Unasnwered Prayers

In my twenties, I made an effort to pray regularly. At first, I would pray for the people I was thankful for: my family, friends, and people I admired, like authors and filmmakers. I would pray for the success of things I was involved in, like the Zoo and Millsaps College.

Most of my prayers were to say, “I am thankful for these things.” Asking for things from God always seemed like it might annoy him. God isn’t Santa Claus. Toward the end, I would ask for just one thing for myself: I would pray for help finding someone who loved me for myself, not because of what I could do for them.

The problem, I think, was that I wasn’t living for myself. I was living to do what the people around me wanted, not what I wanted and not what I was good at. I think many people assumed that if I tried long enough and hard enough to be good at the things my father wanted me to be good at, then it would eventually happen.

Making your way in your twenties can be tough. For many people, it’s the first time they’d ever had to try and pay their own bills. For some people, it didn’t go well. Four times in a row, there were women who associated themselves with me, not because they enjoyed being with me, but because I helped them with their problems making ends meet.

I always debate how much detail to go into with these stories. Three of these women are still out there. One died far too early. Not only do they have a right to their privacy, but it’s also probably not fair to put my version of their story out there where they can’t tell their version.

If I felt like I had something to prove, I might be anxious to tell my side of these stories in as much detail as possible. I don’t feel like that, though. Anyone aware of the situation at the time knows the truth of what happened. More often than not, they were the ones to tell me to do what I had to do to extricate myself from those toxic situations. Until the very last moment, I always tried to hold on to the dream that, eventually, these women would see me as more than just help with whatever problem they had.

A friend once told me that God answers every prayer, but sometimes the answer is no. I was willing to accept that maybe God was looking out for me by ending these poisonous relationships, but I couldn’t understand why he never sent anyone who saw me differently. I began to wonder if I just didn’t deserve it.

Pretty soon, I became an every-night drinker. It’s part of my genetic makeup. One of my most regular haunts was a place called Scrooges, in the same building as The Rogue and Good Company. Another every-night regular was a very pretty woman from Columbia, Mississippi, who spent years ignoring my existence.

Granted, I was never very easy to get to know, but this woman and her friends did a pretty good job of making me feel invisible, which was fine by me. I hated having to break the ice with new people. One night, I was reading my book at the end of the bar, minding my own business, when she came and sat next to me. I was maybe one drink in; she was in maybe four.

She began to tell me about how her job wasn’t going well, and she’d been having to ask her father for help, which made her worry that he was disappointed in her. For about an hour, I listened to her story without much comment. Sometimes people just want to talk.

After a while, she moved her stool closer to mine. I could feel our knees touch, then our shoulders. Under the bar, she reached for my hand and held it.

“You know, you could take me home if you want to. We could have a drink and watch a movie.” She said.

After being silent for a moment, I finally said, “I know what this is,” and let go of her hand.

“We’ve been coming here for years, and you’ve ignored my existence for years, but now you want me to go home with you. I know what this is. I’ve been through this before. I think I’ll go home by myself.” I said.

I don’t think she’s the kind of girl who ever gets rejected like that. Between the rejection and my unspoken accusation, I could tell she was pretty hurt by my behavior. That wasn’t my intention. I never wanted to hurt a lady.

I can’t even say for certain that she was even doing what I thought she was doing. Maybe she really liked me. Maybe she just always gets friendly like that when she’s drunk. Whatever the case, I didn’t want to find out. I didn’t want to spend another six months or a year with somebody only to find out they didn’t really care anything about me.

After that night, I took myself out of the dating game for six years. I just wasn’t capable of doing it correctly, I thought. Besides, with my father’s death, I had an opportunity to find out some things about myself, and I probably needed to do that by myself rather than feeling responsible for somebody else.

I still feel pretty bad about making that woman cry. She had no idea what she was getting into when she began telling me her story. I’m sure she just thought I was a good listener, which I was, but listening sometimes got me into a world of troubles.

I think God takes our prayers into account but then makes things happen in a better way. I was not yet ready to add another person to my life. I was trying to add all the wrong people, listening to what they needed from me, not what they could add to my life.

I have no idea what happened to the woman from Columbia. I hope things worked out well for her. She meant no harm, and I probably would have liked her very much if I had taken the time to get to know her.