Both of my younger kids (who are not that young) go to day centers for adults with disabilities several times a week. They also play several sports for the Special Olympics teams that the day centers field. Through a combination of day centers and sports teams, I met one of their friends, a young woman who was very smart and sweet, but had a very big problem: she repeatedly cut herself with sharp objects (razor blades or whatever else she could get hold of). Her arms and legs were covered with hundreds of scars, and despite everyone's best efforts to prevent her from harming herself, she still found a way.
She liked to draw, and she often showed me pictures she had drawn and even gave me a couple of them.
I don't know why she cuts herself, and I don't think it would be a good idea to talk to her about it (unless she brings it up). I'm not a skilled therapist, and I think the possibility that I could do harm rather than good is very real. But I have found out (inadvertently, not through prying) from others who have known her for some time that she had a horrific childhood in a Romanian orphanage, and that at times she does not think that that she deserves to live. Hence the self-harm.
I've tried to be very positive and complimentary whenever I have a chance with "Sharon," but she finds it hard to take a compliment. Which I can certainly understand, as I am of like ilk. I think it's connected to having a very shitty self-image.
And you know, words are so insubstantial, anyway. So I was thinking that maybe I could find a drawing tablet to give her. Nothing says, "I like you" quite so well as an unexpected gift, you know? And I found one in Barnes & Noble which had a lovely Van Gogh painting on its cover, so I bought it and let it sit on my dining room table for a week or so (I've found that I am usually compelled to let things simmer before I go into action these days), and on the morning that I was going to give it to her it hit me: the tablet was bound with wire, and if that wire were removed it would make a pretty good cutting implement. So I gave the tablet to someone else and resolved to find one that was more like a book. It took me a few more weeks to get around to that, but I finally did, and I took it to "Sharon" this morning. When I saw her, I told her that I had a little present for her and gave her the sketch book. Her eyes lit up and she hugged me and said, "How did you know it was my birthday?" Well, "Sharon" is a bit of a smart aleck, so I thought that she was just having me on, but it soon became apparent that she wasn't. It really was her birthday.
Now, what are the odds on that? Not only that I happened to give her a present on her birthday--which I knew nothing about--but that I had gone through all of the contortions of buying it that I've listed here, and all of that led me to give her a present on her birthday.
It's a very strange world.
But "Sharon" likes her sketch book a lot, so sometimes these things work to our advantage, don't they?
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