Sometimes I complain

Sometimes I complain….

I complain my feet are sore…. tonight I saw a woman so debilitated, her only means of getting around was to be hunched over a walker and half walk half push her body into it, her body was covered in scars and all she wanted was to get the opportunity to experience “those glamorous smoky eyes”.

I complain that I am tired…. Last week I met a woman who had just been thrown 30 feet in the air after she was hit by a car that carried on driving as if it had hit nothing more then a cardboard box, she told me that all people needed to believe in something in this world and that life was beautiful.

I complain that I am lonely…yet I know at anytime of the day or night I can be connected to someone I love and those who love me can be connected to me. Tonight my friend was a lady who is currently suffering from the fact that her toes are slowly and literally turning the wrong way around. A lady who when asked if she should accept my friendship said she wasn’t sure because she didn’t have any money to pay me to be her friend. A lady who gave all her money to a stepson in hopes of one day being a part of his family when she grew old, but instead became a lady who was left with literally no one in the world when he took her money and used it to raise a new family of his own.

I complain that I am bored…while she sits in her apartment both acutely aware that there is no one left in the world who will come and visit her, and in too much pain to even make her way outside.

I complain that I am afraid that I don’t know what the future holds… She is afraid to leave her apartment because she is in fear that if she falls no one will help her home.

I complain that I don’t have enough stuff…Tonight despite the pain in her toes, the unsteadiness of her flimsiness manufactured cane and her uncertainty in the fact that if something happened would she even make it home…Tonight she finally left her apartment to come see me and give me a small gift and a hug.

What she may not realize and may never fully know is that she has given me a gift every day and with every ache I acknowledge, and with every complaint I make…she has given me a gift of perspective.

- Annie Centric