Nobody’s Perfect
When I was young my parents must have made me want to feel better about something I had done or messed up, because they taught me the phrase “nobody’s perfect.” That wound up biting them in the behind, as I then used it from then on, whenever I committed a major or minor infraction. “Nobody’s perfect!” I’d proclaim with a shrug of my shoulders and a barely concealed, dimpled smile.
I have been thinking about that a lot this week. It has been one week since my friend Trey committed suicide amidst questions and finger-pointing and on this particular day, 10 years since 9/11.
Much hullabaloo has been made over the fact that Trey had thousands of online friends and yet seemingly no help. He had lots of people trying to help him, and who loved him, but he shared some dark secrets with my father, who committed suicide when I was 21, and his childhood baggage I am quite certain contributed to his ultimate, fatal choice. But that doesn’t erase so much he did that was good, or diminish friendships he valued, or mean he didn’t love his children and family passionately. People who seem so good and kind and are respected by large numbers of people are usually held to nearly impossible standards and measured harshly when their reality does not meet mass expectations.
But truly, no one is perfect. We all have things we’ve done that we are ashamed of or embarrassed by; baggage that we didn’t ask for; horrors that affected us in ways we don’t always realize. Trey, my Daddy or anyone else who has thought about or committed suicide is no different… they just could not find a way to cope with their own imperfections. Sometimes we are our harshest judge and jury.
And sometimes, like in the case of 9/11 terrorists, we judge others harshly. It is nearly impossible, given the gravity of the situation that happened on that day 10 years ago, to think of the people who caused the incident as humans with any value. “Kill them all!” has been a rallying cry from Americans for so long as we seek retribution for our pain. The pain of those left behind and impacted by loss is really who the justice is for, as the departed souls impacted the most are probably at more peace than we are. But those terrorists, hard to imagine, have children of their own who love them, and spouses and siblings and parents and even friends - though perhaps their friends are all wrong-headed too. Nobody is perfect - people commit heinous crimes that once were children and could not envision they’d grow up to be influenced by someone or something and turn out this way.
My 9/11 experience was completely skewed by a terrible personal experience. Terribly unhappy in my second marriage and dimly aware my husband was up to no good, I had to spend that day alone, as he had left me to be with (literally) a crackwhore he was seeing. He said he had to go see his friend (a guy) but we got into a screaming fight over his insensitivity when he came home that night as I knew something was horribly askew. While people were losing loved ones and the country was in horrible crisis and children were realized they were orphaned, I was trying to cope with this giant noose around my own neck of a terribly dysfunctional relationship and failed choice of a husband and weight gain due to misery, all while working a serious job with lots of responsibility. All the many things I had not been perfect at for the previous 8-10 years that led me to that spot, consumed my thoughts while the country fell apart around me.
By April I’d be divorced, able to change my life’s course. It’s been a decade for the 9/11 families and friends most impacted - and the extended group of military family and friends impacted and I am sure some have rebuilt their lives and found peace and some have not. Woven into the fabric of the last decade are suicides - many from military personnel and I don’t know how many related directly to 9/11.
Nobody is perfect - it’s not an excuse, it’s our simple reality. Be kind to each other. Jump to less conclusions. Assume there is part of the story you might not know. And try to appreciate the days shared with people you like and love. They are precious and few.
