8.15.2007

Day as a WC Boss in Life Signs

Imagine this: I am going to walk you thru a day in a life of life signs. Day One. I walk into the club room with 400 kids and take a seat. I sit half-way down in the middle next to one of my leader friends from el paso. They all come in and take a seat. Spot-lights come on. I start getting really sick to my stomach and nervous. The spot-light finally finds me, in the middle of all the kids... sad and alone. My song comes on. Take a minute to read these words or listen to the first minute of the song.
I'm not supposed to be scared of anything, but I don't know where I am

I wish that I could move but I'm exhausted and nobody understands (how I feel)
I'm trying hard to breathe now but there's no air in my lungs
There's no one here to talk to and the pain inside is making me numb
I try to hold this Under control
They can't help me 'Cause no one knows
Now I'm going through changes, changes
God, I feel so frustrated lately
When I get suffocated, save me
Now I'm going through changes, changes

I walk down to the front, over all these high school kids. Song playing... I take a seat in the first empty red seat, dreading that I am a part of Life Signs. The rest of the group gets spotted and walks down with their own song. Spotlight comes back on me, of course the first person in red segregated seats on the stage. My voice-over comes on.

"
So I am at this party and nobody even knows me, they don’t even care, what are you thinking? oh course they don’t care, your best friend didn’t even care. I am letting the alcohol get to me, just keep drinking and everything is going to be ok. Maybe then I’ll have real friends and my parent will actually care if something happened to me. I wish I still played basketball. Well, I want a future but life seems so lame, I mean other people think I have it all together but they don’t know ME."

My voice over goes off and the next person's goes on. It continues until all 5 of us have gone thru. Finally judgment time awaits us. The 400 kids I was just sitting with now got a glimpse of a night of mine in high school and they proceed to judge who i am with the things they heard in my voice-over and song. So the following are some of the words I was described as: worthless, unlovable, rejection, alone, depressed, alcoholic, failure, hopeless, angry, mean, doubtful, not good enough, unwanted, no help, given up, suicidal.... the list can go on and on but these were the ones i got to write down later. Then the kids all leave. i go back to scrubbing toilets, urinals and taking out trash, making beds, cleaning sinks and vacuuming very inch of every room. Life goes on, but deep down inside- Life Signs arouses dark deep issues that the five of us have had to deal with or are dealing with. In that mindset I sit for the rest of the day. Welcome to dying to yourself, where no matter how I felt- the day had to go on and it was not about me.