Reigns of Compassion

"Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It's the knowledge that there will never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too." Frederick Buechner

My name is Marie Brooke Groef. I guess you could say I have a quite a story to tell. It’s one of those things that is blindingly emotional and harsh as it happens, but time edges onward on the ticks of a clock and other people move on, life settles down, then we begin to see that the life we had … was beautiful. Ecstatic, romantic, and dangerous all at once.

I have one of those stories where I looked down the cliff and saw death taunting me at the bottom. There are only a number of people who look down that cliff and walk away unharmed, unscathed and untempted. And boy, the memories that flood in after the shock are innumerable.

My story started when I was sixteen.

I was a typical brunette nerd-girl … some kind of superhuman who happened upon planet earth when I crash landed my meteorite. Now here I stay, among peers and teachers who ignore me, with my mind on some distant place. No one in this world understands me, but that’s mostly because I’m not one of them.

Seriously though; I was going to Robertson Eastwood Highschool, R.E. High back in the late 80’s. In those days, boys added volume to their hair and donned skinny jeans, while girls tried out their ‘beach waves’, clipping flowers and feathers to their hair while after school they headed for the feminist movement. I guess that was just the sort of people they all wanted to be. Strong, fashionable, confident people.

I was not one of them. Oh no, not with confident clothes and bold bumper stickers. I was that almost-six-feet-tall one with the brown hair in a tight pony tail – I didn’t know any other way to do it – and plain clothes. I wore the nerdy glasses that went all the way from your cheek bones to the middle of your forehead; they had a thin crack in the middle from the time I ran into the wall. My dad asked me why I had glasses if I was gonna run into things like a retarded, blind bat.

Can’t you just see me now? Wondering the school halls, my book bag over one shoulder, my dark brown hair beginning to frizz out and my arms crossed as I weave back and forth between the cliques. I was a sad sight to see. It’s not that anyone really picked on me – I can’t even say that anyone ignored me. It’s just that I wasn’t really involved in any cliques … and nobody really wanted me.

There I was on one of those days, my arms crossed as though I had a stomach ache and my book bag sagging at my side, then the bell rang for our next class – almost there! Chemistry, the one love of my school-time life, was just a few doors away, and just on the other side of ...

Jordan. Not just any Jordan, in fact.

There were three Jordan’s in our school, but the one and only Jordan Eastwaters was six feet away from me. Jordan was athletic, healthy, smart … and had that slight twist of stylish that makes a boy ‘cool’, but not enough to make him girly. That delicate formula is one few can pull off.

So there he was, tall, broad-shouldered, dark haired and tan, just a couple steps away. He was on the left in front of one of the lockers, sort of facing me. In his hand was a yellow page with scribbled handwriting all over it – a letter! I gave my glasses a tiny shove and peaked again.

He was reading the letter – ooh, a love letter? I felt a tiny twinge of jealousy at the thought and stopped walking to catch one more glance. He was reading intensely, but his face showed anything but romantic love – in fact, it showed horror. I was surprised at that look – it was like he had just lost a loved one. His eyes travelled back and forth as he read toward the bottom of the page. When he was done he flipped it over – there was nothing written on the back. His eyes moved to some place lost in space and he began to tremble. His eyes darted from place to place, but never seemed to see anything, then finally, he crumpled the letter into a tight little ball and squeezed it in his fist. Jordan’s eyes fell on me and I realized I had been standing there, staring openly the entire time. He was empty though – something in his gaze just looked puzzled, then he hurriedly walked away.