Commit: Be Willing to Go Out of Your Comfort Zone for a True Friend

Just how far would you go for a friend?

One of best friends in the world is named Lily. She is also the most brilliant person I know (and I know a lot of very smart and special people). Her brain works like no one else’s. When we first met I noticed her (how could I not?) because she was dancing alone in the student union of our college wearing a white lab-coat to which she’d attached letters spelling out schizoleptic. I introduced myself to her and asked what the lab-coat letters meant. “My dad is a paranoid schizophrenic, and my mom is a grand mal epileptic, so I figure I’m a schizoleptic.” See what I mean about her original thinking? That was enough for me to become best friends with her for life. A couple years after I moved from West Virginia to San Francisco she followed, and we had many wild adventures together.

The light behind the darkness

            I knew that Lily had had a rough childhood, with her dad institutionalized and her mother working three jobs to support the family. But I did not know about the pain and guilt that had scarred Lil when she had visited her father in the institution, which sounded like a medieval nightmare. 

Sometimes Lil would “go dark.” On the rare occasions when she did, the pain and fear of it all came spilling out.

            One episode in particular haunted her. It had happened when she, as the oldest daughter, was assigned to visit her father in the institution because the younger children could not handle it. The male patients at the institution had to leave their rooms during the day and wait in the hall of the dank, jail-like ward. They either wandered around like zombies on Thorazine, or they lay down on the cold, hard floor, trying desperately to sleep. When Lil visited, she said she had to “step over the heads” of the men. “Other people’s fathers, too,” she added.

            After a really bad breakup of a long-term relationship, Lil started talking more about these visits, so much so that I began referring to them as “head-stepping episodes.” She would wail and cry and scream about it while I searched desperately for the right words to say. Suddenly it came to me that role-playing might help. So I lay down on the floor, and we reenacted what had taken place so many years before that had cut Lil to the quick. As I lay there and Lil stepped over my head, saying what she used to say to her dad, somehow, I knew exactly what her dad would have wanted to say to her if he had not been medicated to within an inch of his life.

            I said the words for him. “I love you so much. You are my brave daughter and I am so proud that you come here to see me. Lots of the other families are too scared to come, but not you. Even though I am in here, I am okay. I had lots of good years with your mom and you when you were little. I will never stop loving you. You are so special to me and my gift to the world.”

            Lil’s shoulders shook as she cried, walking slowly over my imaginary ward mates and me. That was the last head-stepping episode. Lil

has gone on to become a remarkable success, a hugely talented guitarist and a beloved and excellent teacher. And I learned about what a profound difference we can make when we reach for another with the eternal power of compassion, deep friendship, and love.