Perception

My wife and a female friend were discussing where to take her dog for a walk and her friend made a throwaway comment that one end of the local park is darker than the other so is best avoided. It was a comment that appeared to mean little to them (but is, of course, loaded with complexity) but had a huge impact on me. I had never felt as if I needed to worry, ever, about where I go or when but this caveat appeared hard-wired in their brains. I realised I had an entitlement I had never thought about and was stunned to have such a clear indication, through that conversation, that it's the perception of safety that carries all the weight. One needs to feel safe irrespective of evidential statistics.
(I want to know what can be done about this. I try to teach myself about how other people might feel, I try to practise empathy, I try to remain aware of the effect my presence may have on others (as a large male out jogging in the dark, for example), I talk to my friends about their actions and their perceptions, I hope I can be supportive and encouraging to the women I know. What else can I do?)

I meet a lot of refugees through my work helping homeless people with complex needs. A Palestinian teenager came in for help recently. He knows no other human in a 2000 mile radius and the reasons he is here without his mother, father, siblings, other family members or friends are too distressing for me to have to contemplate unless it is absolutely necessary, professionally, to do so (it is). In many ways he is still a child but in other ways he has been forced into the worst aspects of adulthood that no grown-up would ever want. Before I was able to suggest taking some quiet one-to-one time to discuss how I could assist him he erupted in catharsis, spewing out some disgusting tale of dehumanising violence he had barely survived. He wanted to talk. Seemingly more than anything in his life at that time he wanted to tell me his story of vulnerability, of abuse, of escape, of his contactless family and their probable torture, stories of immolation and being buried alive. For now though he was safe. Traumatised, damaged, scared and scarred, in desperate need of intensive trauma therapy but safe.

A minute into his discussion someone else arrived at the door, another young man in dire need of help, distracted by drug use, hearing voices telling him to hurt someone and preoccupied by the persecutory paramilitary organisation that was listening to him through the electrical sockets in the walls. 

I know a woman who wanted children from when she was a child. The image she maintained with absolute clarity throughout her teenage years, her early twenties and through her thirties was of having children and being the strongest, most supportive, educational, feminist mother she could be. Her love of her dogs could only increase when she found out some years ago she could never conceive. 

She loves her dogs with an anthropomorphic connection, with all her heart. Ten months ago her oldest dog died. She continues to be affected by her grief every day, it disrupts her interactions, her socialising, her self-perception. 

I completed a mental health assessment with a middle-aged man last month. He considers himself a "high-flyer" in his work, had indulged his strong entrepreneurial streak over the years to start businesses in various countries and had maintained an internationally transient lifestyle. One day he was cycling his bike to work, skidded on a tram line and hit his head on the kerb. He received no major immediate injury but damage was nevertheless sustained in subtle neurological ways. 

Thereafter he made one or two bad financial decisions, lost work, became unattractive to businesses, his landlord and girlfriends. He returned to Belfast but there were no favours to cash in.

His physical health is not so poor, he is not addicted to alcohol or drugs, he can walk and talk and maintain a sense of autonomy. He could be considered to be in a good place, objectively, but he experiences such intense depair and loss he feels the world would be better off without him. His psychic and social fall has been from such an immense height, he feels, that the drop was further than any human should be expected to deal with.

It will be Xmas day in two weeks. I remain without Ruby. I will still smile and laugh and be happy, of sorts, but my child died and remains dead and I remain without her. All my experiences, all my ideas, all my thoughts, all the relationships, however fleeting or lengthy, however shallow or intense, I have because of her and because of her death. Whether you know it or not, whether I know it or not, everything I now am is because of her. There is no part of my existence untouched by her. This is as it should be. 

When grief doesn't disable me it still make me unable. But I will always strain to remember the invisible battles we all have, the ones we fight against parts of ourselves, and will try to empathise with the subjective experience as being the only experience that really matters.