I saw a woman driving today, she was crying like she had just lost someone close.
Tears of rage. Of being left alone to fight against this planet. To fight for her own life, without having any support as far as she could see into the distance.
It made me cry. My eyes swelled up.
I cried because I know that pain so intimately. I repress the sadness more than I want to feel it. If I experience the depths too often I cannot live, I cannot move forward. I can get lost in the feelings for days. Stuck, numb, distant.
I cried because I feel lonely too often.
When it feels more comfortable to cry to an empty car than into the arms of anyone you know, or have known since birth. Even a lifetime relationship can’t give you the comfort you’re looking for.
Maybe we don’t cry for the sadness of others but for the sadness in our own lives.
For poorly timed love, for relationships that never quite click, for those who leave our sides too early, for opportunities missed, for lives lived half empty.
Maybe we cry, because the loss of another’s humanity is the loss of a part of ourselves. Helping us to see this world in an entirely different way. Helping us see through our own invisible walls.
Whatever they were doing…they were walking by our sides lifting the veil to their perspective every so often, letting us gain a glimpse into the workings of another. We can see ourselves more clearly, we are wider and larger than we’ve ever felt and been. We felt seen.
When we lose that soldier, that comrade, that lover. We lose a piece of ourselves that can never be obtained through looking at an old photo, or searching for a perfectly intact memory that’ll bring that person back.
We will never get that again. No matter our wishes or our prayers, our lives will continue to march forward with one less drummer. In this sadness and loss we can find a whole lot.
Maybe something to fill the hole, and maybe not. But, whatever lesson this loss brings us, we can test our faith by claiming the lesson was necessary.
We can either call ourselves on our bluff or take this lesson deep into the folds of our mind and let it incubate. We can let it shine through the sadness, so we can see the luscious beauty within this emotional journey. We’ve gone deep into a cave without a flashlight, only to be illuminated from the inside once we’ve reached the bottom.
Inside here we see the walls lined with paintings from times past, from those who have also lost. We can get a nights rest knowing that fragments do live on, even though we may never get the full thing ever again.
We do get the pieces.
And these pieces lead us to places we never would have considered, or seen before.
We continue to be shaped by those who have touched our lives forever. Even when their physical imprint is gone. Their tangible imprint continues working on us for years, until we meet the same fate.
Tis’ life. This changing beast. Relish in this. Whatever it may be, even if it’s all pain. Because sometimes beauty is only a few seconds away.
And even tears can be greeted by love sometimes.
If you’re lucky they’ll share the same breath.
And that’s when you know you’ve stumbled upon something truly beautiful.