Thomas

Thomas is a skinny, young white kid, barely 22, and two years into a three year sentence for drug possession.  It isn’t his first time locked up, just his first time in prison.  Thomas is one of those rural white kids scattered around Virginia who are from screwed up homes, with no sense of self, no hope in the future.  So they drink; they try all kinds of drugs, they do stupid things to themselves, all in the name of “getting high”, feeling better about their lives and their futures.

When Thomas first moved over to our building to join the new college IT grant class I couldn’t help but laugh.  In my mind’s eye I heard the words to the rock group Weezer’s song “Just like Buddy Holly”.  He looks just like Buddy Holly.

I want to write a positive piece about Thomas, something uplifting that will show a kid getting his head together and succeeding.  I can’t.  See, Thomas was dropped from the program yesterday.  He’s moving out of our building this morning.  It was the right decision.  Thomas bucked.  He’s a bright kid, getting A’s in our intro computer class and holding his own in math.  But English?  There were eight papers due.  Thomas did one and that was only because he’d been told a week ago (his third warning) “get your work all caught up or you’ll fail the class.  Fail and you can’t go on.  It’s a prerequisite for other classes.”

So Thomas only turned in the final essay, a self-reflective piece about you and writing.  Twice before, I’d begged and cajoled him to “do the work”.  DC sat with him repeatedly.  The English Prof kept him after class three times.  Thomas knew what was expected and he said “screw it”.  He was bucking authority, he told me.  He didn’t need to know how to write.  The truth is he couldn’t do the work because he couldn’t let go.

I read Thomas’s self-reflective piece.  It was disjointed and contained numerous grammar and spelling errors.  And it tore at my heart.  “I hate to write”, he began and then went on to describe punishments he’d suffered at home, in school and in court where he’d write over and over “I’m sorry”.  “My dad called me idiot all the time.  He said I was a piece of shit.  My mom said [when she wasn’t high or drunk] that she didn’t love me.  It was my fault she and my dad split.”

I read in broken syntax and subject-verb disconnect how his “behavior” outbursts in school led him to special ed classes and being called “retard”.  So he found solace and belonging with other misfits and outcasts.  And the anger, the self loathing, the loneliness festered.

After class yesterday he went to the English Professor with tears in his eyes and asked “can you just give me a D?”  Dr. Y is a sweet, wonderful woman.  And it pained her to say no, but he didn’t do the work.

Thomas came back to the building devastated.  The kid has no one he can count on.  His mother and father, biological parents and nothing more, don’t even bother with him.  He hears from an aunt, a few “friends”.  The word friend is a strange one.  Thomas discovered something I learned early in this process.  We have few friends, people who will stand by you when everything has turned wrong. 

I told Thomas as gently as I could “you have to let it go”.  Let it go.  Those are three tough words, almost impossible words to grasp, comprehend and fulfill.  Let it go.  This kid was dealt a lousy hand.  But that lousy hand keeps tearing him down, keeps him locked up in despair and self-hatred.  That tough hand is destroying his life.  “Thomas, let it go.  You can’t let that stuff destroy you.”

Words come easy.  Living it is tougher.  It’s taken me a long time to let go.  Hurts sit inside of us and fester and ooze.  And the worst hurts are the ones inflicted on us by the people who we always hope love us, no matter what.

I’m not sure when it hit me that I needed to put the past, the hurt behind me.  I think it was rather recently when I heard from a dear friend shortly after he was diagnosed with cancer.  The cancer was advanced, the treatment painful and difficult, but the prognosis was cautiously optimistic. 

This friend, a minister, had seen me through some of the worst days at the jail and the receiving unit.  When he wrote, he surprised me by confessing that he’d been knocked off balance for a little while after the diagnosis, trying to figure out “why”, why was he going through this.

And I got that.  For years I wondered why was all this happening to me.  What was God doing?

 After getting his letter, I started thinking about the story in the Gospel of Matthew, the rich young man who had “followed the commandments” his whole life but wanted to know the key to heaven.  “Give away all your money,” Jesus told him.  “Let it go”.  I always thought that was merely a statement about materialism.  But, it was so much more.

We cling, we protect things – money, homes, jobs and hold on to stuff – even poisonous hurtful stuff like someone you love telling you “I don’t love you anymore.  There’s someone else.”  We hold it because we’re afraid, afraid to let it go.  And it imprisons us and eventually consumes and destroys us.

I realized reading my friend’s letter that God uses all this crap that comes into our lives – whether self-inflicted or thrust upon us – to liberate us and allow us to be, really be, His children.

That doesn’t mean you still don’t hurt.  The emptiness and the loneliness don’t magically disappear.  It’s just now you’re OK, OK with who you are because you trust God, in His time and His way, to make it all right.

Thomas hasn’t figured that out yet.  He’s still letting all that baggage define and damage him.  Hopefully, before it’s too late, he’ll let it go.  It cost him the college program.  The good news is, God gives second and third and even fourth chances.