Hope Architect

Cliche title, right? I think I see that line almost every second day in my instagram feed, either a post from one of the many “inspirational pages” I follow or from someone who’s sharing it in the hopes that someone reads it and does something with what they see. Sound familiar?
Sometimes I really wish we could all take a step back from social media and actively do something kind everyday. Are you already doing this? That’s fucking awesome and my hat is off to you for doing what you do! I have those times where kindness comes out of me in waves and other times where I just seem to go into this autopilot mode where it feels dull. I find that  only in writing in my gratitude journal or watching another person go out of their way to brighten someone else’s day do I notice that a part of me is in hiding, waiting to be called upon to bring kindness back into this beautiful world. 

Let me tell you a story about kindness, one that I feel needs to be shared with the world. I feel very fortunate that I was the receiver of it all those years ago. 

I was in year nine, and as a lot of teenagers do, I was struggling to figure out who I was, and what friendship group I should be a part of. The group of people I was hanging out with didn’t really have my back the same way that I would have had theirs. There was another person in high school who I regularly clashed with. He always seemed to do the strangest things in class and had more porn on his laptop (yes I was in the laptop class, surprise!) than I did storage. As a teenager who didn’t really know who he was it was very easy to encourage me to do something if I thought it would be “cool” or would make me “fit in”. The friends I had were a part of the same class and thought it would be a great idea to antagonise the hell out of this person and for a short while, I joined in. 

At some point I realised that what I was doing was downright stupid and was upsetting the other person immensely, so I stopped. By this point I had made him so angry, that any attempt to resolve the situation with words was met with threats of violence. I was petrified, in my eyes he was a lot stronger than me, and I’d never been in a fight before. I really did not want it to reach that point. Sadly the antagonising from that group of friends never stopped, and what made it worse was that sometimes they would still pretend I was involved, only increasing his anger towards me. I marched myself straight down to the school office and told the principal what I’d done, and what these people were continuing to do. We all got into a lot of trouble, and rightly so. 

Sadly, the people that I called my friends turned their back on me, and basically told me that I was worth nothing to them. This was my only friendship group so to say that I was heartbroken was an understatement. What came next though, changed my life forever. 

I remember sitting down at the steps of this building in high school to eat my lunch by myself. I was crying and felt very alone. Toward me walked a very small boy with a big red afro and a huge smile on his face. His name was Billy. I knew him from one of the classes that we had together. He asked me if I was okay and why I was by myself. My response was that I didn’t have any friends. He looked at me and said “What do you think I am?”. The warmth that answer gave to my heart was powerful. I told him what had happened and he looked me dead in the eye and said “Real friends don’t turn their backs on you, they aren’t your friends and never were, you’ve got me there’s nothing to worry about”. The rest was history, we never stopped being friends from that day. The kindness, persistence and resilience this man had was unlike anything I had seen before. For the rest of my high school life I never felt like I was alone again. 

Seven years ago in August 2013 we lost Billy to suicide. If you’ve read the introduction to my blog you’ll know that Billy’s passing was the turning point for me to seek help. I knew that there were ways to make what was going on in my own mind not be as overwhelming as it was. So after almost 600 hours of therapy, a ton of my own emotional wounds healed, and what I feel is a life that I am extremely proud of, I tip my hat to Billy. That moment in high school where he told me what I was worth to him has stuck with me ever since he said those words. On the days where I fall into what used to seem like darkness I couldn’t get out of, his voice is a part of all the voices that guide me out of it. 
 

That’s the importance of kindness.