A Love Letter

Life is noise and panic. It’s thumping dance music that turns into boxing matches in the street at 4am, it’s tired babies who refuse to nap when they should and won’t go to bed when they’re more than ready. It’s the squeal of a megaphone on an early morning’s freezing winter protest. It’s the shrill ring of the phone, the outpourings of loved ones bearing tragedy. It’s the blaring of headphones on a packed train to work, the hysteria of every newspaper and tv channel screaming headlines at a species individually held prisoner, each to their own personal trauma. 

It’s the empty smiles and wild eyes of friends, family, strangers – united in blind panic, frozen in the headlights of this grim reality that we are subject to and unwillingly, unknowingly perpetuate. The traps we painstakingly set for ourselves and inevitably tumble into. The simple humanity to be found in the destruction of monotonous routine, the construction of our own obstacles and the lamentation of their effectiveness.

It’s the fear on the faces of people winging it, holding a map, a diary, a watch – with no concept whatsoever of what they are doing, where they are headed. Careering into the unknown, white knuckled, and scarred from years of torment. Everyday life which is at once so easily explained as bland, boring and at the same time a never ending conflagration – self punishment for sins real or perceived. 

It is the guilt and shame of irreparable mistakes. Lessons learned at high cost and too late. It is the back breaking burden, piled higher every day with stress and worry and debt and illness. It is the frail beating heart of those who struggle on simply because they have not the energy to submit, to confess that there really is no reason good enough. There is no great reward. 

Life is pain, every step like bare feet on broken glass. Every milestone brings scars, every choice bears unimaginable consequence. Though technologically advanced, intelligent and capable beings, we are victims of our own immeasurable stupidity and naïveté. The architects of our own demise. We stumble around in the dark, we fall. 

When I am tired, hungry, afraid to go on and unable to turn back – when my body is weak, and my heart is broken, you are the light in the dark. Though my feet are bloodied and blistered, though my heart is tired and sore, you guide me through the waste. You are a beacon of hope, a simple reason to the sheer madness of the world. The pain lingers, but the despair is gone. The hurt is necessary, a perfect contrast to the absolute and all-consuming love that envelopes me with you. It all makes sense. The road here was full of thorns and potholes, but I have arrived home.