I’ve sat with the most kind-hearted and loving of woman, on the concrete, in Jacksonville, the only thing that was naked and cold, hearing stories of the woman that was once raped right across the street, maybe 200 feet away, and that now have a party atmosphere.
We talked about all the Good Old TV shows. As if she could read my mind, my troubled-heart, that walked me back to sit with her, she told me that the one that made me turn back to be with her was right there, beside her. From my perception, she was only in my heart.
As people sat down to crowd in on her and I, hustling her, trying to make her move.
Yes, she later told me, she wanted to move, or at least is going to, so after watching the two next to me start tweaking on crack, looking up at penthouse type high rises and buildings—souls flew out that night—God only knows what returned after the high and tweaking stopped.
So as it approached 3 am, and with the care of a son wanting a nice home, suitable for a great gift, I walked on into the night, stopping in front of a home which I hoped for God to bless her with one day.
Even in the beauty of that, the anger and horror of not being where she said that the rape had occurred, or not having the foresight to stop it caused an effect in me about as bad as the tweakers probably felt after they got out of the ivory towers of the penthouses and crystal palaces, the same sense of hopelessness and loss of self-worth.
Maybe that was my new friend’s blessing from God for me. To know that feeling to empathize even in the worst “case”, yet never letting that gut feeling make me back down.
One word people—CONSENT; because that is why death saddens, while life frightens so many.
Had I myself always been pure of heart, maybe I’d never have happened upon my friend, yet who then could tell her tale, her warning in such a beautiful spirit of being, or since I had lost my own mother at 10 years of age, so I also lost my own intercession to God, and God needed the asking of a home for this wonderful being.
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