Compassion Poem by Theresa Haffner

On the good nights, I could almost discern three fingers on the face of the moon.

I could see a person clear across the parking lot and optimistically mistake their identity for that of my friend.

I could go to the Donut Shop at midnight, and having no money to buy donuts, stand outside for an hour debating the merits of rechargeable batteries for portable televisions.

I could stay up all night long, sitting in Laundromats or the backseats of cars, writing long disjointed poems and figuring out solutions to all the world’s problems.

I could fly so high in my mind’s imagination that I could understand the nature of the universe and the relation of all things within it.

I could make myself believe, even for that brief moment, that life was a beautiful thing, full of promise and ultimately worth living, instead of the desolate, tawdry, meaningless existence that all common sense and previous experience would dictate.

But on the bad nights, I could go to sleep on the sidewalk and wake a 5: 30 A.M. with dirt on my forehead, my wrists swollen, and my face distorted beyond all recognition, needing only a drink to ease my suffering, and having to wait a half hour for the liquor stores to open.

When I would seek to drown myself in a delirium of intoxication but, drunkenness evading me, drink myself into a stupor instead and obliterate myself briefly in the forgetfulness of sleep.

On the bad nights, which can stretch into days and become weeks, when I would wander the streets begging for money to buy alcohol, without taking a bath or changing my clothes, until I smell so bad they won’t let me on public transportation, until I won’t go inside a store or restaurant even if they would allow me, until I have driven away friends and loved ones, preferring instead my own solitary aloneness, until I have effectively “X’ed” myself out of the society that I no longer wanted to be part of because it had already failed me.

There will be both good nights and bad nights, but hopefully over the course of a lifetime, the balance will fall on the side of the good nights.

But even suffering must run its course, and eventually I will come to myself and figure out a way to start putting the pieces of my life back together again.

I realize that no one can tell me what to do, even if I am causing my own suffering, and efforts to coerce me against my will are doomed to failure.

You can’t help someone until they are ready to help themselves.

In the meantime, all you can do is have compassion.