Because

by Jack A. Langedijk

  Penny Mooreland became apologetic. “It’s just, Mr. Sanchez...I mean, she’s one of the most at-risk kids we have at this school. That’s the reason we brought you and this workshop to our school, because of maybe ten students like her and, big surprise, five of them aren’t even here today. And her—”

  Penny Mooreland stepped closer to Robert and whispered, “Look at her arms. I haven’t fully seen them, but we think she is...well, you know!”

  Robert didn’t turn to look at the girl, he just shook Penny Mooreland’s hand and said, “Let me talk to the girl, okay? And thanks, Penny!”

  The teacher walked away smiling, but still found a strategic place in the gym to keep a watchful eye on the girl. Robert grabbed a spare chair from against the wall and sat beside the girl. She was dressed completely in black except for yellow socks. She had short red hair and porcelain white skin that was coloured with as many freckles as it was blemishes. She wore a zippered sweatshirt and her arms were tightly crossed. But just as Robert sat down, she reached behind her to pull the hoodie over her head. As she lifted her arm to yank it over her head, Robert saw what Penny Mooreland was talking about: the reddish scars etched into her wrists just above her hands.

  Robert purposely looked away from the girl, surveying the students in the gym instead. No matter how many times he did these types of workshops, it never ceased to amaze him how this room, which was mainly built for competitions of the chosen few, had now come alive with a different kind of sound. Usually, these gyms echoed the sounds of the cheers and chants and were a place where the jocks and the pretty cheerleaders sang and soared. But he also knew how many students hated this room. Because it was in gyms like this that they were constantly reminded how they were not the pretty ones. It was usually in gyms like these that many had to face the failure of their own physical inadequacies—a daily reminder that they were not and would never be the chosen ones.

  But today this gym transformed into another world—a world that was listening. A world filled with little groups of teenagers huddled in circles, leaning in to hear, straining to listen to each other—listening to how being the chosen or unchosen really feels.

  Robert turned to the girl and said, “Could you excuse me for a second? I have to say something to everyone.”

  The girl looked down at the floor and sneered with a sour face, but as soon as he started speaking, her eyes glanced his way and he could see she was listening.

  “I’d like everyone to do something. Think of someone you know who is a really, really bad listener. Don’t say the name, just think of them. Now think of the top three things that really annoy, piss you off or even hurt you about how they listen to you. But don’t say anything. Just think of those three things.”

  Robert watched the students. Some of them looked serious, some started to giggle and some even pointed at someone in the room.

  “All right, let me hear some of things that piss you off or hurt you about how someone listens to you.” Robert walked around the room and as he pointed at a student, they would get up and speak.

  “She’s always texting while I’m telling her something.”

  “He never looks at me when I’m talking.”

  “He cuts me off before I even finish.”

  “...telling me it’s not such a big deal. Get over it!”

  “No matter what I tell her, something worse has always happened to her!”

  “He doesn’t even look up from the computer.”

  “Always has to give me advice.”

  “Tells me they know what I’m going to say.”

  “No matter what it is, they...they just try to fix it.”

  With each statement, the room reacted, acknowledging how they too had felt the hurt or annoyance of not being listened to. Ten minutes later, Robert then asked a question to everyone in the room.

  “Okay, now stand up if you have never and I mean never, listened in any of those ways we just heard?”

  No one in the room stood up.

  “Look at us. We have all these things that hurt us, piss us off about others and how they listen to us, yet we do the same things to someone else! I know one thing I had to change in my life was how I listened. I wasn’t a good listener at all! I think I hurt a lot of people who came to me wanting me to listen to them. Someone just mentioned how it hurt them when someone just wanted to fix them. Well, that was me. My daughter and I always send each other the new songs that we like. Anyway, one day she sent me this Coldplay song called ‘Fix You.’”

  The gym filled with some clapping and cheering, showing they knew and loved the song too. Robert put up his hand to quiet the room.

  “I like the song too. But when my daughter said the song reminded her of me, well, at first it made me feel great. Then after listening to it a couple of times, it kind of hit me. Is that how she sees me: someone who is trying to fix others? Am I the fixer?”

  Robert let the question reverberate in the room for a second.

  “I was. It was true! When it came to listening, that’s who I was—the fixer. Because if anyone ever came to me with a pain or complaint, what did I do? I was always so quick to give them advice. YES, I was going to fix them! Maybe I was brought up to think that if someone was telling you something, you better have a reply for them, and it’s your job to fix it or change it. I didn’t know that people just wanted to be listened to. I think the thing I didn’t realize was that most people weren’t coming to me for an answer. They weren’t looking for any judgement; they didn’t come to be fixed. They just wanted to let something out and have it heard.”

  Robert’s eyes momentarily made contact with the girl. But she quickly pulled her hoodie up to mask her face when she saw him.

  “And another thing I didn’t know. I didn’t find out what it meant to feel listened to until my sister died. I was already twenty-two years old. It took me twenty-two years to find out how much I really needed someone to just listen to me!”

  Robert pulled another chair from the wall and sat on the back of the chair so everyone could still see him.

  “You see, I wasn’t living at home at the time. I was in university about three hours away...I remember it was five am. I was in this deep, deep sleep and the phone rang. It was my mother and she was telling me that my sister had just been killed by a drunk driver. Man, it was all so surreal! There’s just no preparation for something like this. How do you deal with someone you love getting killed?”

  All eyes were now on Robert.

  “So I went home for about a week. I saw my sister before they put her in a coffin. I’d never seen anyone...you know, dead. She looked so...not her. I touched her hand and suddenly there was this overwhelming feeling that I didn’t know anything anymore. It was like I was an alien and I had just beamed down on this strange planet. Over the next few days, I was like this otherworldly being watching these strange human creatures cry and hug. It was like I was removed from the reality of it all. Her funeral, lowering her into the grave...I mean, if you saw me, I was crying. There were tears. But inside me, nothing! I felt numb. Anyway, a week later I went back to school.”

  Robert looked over to the girl in black. She had taken off the hoodie and sat tall in her chair. He wondered what loss in her life had affected her enough that now she looked so engaged.

  “Now, when I got back, I thought it was strange how no one really spoke to me about what had just happened to my sister. After a couple of weeks, I was getting really angry with my friends. One day, about four of us were sitting having a beer after class. When I saw everyone just sitting around laughing, talking about something that had happened at school, I just lost it. I couldn’t take them ignoring this...this horrible thing that had happened to me. So, I stood up and told them how heartless they all were and cruel. I screamed at them, ‘For God’s sakes, my sister had just died! And not one of you,’ I told them, ‘has really talked to me about it...and you call yourselves my friends?’”

  Robert got up from the chair.


  “Then, I just ran, not knowing where I was going, but man, I was running hard, so hard, until I just couldn’t run anymore. I completely collapsed right in the middle of this huge empty parking lot.”

  Robert walked towards the wall and leaned against it.

  “When you feel this kind of pain, it’s like you’re in a play or a movie; you’re just acting everything out because you can’t seem to connect with the horribleness of it all. You feel so alone...like you want to be touched, but a hug is not enough. You feel like you need someone to reach inside of you and...well...I just sat there and screamed and I didn’t know what I was screaming for. Maybe I thought my screams would somehow connect to something that made sense. But all I remember was the more I screamed, the more pain I felt. And I was so alone...so, so alone.”

  Robert wrapped his arms around his body.

  “Then I heard my name being called out and there were two of my friends on their bikes. They pedalled towards me and got off their bikes and said, ‘Robert, we’re sorry, really...but when you came back from the funeral we tried to talk but you kept saying, ‘I’m okay,’ or changed the subject. We didn’t know what to do and thought you knew how to deal with it and...’ Well, then they tried to explain to me about me being the ‘fixer.’ They said, ‘You gotta know Robert, it’s hard talking to you ‘cause no matter what anyone tells you, you always have an answer for everything. We didn’t know how you felt ‘cause you really don’t ever expose yourself to any of us or really tell us how you feel!’”

  Robert looked directly at the girl. She didn’t turn away. He then walked away from the wall and sat down on the back of that chair again.

  “And there we sat for the next two hours in the middle of this huge parking lot emptying out all the miscommunications and feelings that were, for so long, unspoken. And I can tell you, I learned what the greatest gift of life was that day. I learned to have the courage to talk about myself and how to appreciate that wonderful gift of feeling listened to. But I also know it’s something you can lose just as fast. You have to constantly be working at it: talking, listening, listening, talking. That’s why it’s called connecting. Once one side stops—doesn’t listen, doesn’t talk—you break the connection!”

  Robert then stood up and smiled.

  “So, how many in this room can give that connection to someone else here?”

  And at that point, Robert asked the students to go back into their little circles and simply go around and tell everyone in their group something about themselves, starting off with, “One thing you probably don’t know about me by just looking at me is...”

  And very quickly, the room was buzzing again with young people sharing with each other. The room felt so alive with purpose. Listening with purpose. The room soon filled with sounds of great open laughter as someone obviously shared something funny about themselves. In other groups, you could see hands reach over and comfort someone who’d just shared something delicate.

  Robert looked over at the young girl. She was quietly mouthing the lyrics to the song Robert had playing in the background. Natasha Bedingfield had found a fan in this girl and she seemed to know the song as if it was her own—that we are all a blank page and our story is always ready...ready to be written.

  Robert sat beside her. The girl suddenly stopped mouthing along to the song, turned to Robert and asked, “Do I want to stop being unhappy and feeling alone?”

  “I’m sorry, what did you ask me? Do I want to stop...feeling alone?” Robert was puzzled.

  “Don’t you remember you asked me that?”

  “You mean, when I was talking about my sister dying?”

  “No, on the phone...On the phone to me. On the phone, you asked me, ‘Do you want to stop being unhappy and feeling alone?’”

  “Oh my God.” Robert’s eyes opened wide with disbelief. “Nancy...Nancy?”

  “Yeah, don’t be so shocked. I do go to school, you know!”

  “But I checked, the school you told me you went to was—”

  “Big shock! I lied. And anyway, even if I told you, it wouldn’t have mattered because I had to move to this school this year.”

  “Nancy...Wow! Nancy, I...I’m just—”

  “—Happy I’m not dead?” she sarcastically asked with a knowing smile.

  “That night after I spoke to you and you asked me if I wanted to stop being unhappy and feeling alone...well, I did. So, I told my mom about talking to you and calling. And do you know what? You were right; my mom actually listened to me for once. I told her about things and how people at my school were so mean and...Do you know what she did? She actually helped me go to this school and, anyway, here I am at a new school!”

  “That’s so great Nancy. I’m just so—”

  Nancy cut Robert off. “—Only it’s not so great, really...she’s thinking everything is solved ‘cause I’m in a new school, but guess what? Big surprise! Nothing’s different, all the same, the same assholes...Nothing changes! People are all the same!”

  Nancy then tugged her sleeve up a little to hide the multiple scars on her arm that mapped the pain she held inside. “See, nothing’s changed, and trust me, no one cares!” And then she got up and started to walk out of the gym.

  Penny Mooreland immediately popped up from her chair to stop Nancy from leaving, but Robert darted in front of Nancy first. “Okay. No one cares, same assholes and so now you still want to cut yourself...I got that, Nancy. And that’s how you feel because that’s how you think, right?”

  “It’s not how I think or feel, it’s how it is!” Nancy then put her hands up and pushed Robert away from the door so she could exit.

  Robert could see Penny Mooreland and another teacher making their way towards them. From angry looks on their faces, it was clear they felt very little compassion for Nancy after seeing her physically push Robert.

  “Nancy, please...please just stay for one more hour and if you still think that’s how it is—” Robert was interrupted by Penny.

  “—Ms. Archer, we have tried to be patient with you for two months and—”

  It was now Robert’s turn to cut Penny off. He knew what these two teachers were about to say were the same words Nancy had heard her whole life. That people had tried to be patient, but now they had had enough and that she needed to be punished for not playing along with everyone else.

  “—Oh, I’m sorry, Penny. One moment please. Nancy was just showing something to me.”

  “Mr. Sanchez, I just saw her push you.”

  “Oh, no no no.” Robert had thought he had lost Nancy forever, so he wasn’t about to lose her again because of a little push.

  “Well, yeah. You saw her push me, but that was because she was showing me something I had asked her to do. I asked her to demonstrate how she feels when people don’t understand why she...”

  Robert then pointed meekly to his arms, leaned towards the two teachers, and then whispered, “You know, cutting herself.” Then he spoke a bit louder. “So I asked her what that made her feel like doing. So she pushed me. You see? Because that’s what she feels like: like pushing people away.”

  “Oh.” Penny was at a loss for words. She looked at the other teacher, who also stood there, baffled, and just repeated what Penny Mooreland had said. “Oh!”

  “So, thanks for your concern.” Robert smiled.

  But Penny still felt the need to be in control of the situation so she pointed at Nancy’s chair as she spoke.

  “Still, we don’t need any more pushing or shoving. And if there’s nothing else to show Mr. Sanchez, could you please go back and sit down?”

  “Oh, there is one more thing,” Nancy said. She slowly drew one of her sleeves up as high as she could, exposed the multitude of scars, then simply turned to the two teachers and said, “My arms...I wanted to show him my arms.”

  Penny Moorland had obviously never seen the full scope of the scars that lined Nancy’s arms and she immediately let out a little gasp.

  The other teacher blurte
d out, “Oh, my God!” and quickly turned her head, pretending something else had suddenly distracted her.

  Although seeing Nancy’s arms caused Robert to wince a little, he also could not hold back a smile at Nancy’s shocking boldness. He knew she wanted to shock her teachers into some kind of reaction and he couldn’t resist playing along with her. So he turned to the two teachers and said very softly, “Yeah, we just wanted to do it in the hallway away from everyone else...you know, in private.”

  The two teachers sheepishly backed away and murmured, “Of course. We’re sorry...Go on.”

  “Look at them run away!” Nancy mocked.

  Robert took a step closer to her. “I don’t think they are running away. They just reacted because of your arms, Nancy.”

  “Yeah, these are the adults that say they care for us and the moment they see something bad, they run away. Nothing ever changes!”

  “Well, maybe something did change. You finally showed them your arms.”

  “Yeah, and they ran away!”

  “You have to give people a chance to react first. They didn’t realize how bad it was. How can you expect them to care about something or someone they don’t know anything about? Look Nancy, you say nothing has changed; it’s all the same, even coming to a new school, right? Because that’s how it always is, right?”

  “Yeah...so?” Nancy hesitantly asked.

  “Well, I’d like to make a deal with you. Just stay for one more hour, and after that, if you still think that’s how it all is and nothing has changed, well, then I’ll talk to your teachers and you can go home, all right? I promise I won’t stop you from going home and cutting yourself some more.”

  “What! You don’t care if I do this?” Nancy said in a hurt voice while holding her arms out.

  “Nancy, I think you’d cut yourself whether I cared or not.”

  Nancy’s face was filled with disbelief. She opened her mouth wanting to respond, but nothing came out.

  “Listen, of course I care, Nancy. But no one can help you if you don’t want to be cared for and are just resigned to thinking you’re all alone. And you know what? You’ll feel even more alone if you never tell anyone what is hurting you.”