, both of us searching for warmth from and within the other. "I thought you were going to tell me you had cancer."

Our tears melted into a laughter that told us what Sarah already knew. It was okay. The most valuable gifts we give to one another are those that help us to know with certainty the infinite capacity we have to heal and to love. In unexpected moments when life is dark and there is silence in the scary places within ourselves, we can be for others what we can't always be for ourselves.