"What Do Love Mean?"

"What do love mean?"

- Lamar Xander Jackson,
The Bridge homeless shelter resident

***

Joan Burns was a girl who couldn't wait. She wasn't a nobody, she was a somebody. But she was a somebody going nowhere. In the bubble that is high school, her star shone at the very top, great expectations sprinkled with moon dust in store for her. And she loved it. The adoration, a Pathway to the stars, and most of all, no need to ever question herself. "Others have to do that. Not me."

Then came college. The dream was breaking down. She didn't know what she wanted to do - or could do. Did she really have what it takes to reach the stars? Did she really have the guts to find out if she's the winner she - and everyone - declared (and expected) her to be? Joan certainly didn't want to lower herself from the exalted plane from which she'd determined she deserved. Being special means never having to say you're wrong.

Her sense of entitlement seemed so real. "Just wait and the Pathway will take you to stars." Unfortunately, Joan was a person of faith - in faithlessness. Her family who'd praised her so mightily expected her above all to be morally seen. The weight of it loomed like an ambush down the road. "OK, time to grow up and realize what's really in front of me and stop this wishful thinking. I believe in love, but -" Doesn't really matter what she said after "but". She did what most people do when they decide to grow up: she chose death.

To reach for the stars meant to follow her heart. As much as she wanted to - and actually believed in - spending the rest of her life doing just that, fear knocked her off course from the Pathway, fear she was a fraud, a person undeserving of the dreams she'd seen was God's truth, she determined. From now on she'd close her eyes and hope for the best she's on the right path. "That's what God wants me to do. I shouldn't be believing in myself so much. I'd be condemned for all the ages! Forgive me, God, for putting myself before You!"

God wants you to be free to do what you want

Having been knocked off course, Joan floundered for direction. Not willing to take the chance of being made a fool for doing what she wanted, a vacuum formed putting her on the wrong side of nature. Worst of all, this was happening in secret, for these were concerns a "somebody" should never have. She could trust no one - because she could no longer trust herself. "God doesn't want me trusting myself. I should only trust God. I have perfect faith and know that no one who trusts God is a fool - and above all else I will not be seen as a fool!"

Having given herself her marching orders (in which Joan made herself God), she deceived herself with the wishful thinking that having the trappings of success is the same as success itself. And the most beautiful part of this wishful thinking was that she did it in the name of ending wishful thinking! Later in life - though never confessed - she would call this moment "The Fall". And while nothing was ever the same again, she clung to the vain hope things would be - or could be - or should be. These were tears frozen in her heart.

As with all vacuums, an answer was summoned to fill it. In this it was in the form of Joel. Joel was a nobody, never a star, and nothing possessed him more than the idea of having a somebody for his own. One thing he did have was direction: nothing would come between him and every last dollar he could squeeze out of this Earth. Joan, naturally, was initially repulsed by him but she soon realized her only alternative was to return to the Pathway where she was certain she'd be ruined for life. So she signed a marriage contract to ruin her.

Two years into her vow of self-betrayal, Joan's soul cried out for help. As certain as she was of her fraudulence, an equal part still believed in the Pathway. Secretly, she begged and pleaded not to be the person she saw in the morning mirror being dragged down to the slaves of Babylon. "I feel as though every part of me is dying. This isn't the life I want. Please, please tell me it's not too late to go back to the Pathway. I'll do anything to get my dreams back." The universe replied with Jack.

Jack was the soulmate she'd been looking for her entire life. He too had strayed from the Pathway that would lead them to paradise. And he too struggled to believe he deserved love. Their meeting was as much a nightmare as a dream. Like two children with noses pressed against the glass of a candy store, they wondered if they could ever get inside. Excitement and frustration boiled over when Jack finally had to confess, "I love you." Joan covered her face with her hands, afraid of showing her delight. Would Joan return to the Pathway having been given the chance she swore she needed?

As if by design, that night her husband gave the news he was being transferred out of state, his relentless ambition not to be denied. If Joan didn't commit to Jack now, she'd never see him again. "To leave my marriage for an unknown would be insanity! Everyone would be questioning me and asking why and I'd have no explanation other love. But can I make love work? Is what I got so bad? Who gets to live their dreams? This is more of me thinking I'm special when I'm not. I need to have integrity and not lie to myself and bravely face the fact I'm really a fraud. What does love mean anyway? I only need the appearance of it."

The cover-up continued over the years as her despair and lifestyle grew equally off course. Joan insisted she was fine without her dreams and exquisite luxury proved a suitable substitute. At night, the lies gnawed at her but she only cared if they showed during the day. But nature would have Her revenge. As part of her cover of a loving and moral couple, Joan had produced two children, the oldest a boy with whom she had repeated rows that he deny his dreams as she had done. And while Joan may be able to live with her lies, her adolescent son could not and threw himself in front of a BART train as other Bay area teenagers had.

Immediately her fellow corrupt warriors assured Joan she was not to blame and above all else not to abandon the path she was on and throw away the good things in her life in a fit of disillusionment. After a suitable number of years to save face, she finally divorced and ran away to live near her daughter lest her only remaining child also succumb to despair. Her ruined life devolved into nothing more than a fool's errand of a charade to show a brave face as she rotted out the rest of her existence.

To the staff at the Beth Israel nursing home, she was just another breathing body to be processed and given an account number and impersonal love as outlined in the guidebook. Her money afforded her the best of dying conditions - but for life it was too late. A toxic brew of loneliness, alcohol, and religion slowly fossilized her into sterilization. Joan could hardly speak during the slow motion hell that enveloped her.

Years of tears within had bloated her to twice her normal weight. Born with a smile that would light up a city, she ended with a frown to darken the universe. Drip by drip the life drained out of her, bleeding to death in a world bleeding to death. She'd turned away from her shining star so no one would know she was one. No one in the fluorescent facility knew of her dreams or nightmares, of her miracles found and lost, of the colossal tragedy of her nothingness. No one knew of her implosion into a black hole, trapping any escaping light.

But she finally had the answer to her question: "What does love mean?"