Day 70. A kick in the teeth.

I know I've left 4 days out. I've been poor at blogging again, which would usually mean that this post would be an apologetic run-through of previous meetings. That will have to wait. I need to talk about the meeting I had today. It really left my head spinning.

I met Kathleen, or Kathy. She said either was fine. That was the first of many indications that Kathy is a lady who sets other people before her own preferences. We started talking about her job as a nurse. Then about Justin Beiber (yeh... I'm not sure how that happened). Suddenly, she starts tearing my heart out telling me about an ongoing family tragedy. I don't want to get into the details, but her sister is in a terrible situation, and Kathy is trying to help her maneuver it. I didn't just hear about the current situation. She told me about the history leading up to it as well. I just thought my heart had been torn out before. I didn't know what to say. I felt split by my desire to hear more, and a desperate urge to get lost in some mindless distraction. All the while, even though she wasn't saying it, I kept getting clues that she's highly involved in trying to fix the situation.

I've been in a daze since we talked. I'm just at a loss. In an earlier post I mentioned how judgmental I am. Kathy helped me see that I'm also guilty of viewing people as 1 dimensional. Some of my posts display that tendency. If I hadn't sat and talked with her for as long as I did, this post would've been: "Hur hur! Hey, guys! Today I met Kathy. She's a phlebotomist. Isn't that a hilarious sounding word!?" As it stands, I'm left pondering this impossibly difficult situation. As soon as I meet someone, my initial thought is that they are whoever they sound like in the 5 minutes or so that I talk to them. The truth is that many people are hurting much more than I'm willing to admit. Sometimes that becomes evident to me. It should always be on my mind, though.

Sorry if this post was confusing. I'm still trying to work through this funk.