…and the sun will rise.”
– Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

I read a lot, you guys. Like, pretty well constantly having some sort of written word in front of my face. Books, games, blogs, backs of cereal boxes.

A lot.

One of the people that  I read about has the loveliest, most lyrical voice I have heard in a long while. She writes eloquently about her life, her depression, and her work to feel her way along in the world. It’s beyond moving.
Maybe it is especially so for me, as I see echoes of my younger self in her words. It could also be just that the work is stunning.

She wrote something this morning that grabbed my heart and shook it. Shook it like a terrier with a rat, to be frank. She spoke how her anxiety and depression were tearing her up, shredding her, exhausting her, making her feel worthless and unwanted; made her feel without hope.

I wish I could capture what she said, and I don’t want to link her without her permission (I’ve been recently told that that is not kosher). But, I wanted to put here the response I wrote.
It may be terrible poetry – but it is, one hopes, empathetic verse.

It’s not always like this.
There isn’t always a pile of unopened mail
there isn’t always laundry organized and still waiting.
Mundane tasks left behind while we sit and wonder
About all the work we have left undone.
You do good things.
But, better…
You are good.
You are worth every bit
of work and hope and love.
It isn’t about earning someone’s trust
and love and acceptance.
Fuck that. It’s
Remembering that you are loved and accepted and trusted.
Sometimes we forget
Sometimes we crumble
Sometimes we hover too long in one spot
Forgetting that we can strafe right, left, criss-cross
Zoom, soar, and dart.

——-

I am not, as you can see, much of a poetess. But I, like most writers, feel things especially hard. You’re having an emotion? Here, have it in spades. Have it in hundreds! (Quoth the brain).

Anywho, reading your words today gave me (as the kids say) all the feels. I sincerely hope that as you read people’s words back to your own, you can see the care and acceptance.

I hope these words find you better, find you safe, find you happy.

Having cast your own words out into the internet; a bottled message in a digital sea, if you will forgive the conceit, please accept this response as the outstretched hand that it is meant to be.