We All Need Somebody

When the girls were still in high school, they were in talented drama.  During Persephone's final show, one of their classmates, an autistic boy, gave his monologue.  It centered around an alien invasion, real or imagined, and how their invasion of the human world finally gave him a place to belong.  I remember the tears I couldn't hold back as he ended his monologue begging the aliens not to leave and to take him with them so that he could finally go home because he just couldn't find his place here.  His words hit home because I remember feeling the same way years before when I sat in the chemo lounge cracked back in the worlds best recliner and comparing headband notes with my chemo posse.  It was the safest place in the world, albeit filled with needles and knives and tubes of kool-aid colored poison.  I fit in, and when the doctor proclaimed me "cured," I didn't want to go home.  I fit in.

It's been a few days now since the shooting in Orlando.  My heart broke as the news flashed the then "20" dead at a gay night club shooting.  As the day progressed the total climbed until there were 49 dead and over 100 shot.  Facebook, being the social media god that it is, allowed me to connect with many reactions that varied from complete horror to God's justice, and soon the "I'm heartbroken" was replaced with the battle of the guns between liberals and conservatives.  I won't go into that battle because I still believe we should be mourning the loss of the 49 souls that were lost. Instead I will bring to light something I read on a friend's post.  He was devastated
not only because of the lives lost, but because "Pulse" was his haven.  It was the first place in his life that he could actually let his walls down and become who he had tried to hide away for his entire life.  He was free and safe and welcomed and loved.  Like the aliens that invaded and the chemo room, he was home.  And in the blink of an eye, it was taken away.

At least he wasn't there, some say.  It's not like he knew any of those people, some say.  Maybe this is God's way of saying he shouldn't be gay, some say.

I'm sorry your home isn't safe anymore, I say.