Differences

         Two years ago I sat in a dark car, watching the scenery go by with a man begging for me to rip him apart. He dared me to say outloud the things that he felt about himself so that if by some magic the words would be true. I refused him. I wouldn't beat him up because he wouldn't understand until he came to his own conclusions about himself.
         He wanted to hate me. Begged for me to give him a reason to hate me-so that he wouldn't have to love me. So he wouldn't have to be scared. I've thought about that night for two years wondering why it was I refused to beat him up. To dissect him like he wanted me to.
         "What do you see when you look at me?" he asked. Please tell me all my faults so I can make quitting easier, was what he didn't say.
         Two years later- with a different man-I readily told the man what I saw. Sitting in a dark car, watching the scenery go by with a man who begged for me to do anything but rip him apart because his sole fear was not being good enough, who worried that his worst fears were true.
         A man who would rarely ask questions like, "What do you see when you look at me?" There's a part of me who knows that in his darkest hours would avoid a mirror, because he already knew what he'd find. He would see his own faults too clearly. He would know exactly where the sadness would be, where the pain would rest. Where the disappointments would crease his eyes and the tell-tale signs of failure would turn his hair white. He needs no mirror.

I use this particular passage to illustrate a point. I see people.

         One man was raised in a verbally abusive envoirnment with alcoholic parents in a very disfunctional family where he helped raise his twelve year old sister. Who when he graduated high school, moved to California to take care of his grandmother who was failing in health.          During his college years, he was responsible for renovating his grandmother's house, helping his grandmother through two strokes, an active participant in a fraternaty, the Airforce ROTC program, and working two part time jobs.
         The other was raised in the house of his grandparents with his mother, who visited his dad during the summer months in New York. Who, when he graduated from high school, went to college, dated a girl and because it was the next thing to do, got married. He was unemployed and divorced in the same year and finally after nearly ten years of never getting things right, has finally gotten his life to a place where he's content.