There is a man in our neighborhood, I must tell you that I live in a valley, that although would be considered small, where everyone basically knows everyone! but it is quite vast.
Now for those of you who have never lived in one, you should know that it echoes, sometimes you could even hear the conversation people are having on the other side of the valley if they are loud enough, and with the amount of population that has increased in the last few years, it is inevitable that you hear people, animals, kids, birds echo around the area.
So, you get the picture right?
So, there’s a man, I’m not quite sure if it’s just one particular or different every time, for I never had a chance to see him, as his voice only echoes in the dark and it is not necessary for you to be curious of his face, you’d rather not.
This man is labeled “The Drunk Man”.
No, we didn’t have a special meeting to determine his name, it was inevitable. No one says anything, no one even tries to listen, people here are now used to hearing him curse, scream, shout and demand revenge, abuse no one in particular and this goes on for approximately an hour. Even kids are no more surprised to hear these voices, everyone has somehow adapted?
But I think about him, I being an over-thinker, I think about a person no one cares enough to even notice. I imagine the backstory of his anger, frustration, and courage that he could only have when he’s drunk out of his wits. The things he could say out loud to the entire world without being ashamed or even a hint of terror only after being drunk to the point where he has no sense of reality.
I imagine how silent he must be when he is sober, or is he always this drunk to avoid the guilt, suffocation, and helplessness that results from being a coward. Trust me, I know. I imagine how freeing it must be to let it all out, not just to the person who is the source of this anger but to the entire world, under the open sky.
I don’t want to go to the depressing parts of it where he’d have to see the disappointing face of his children and wife, where people must make fun of him in front of his family, and how his son has to take his drunk body home, from the side of the street and sometimes in horrible places, we all know how that goes, we all witness it around us, almost all the time.
But I just want to imagine or might I say assume what people don’t really want to see and would rather ignore. The pain of a person who has to drink near to death, to be able to let it out, and to the extent that he’s addicted, scared to be sober, and face the feelings that I could never even imagine.
Well, that drunk man once must have been a normal guy with dreams, hope, love, kindness, vision, and life. How horrific the situations he must have been through to turn into this person who is dependent on liquor to feel and mind you, he might still be filled with kindness but maybe not life.
We usually have a harsh judgment of drunk people, we assume that they are bad people and we are not safe around them, and some of them are actually a threat. But you know what, most of them are just like us, who have found drinking as a way of coping with life, and they don’t know how to get out of it, some of them don’t even want to get out.
There was an incident in my life that changed my perspective towards them;
I was about 15, it must have been around 3 pm, walking back home from school when I saw this drunk guy stumbling in the distance, I got petrified to walk past him because according to what I have been told, Drunk people meant threat. I even waited for a while to see if someone would come so I could walk behind them. But no one came, I gathered my courage and told myself that he could barely walk, if he does anything I could easily push him down.
I walked towards him, my legs were literally shivering, I was taken aback by what I saw him do, as soon as he saw me, he stood at the corner of the narrow sidewalk we have here, and turned his eyes towards the ground, leaving me enough room to walk as he stayed there until I walked past him. This filled me with an unusual feeling of guilt and sadness.
I’m not saying that we should turn our guard downs, especially, since we as women don’t have that privilege. But we as humans could choose not to judge someone just because they have different ways of dealing with things because we have absolutely no idea what goes on behind the scene.
Originally published at http://lostinminds.wordpress.com on September 10, 2020.
