Dealing With Alienation

My life pathway occasionally intersects that of a person who touches a painful place in my core … and my soul aches for that Individual. I encountered just such a young woman whilst working in the warehouse that housed newspaper delivery operations. I was immediately sensitized to this person. For, what I heard from her is a crying Spirit that is lost … and I am intimately familiar with that pain. Whilst my miseries are something of my past, the awareness of feeling as an Alien in my personal world is forever fresh. Thusly, I did the only thing that I could do for this young woman … I told her that she is known … she is heard … and she is loved. And she is, above all, not alone. I then expressed it this way …

Alien

An alien to all that constitutes her environment …
Wanting … no, Needing to find a place of comfort …
Plagued by the exceptional capacities, evidenced as notable qualities,
She cannot naturally meld into the safety of obscure anonymity.

So she camouflages herself with defacements common to the others,
Assumes language and behaviors that conceal her innate endowments,
And avoids any challenges to the legitimacy of her artificial portrayal …
Most importantly, challenges borne of her own awareness.

Unknown to her, those without her qualities …
find validation for their behaviors,
In her degradation of her appearance and demeanor.
For they are all conscious of the extraordinary gifts,
that are naturally hers,
Making the cycle of mimicry, shared for comfort, an endless waste.

Only in those still, lone, and quiet moments of painful reflection,
Does she find herself confronted with unidentified frustrations,
As dissatisfaction, and Self loathing drive her to Self punishment.
Inflicting wounds … tangible, real, and knowable …
for all else is too dark and unknowable …
while her self-punishment is accepted as deserved flagellations.

When I last saw this tormented young lady, she had given birth to a child … though she was but a child herself. For those in the circle of frustrated dissatisfaction that constitute her peer group, had all elected to bear children, simply as an rite of acceptance.

I still find it difficult to dismiss my recollections of and care for her. Her innate intelligence, ready wit, and sweet spirit are such an obvious treasure. Alas, known to her only as a source of alienation, in the circle that she lives in. Though she demonstrated specific choices to discard a path different from that traveled on by her chosen world, I find it difficult to discard the Possibilities that she turned away from. Empathy can often be painful.