Lessons from a Staircase and a 5 year old.

Stairs I sat on. Stairs that connected me — to the shouts of downstairs and the lure of peaceful sleep upstairs. I didn’t need to see the beings that passed these words back and forth to know that there was pain, and hurt, and anger among them. I heard the vibrations in my ears and in my heart. That was enough. Is this how you love? Is this what family sounds like? Are the silent tears from my eyes enough to mend the world?

And I was learning from those long nights on that staircase. — More than anyone would ever know.

Shut up. Because speaking up only gets you hit. Because standing between two people whose vows of love were lies only gets you pushed around like a pinball and tossed to the side. When your sister calls you back to bed you wonder how people can sleep through all of the suffering. Ignorance is bliss, but you can’t be covered in a veil that has already been lifted.

So you learn to wipe tears from your own eyes because nobody will be there to do it for you. You learn it’s easier to watch from afar than explain bruises to your friends on Monday. You learn that most things were never whole to begin with. That the movies are all wrong and your parents aren’t superheroes. That love is rarely real and honesty is hiding brokenness.

But somehow, miraculously, it doesn’t make you hateful. Perhaps that is the greatest lesson? That beauty can arise from brokenness? Because you give the love you never received in ways you never saw before even though you cover the walls you’ve built of distrust and doubt, behind a drape of smiles and laughter. You promise yourself that you will be a love that others can fully depend on. That you have nothing to lose since you’ve already lost it all. Isn’t it crazy that we often give what we never had, we often see what we never saw, we often do what others never did. Because those without money are the only ones who know its true value, and those with little love are the only ones who know its true worth. Because we cherish that which we’ve never held in our hands.