The Sh*t Show and the Shoah

This is what happens to you when your life is just a series of betrayals.

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You can’t tell someone else’s story; you can only tell your own.

But me and J., our stories came together. Not suddenly by chance, but over time.

We rarely actually argued, and he was too polite to roll his eyes at me, but I could tell.

“I know you think I could never really understand you because I’m white.”

“You’re not white your Jewish –there’s a difference,” you replied.

When you’d get mad at me, you’d start your sentence with the “N” word. “Listen N***a.”

Oddly enough, I began to take this as a compliment.

Even after 10 years, you’d only trust me so much. You’d pick and choose when to ask me for help. You always seemed to think that secrets were like some kind of bulletproof vest.

I could never convince you to the contrary that certain secrets will do you in.

When you called last December, not long after your 25th birthday, to tell me about the sewage overflow at the nursing home where you were working, I was proud of you for telling me about a crisis as it was happening, instead of after, when it was…