the great pit of carkoon

I listened to him more intently today. For weeks he has told me of the characters on the new game he's been playing, but my heart has been clogged. A heart is to be a guarded place, but when it is infiltrated the whole person is affected. The mind is swallowed with thoughts that consume seconds, minutes, hours, even days. Conversations happen all around, but little is heard because the mind is busy. The heart is to be protected at all costs, it is the cherished place.

My time has been so wasted lately in my thought life. If an enemy were to attack me, that would be the prime target for destroying me as thinking is my favorite past time. I welcome quiet places where my mind is free to ruminate, to chew the cud of everyday happenings.

I have known for months of the dangers of allowing my mind to wander and have even fought the onslaught of invading thoughts, but I became tired in the fight...and weak. Gradually, I fought less vigorously until finally I set aside my sword and just ducked for cover. To my own dismay, I eventually found myself so bombarded that all that was left, it seemed, was to hand myself over, a captive to an enemy, thrown into a pit, thinking this is where I deserve to be, where I belong.

Somewhere in the midst of the fight, before I had grown too weak, I searched for an ear. I found it almost accidentally and spilled bits of information about my struggle to that one, only bits. That has probably kept me. For at times when the onslaught has grown wearisome, I have found slight refuge in hinting again at my struggle to this one. A sort of release of the contained pressure on my mind. So when the time came when I was certain that I had been dominated and had reached the unbearable, there had been a seed planted in another. A seed of "I need someone to listen", "I have to speak things out loud to someone", "Help me sort this confusion". There is great comfort in speaking the shameful out loud to one who does not react with disbelief, dismay, accusation, or even grasping to provide an answer when really they don't have one.

To sit in the bottom of the pit and have someone crawl in next to you, plop down beside you in the midst of the mire and listen, hold you when you cry, let you speak everything out loud, everything that you would normally dread anyone knowing about...to sit in that spot with them and then see them smile at you, hear them make fun of the predicaments we humans can get into and then laugh while causing you to laugh too, to spend hours allowing you to open your heart and let all the messy contents spill out in their presence...that is an ear provided by One who loves me so well.

I am so thankful for the ear that listened. Shared misery can create a tight bond. A burden bearer gives hope.

As little guy talked for nearly half an hour today about his new game, my mind heard him. No longer bombarded, pressure relieved, light shed on the darkness, the overwhelming now sitting quietly in a corner of my mind. As he mentioned the Great Pit of Carkoon, I considered the great pit I feel myself climbing out of and I was thankful he would never know about it.