We wrote this one a little while ago and let it wait in drafts a bit. Today it’s not where we are, but it was asking to be published.

I’m sad, sad, sad beyond bearing. I wake from honesty and find myself wordless and lost. I must dismantle it all again, over and over. (living is about betraying your own identity) The constant search for the point of balance between light and dark, day and night, responsibility and freedom, the place where my name has meaning and nakedness is possible.

I’m sorry!

I’m so sorry for a million things I can’t begin to put into words. I’m sorry that I don’t understand you better, that I can’t follow you, can’t hear your heart beating in this night. I’m sorry for all the ways I let you down, that I’m not who or what you need, that I leave you hurting, mouth full of black night, lips closed on black blood. I’m sorry it’s imperfect, so hard to speak truths at noon, so hard to bear touch without turning off your skin so you can hug without flinching, without the smell of another person getting into your nose and staying there like a cologne you can’t bear. I’m sorry that I’m broken too, that I don’t have answers and don’t even always understand the questions, that the night baffles me and the day dazes me, that I know so little and can’t draw you a better map. I’m sorry that it’s so hard. I can’t bear it either, some days. It just fucking hurts. It just bleeds from you.

I’m sorry that sometimes you still feel so alone, even when I’m right here, that there’s parts of you I can’t reach, that holding your hand or speaking your language isn’t enough to make you feel heard, safe, loved, connected. I’m sorry for the days we just feel like planets spinning in space, untouched and light years from touch. I’m sorry that words stick in my throat, that I find it so hard to play at being a good host, even when you’re so kind and respectful, that it takes days or sometimes months before I unfreeze and reply. I wish it didn’t, I wish I did better, but I get scared and I’m not even certain what I’m scared of.

And at the same time I say I’m so sorry I can’t make it better I want to tell you – beware those who tell you they can! Beware the gurus, the cost of their salvation is much higher than first apparent. Beware those who are healed and whole, who never suffer and are not lost, not bewildered by the world, not sickened by the violence, the rhetoric, the vile squabbling of those with full stomachs and empty hearts. These leaders who are fit to lead, confident, with their easy grace and their warm smiles, I know the lack of doubt is like sun after a long winter, like rain after drought, but be careful. Sometimes there’s a kind of healed that isn’t so much whole as it is wilfully not knowing about the cracks about the outliers about the contradictions. It’s fitting the dress because the surgeon cut out every part of you that didn’t, and don’t you wear it well? And aren’t we all so envious?

The world’s on fire some days, so full of pain I don’t know how to bear it. A thousand stars reflected in the ocean. The vast and distant echo of your pain sounds in my skin like a gong that is struck and reverberates on. I cannot bear it and I cannot bear for it to be silenced.

Be a little kind, a little brave. I’m tired of the boxes that we live in. There’s so much here, beneath the surface, that connects us. So much human feeling. None of us owns pain, any more than we own the cure. We’re all broken, and the ones who know it least are broken most.