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Anonymous Assignment - speaking out 3Sandra said Jun 29, 1:38 AM: |
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He needs help. He really needs help... ___________________________________________________________ This post is anonymously posted in response to this assignment. For more details on how this works, also see this anonymous topic assignment.COMMENTING: with this assignment (as with all work posted on Diving Deeper ) it is important that all comments be about the piece, - the writing - how it affects you, what it is about the writing that works for you etc; not to whoever you think or imagine is the 'author' of the piece. ___________________________________________________________ He needs help. He really needs help. I want someone to go there and to be there for him. You should have seen his face. He used to be beautiful, I mean really beautiful. The most beautiful man I'd ever seen, a man you'd want to put in a glass fronted cabinet just to keep him safe, to keep him always visible. To show him off to your friends. More beautiful than a woman. He did everything he could to disguise his beauty - he shaved his hair, he grew a weird moustache. But his loveliness couldn't be disguised. Sometimes I'd watch him sleep, just to soak up all that beauty. Skin like alabaster coffee. Fine bones. Almond shaped eyes, long eyelashes. I almost didn't recognize him. He looked haunted. He is haunted. Cavernous, the bones sticking out. Dark circles underneath his eyes. His skin sallow. His teeth stained. Those mismatched teeth that even they were so perfectly mismatched they were beautiful. Didn't someone once say that a painting, or something beautiful, had to have one imperfect thing to be truly beautiful? Well in him it was his teeth. Now they just add to what he is now, someone uncared for, someone about to break with the strain of his life. I know he is not the only one. There are others. They need help. I know this one, so I can ask for him, I can feel for him. Someone to come in and take care of what needs to be taken care of. Someone to lift the weight from his shoulders. Someone to make life a little easier. There are others. I've seen them on the subway. I've seen them at street corners. Sometimes I've stopped, sometimes I've looked away. Sometimes I was gripped by grief, as if I had absorbed their own life, the truth of what it is like to live in fear. In total insecurity. Where every moment is taken up on surviving. A life where everything has been slowly taken from you. Your confidence. Your livelihood. Your home. Your loved ones. Your dreams. Your hopes. Everything. I could feel my grief, I could give some money, I could walk away. I could live my safe, happy life. It's not easy to walk away when the person you see in this state you once held in your arms and made love to. It's not easy to walk away when you can remember the expression on his face when you first made him a birthday cake. It's not easy to walk away when the person you see in this state left you cards every morning to find, before you went to work, cards that told you how much he loved you. It's not easy to walk away when you can remember how he was that summer, swimming in the ocean like a young boy. Happy, healthy, and so beautiful. They all were, I'm sure of that. We all were, somewhere, happy. Healthy. Beautiful. Some of us can still find that place, some of us will always be alright. And there are others who seem to fall off the edge. I don't know why. I know what happened to him when he was a child. It's unthinkable. And I also know other people who had unthinkable childhoods who are happy now. So I don't know. Maybe it's up to us, to all of us. They need our love, our help. Not just our love. They need someone to come into their lives, someone who is strong enough to not climb down into the bottom of the well with them, someone who can support them to build a new life, step by step. Or at least show them a way, and then if they choose something else, at least we tried. We have to say we tried. I'm asking for that - for those around him to not pretend everything is alright, I'm asking for those around him to see that he needs help. To do something. Anything. Make a meal, take it to him. Give him a hug. Pay for an hour at the internet cafe. Some small thing. All of you, just some small thing. Maybe it's not possible. It must be possible. All it takes is to step out of our comfortable lives for a moment. To stop when we see that person on the street corner with the hollow eyes. To ask them if there is anything we can do. And if what they ask we cannot do, ask again. Stay there, meet those eyes. Do one thing more than you think you are capable of doing. |
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Re: Anonymous Assignment - speaking out 3Amazume said Jun 29, 12:27 PM: |
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This piece grabbed me from the beginning. It makes me want to go ahead and ask the hollow eyed addict I occasionally come across if there is any thing else I can do instead of supporting his/her addiction. |
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Re: Anonymous Assignment - speaking out 3quietlaughter said Jun 30, 5:48 AM: |
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When I first read this piece, I felt drawn into the memory that the ‘I’ character has of the man, and felt the sadness of realizing what had happened to him, how he’d changed, how addiction had transformed him… I was drawn out of the story by the end though, when the ‘I’ character started to sound a little ‘preachy’. I wanted to know more about the man, what drew him to the addiction to drugs, what made him fall offside, how did the ‘I’ character interact? I wanted to know more of the message that was desperate to be told - why couldn’t the ‘I’ character say this to the people around them? I would have loved for that voice to go deeper – push into the fear and sadness of how devastating it is to have a loved one become lost in that world of addiction, and go more into why having a deep compassion for that suffering is so important. |
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Re: Anonymous Assignment - speaking out 3Maria said Jul 3, 8:12 AM: |
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like the others had said: this piece had me from the start. i was reading furiously to see what would come next. it was very emotional. |
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Re: Anonymous Assignment - speaking out 3michaelsits said Jul 3, 8:54 AM: |
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This was fun to read. I know it is not supossed to be fun to read this kind of stuff but is for me. I would have lied to hear more about how the i character feels now, what is he/she experiencing beyond just wanting to help? The trigger event maria mentioned would have been nice too. I eflt like the i character was somewhat guarded from letting themself really experience this deeply. The parts about what he used to be like had a lot of energy- maybe sharig an experience or two from then with details would also have brought us closer to the i character. |
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