with hands in my pockets and my heart in my throat

and a good dose of heartache to go with it. so many people are hurting right now, i feel helpless. all i have to offer are words, and sometimes not even that. things happen before my eyes, pain passing in and out of my fingers without the ability to grasp and hold onto it. it doesn't make sense to me. i'm feeling overwhelmed. and it's a feeling now, darker and deeper than ever, pressing harder until this point in which i don't know what to make of it. everywhere i look i'm seeing tears i can't catch and hugs that won't reach far enough, people i can't take care of. i can't make it all better for them.

i know, i know -- everyone tells me i worry too much. maybe i do. but what i do know is i'm concerned about peter right now, and it scares me because i'm too far away to really know whether or not i'm reaching him. too far to be able to see that i'm losing him, if it comes to that. i'm worried about blair; there are wounds there that i can't fix no matter how hard i try. and i wish i could make her pain my own so she didn't have to bear it. i'm very very worried about claire -- that's all i can say about that because it hurts a lot, i just wish i could offer her a way out of all of her hurting and yet i can't even hug her; i know her only through her words.... and kari. if only i could...change things. because i see her there with no one, just her alone to watch out for herself, and when she can't -- what happens? she needs more, she deserves more. no, i don't pity her (although i will if i want to because i sure guess that's my choice to make). but no, i just hurt for her. if kari says she's cold, then it's all wrong, terribly wrong. because that's not my kari, not the kari i know.... john too, i'm concerned about, for all of the strain that my problems are putting him and us through. worried that i can't hold on to him tight enough to make him realize that i haven't let go. and worried that my love seems transparent and weak right now to him, because it seems that way to me too at times.... beth, i'm worried about for different reasons which i won't mention here, but she's hurting also.

and i feel so far, i want to make things better somehow and yet i think i'm powerless to do so.

awhile back i knew a lady named leanne. i only met her once or twice; she was the friend of one of my best friends. i went to her baby shower, actually, when she was pregnant with her third child. after that birth she had three children, a little girl and two little boys. she was a soft-spoken woman, with sad eyes -- if i remember anything about her, it's those eyes. i didn't know much about leanne, mostly that she had had a hard life. she loved God and she loved her family. but she'd taken some hard blows from life, lived through one too many nightmares, too much, it was all too much. in her mind she was trapped, no other way out, she didn't know where to turn and nothing would relieve the pain. overwhelmed. and so one day leanne made a noose -- and hanged herself. such a tragic cry for help. it was her little girl who found her hanging there, not dead but unconscious. her little girl. lindsay had to be only 8, maybe 9 then. leanne slipped into a coma as she laid in the hospital, and that's how she stayed, for weeks. i remember it felt like such a long time, because i remember praying every night that somehow her life would be spared. but, i suppose, God knew better than i did. and He took her home.

that story has no end. it won't have an end, and it stays with me still. leanne's home now, and in my heart i know that i couldn't wish for her to be anywhere else. yet i remember those eyes, sad sad eyes, and wonder at the pain that she must have encountered in order to have not been able to survive it anymore. and i wonder...about other people too. and their pain and if maybe they just had someone -- someone to hold them -- maybe. or maybe not.

sometimes i just want to go home too, go home and see leanne and know that she doesn't have to search anymore. and neither would i.

but i know i'll get there in time.

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"what crime have you committed, demanding such a penance? couldn't wait for five more minutes, and a cry for help. this room is so peaceful, this room is so quiet, and i hate the silence. i hate the silence... i can't walk the center aisle."

-- caedmon's call

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