My husband, Tom and I, are avid Sherlock Holmes fans and own the complete collection of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock. About once a year, we recycle our series, grateful that, despite the perfection of the episodes, we rarely remember them long enough to interfere with our enjoyment of watching them yet another year. Today, my errands in town behind me, a bowl of popcorn and a coke flavored with grenadine and maraschino cherries in front of me, Tom and I and Guinevere (our Golden Retriever) settle down for our favorite part of the day. Today’s series had the venerable Mr. Watson traveling down to the seedy side of London in the 1880s to an opium den to rescue a friend at the request of said friend’s wife.
I’m watching these scenes: children dressed in rags, begging from whomever comes along, men sunk in the fog of their opium, women looking like corpses, working at the world’s oldest profession as they pathetically grab Mr. Watson’s arm pleading for money. In the back of my mind I think, despite the fictional accounts of this series, about how many people in the world actually do live like that: people in poverty, women working as prostitutes to stay alive, men who bear the scars of many years of addictions and I think how fortunate I am to be where I am. How much I have when so much of the world has none. I think of the words I recently posted on Twitter, “It takes so little to wrong a right and so much to right a wrong. We must charge into life and find causes that show why we are here.”
With my multifaceted brain, I am able to enjoy the talents of the screen even as time drags me back to a place from which I never thought to be free. I remember beatings, humiliations, cigarette addictions, sexual addictions, multiple and violent rapes, terrors in my sleep where nightmares emerge of former rape and beatings. I pull myself back as I see that Mr. Watson, having rescued his friend, now runs into Sherlock who is in disguise in the opium den. They both leave, racing away to another adventure, Part II, to be at our dinnertime. The heavy drag of fear, hopelessness and despair that has covered me in the space of a few minutes slowly pulls away.
Later, here I am sitting at my computer, surrounded by the books I love and photos of family and friends that are my life and I think again, Thank you God for giving me another chance. Thank you for guiding me, in your wisdom, through working a recovery program I later called Repair. Thank you for taking me away from the torments of the past, across that bridge of recovery to where I am today. I remember times when the burden felt like a blanket of darkness and death, like the victims in the opium den. I think of my utter longing during that time to be free from all of life’s pain, thinking death would be my only escape. I didn’t make the journey from there to here by myself. Even in my darkest hour, when I thought I was alone, God was there, holding my hand, telling me to take just one more step……saying, You can do it, you can do it. I am here to help you. And so I did; and so He was. And so can you. Begin to Repair your life. You won’t be alone.
