Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [71]
Rhonda and Gary talked more that day than they had since they met in high school. He went so far as to say that he was sorry to see her in this place, although the other inhabitants of the day room looked quite normal. He asked what had happened, and then he admitted he already knew. He knew that Rhonda felt like she had nowhere to go. He didn’t quite say he was sorry, but he did say that when she got out, he would do what he could to help her. Gary talked about his new job and explained why he and his wife were no longer together.
When he stood up to leave, he bent over and kissed Rhonda on the forehead. As she walked him to the door, he held her hand and told her that he knew she would be all right. “You can do it. I know you can.” Rhonda did not see him again for five years.
Nett declared that she could not and would not visit Rhonda in “a place like that.” Every time they spoke, Nett cried, so Rhonda stopped calling her. It took Daddy three weeks to get there. When he came, he told Rhonda that he and his “wife” were looking after Damon and Gemmia, and that John had taken the baby.
“You look fine,” Daddy said as he peered around the room.
“You mean I don’t look crazy?” Rhonda shot back at him.
“Nobody here looks crazy, but people have problems.” Daddy knew he had better quit while he was ahead.
“Nett sent you some clothes and other things.” Daddy handed Rhonda a plastic bag. “Do you need money in this place?” he asked.
“No.” Rhonda was peering into the bag. “My friend Ruth Carlos cashed my checks and brought me the money yesterday.”
“How much money?”
“I don’t even know. I didn’t count it. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to keep it here. Would you hold on to it for me?” Rhonda asked her father, not remembering his financial situation.
“Yeah.” Daddy was trying to hide his excitement. “Do you need me to pay anything for you?”
“No. Just hold on to it. I’ll need it to try to get another place when I get out of here.” Rhonda excused herself to go back to her room. When she returned, she handed Daddy a paper bag full of dollar bills. He promised he’d be back to visit her on Friday. The next time Rhonda saw Daddy was six weeks later, after she’d been released from the hospital. She never saw the money again.
Often, we fear solitude. We mistake it for loneliness and attempt to fill the emptiness, the silence with activity and noise and people. But the solitude of Snapper Five provided Rhonda with the silence she needed to hear herself think. She was able to become still and allow her feelings about herself to surface. Through the silence, she became aware of her fears as well as her strengths. She learned that she possessed faith, and she learned to trust the power of that faith. The solitude of Snapper Five also brought Rhonda much-needed clarity. She became clear about what it was she specifically wanted in her life and what she did not want.
Rhonda was a model mental patient. She always took her medication. Actually, she would hide it under her tongue and then take a nap so that the nurses would know it was working. She also made an earnest effort to answer the dumb questions Dr. Miller asked about her life. When the medical staff wasn’t bothering her, she sat by the window and remembered. What she remembered, she wrote down.
She remembered the adults in her life who had taught her to be afraid; afraid of them and afraid of what they could do to her. She wrote about the pain of what they had and had not done. She remembered all the ways they had hurt her body and her feelings. She wrote it all down. Then she wrote about the things they said and the lies they had told to her, on her, and about her. She remembered how she had trusted them to take care of her and protect her. She wrote about how they had not done that. She decided that she could no longer trust people. “People,