May, you may go.

May,

you may go.

I won't miss you.

No, no.

Your 31 days

hurt 31 ways.

I just thought that you should know.

Your 31 days

hurt 31 ways

I won't miss you.

You can go.

lonely

Been trying to suss out what I feel and this is all I've come up with:

I'm lonely.

Not, like, in the "woe-is-me-I-don't-got-no-friends" way of lonely.

This loneliness is deeper.

More along the lines of lying-on-your-deathbed-knowing-you're-finishing-this-journey-alone kind of lonely.

I use words to express how I feel, but you will never really know how I feel.

I use words to tell you what I see and think, but you will never really know what I see and think.

You will never really know me.

And I will never really know you.

Which has always been the way of things.

Each of us is a secret - one that will be kept until we die - one that will only ever be fully known by the very person the secret embodies.

That's nice imagery.

But you'll never see that imagery the way I see it.

DAMMIT.

...

I don't want to be a secret unto myself anymore.

I WANT to be known.

I want every person on this grassy orb to see what I see, feel what I feel, know what I know.

And I'd like to return the favor.

I wanna know what joy feels like to you.

And pain.

I wanna know if your red and my red are the same.

I wanna taste your sweet and sweat your salt.

I wanna breathe your breath and beat your heart.

What does it feel like to laugh like you?

To cough like you?

To fawn and scream and fart like you?

What does "home" feel like for you?

What's it like to actually like golf?

...

I don't want to be a secret unto myself anymore.

I don't want to be lonely anymore.

Does God Cry?

The older I get - the more I know - the more depressed I feel.

Sure, I'm a pessimist at heart, and, sure, this tendency toward the negative likely colors my view.

But I know I am not alone.

As many have said before me, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."

There's lots of good going on in the world.

But most often we're bombarded with the bad.

And maybe that makes sense.

Bad sells papers.

And even that fact ^^^ illustrates my point.

Just another piece of knowledge to be sad about - that human beings, on the whole, flock to the negative.

As I do.

But I digress.

Negatives sell news - and, after all, what is one person's giving to a food bank, when corporations are polluting the environment, and ruining it for all 7+ billion people on the planet?

What good do solar advancements do, when the government actively works against them in favor of antiquated energy sources that literally kill people (the Black Lung. Look it up.)

I've always been told that one can only control onesself.

That to do a good deed is to, in some small way, set the world right.

Sure.

That's great.

But I've gone off down a path I didn't intend to tread when I started this missive.

No, what I came to say is this:

If I - a 37-year-old woman with a decent brain and internet access - am dismayed at the world, and if any of you feel a fraction of the disappointment I feel about how humanity is basically a cesspool of selfishness, then I think we all need to stop for a second and give empathy where it's due:

To God.

For truly, if He (She? It?) is all-knowing, then He/She/It must be fucking miserable

ALL

THE

TIME.

Can you even imagine the futility of seeing humanity spinning its wheels, knowing, without doubt, it's not going anywhere?

Or even if it is heading someplace, knowing already the destination and the outcome, but still having to watch the cruelty play out in real time?

Honestly, it's a wonder God hasn't offed himself to this point.

But Erin, you ask, "What about Free Will? Maybe God doesn't know how things will play out. Maybe He/She?It is relying on us to make the choices and shape the future!"

To this I reply, gesturing to everything around me, "Have you SEEN the choices people make? If the future is up to us as a species We. Are. Doomed."

But maybe God's an optimist.

Maybe He/She/It sees the soup kitchen as offsetting the destruction of the entire planet.

Maybe, to Him/Her/It, it'll just all come out in the wash...

Maybe, He/She/It has a subscription to cosmic Netflix and, instead of watching us kill each other, binges on celestial comedies?

Maybe He/She/It is a cutter.

I guess what I am saying is, I dunno how God copes.

It's all I can do, with my limited exposure, to make it through a day, and God has the (mis)fortune of seeing all of our shit 24/7, 365.

If it hasn't happened already, I'm pretty sure this is where the Jesus convo comes into play.

And I haven't the time, the energy, or the desire to get into how convenient it is to have a human God destined to show up eventually to save the day...deus ex machina much?...so I'll just answer with an aspect of Judaism I've always liked:

Live each day as if there is no God, and therefore all good things that are to come are dependent solely on you.

In other words - don't sleep tight relying on Jesus to clean up your mess.

Clean up your own fucking mess.

And try not to make another one.

But I've veered down a side road again.

Sorry.

Add it to the list of human mistakes I make that reek to high heaven.

And, with that, it seems we have come full-circle.

The Rolling Stones have a song about sympathy for the Devil.

But maybe it's time we give God some of that pity.

Because I cannot imagine a worse punishment than being all-knowing.

For about three years now, I have wanted to know, for sure, if I would heal from my disability.

But, in looking back, it's probably a blessing I wasn't told.

Because if you told me three years ago that by May of 2017 I'd still be sick - that my vision wouldn't recover, that the tinnitus wouldn't cease, that my sleep would still be fractured, and about the continuous and innumerable pains/malfunctions, I would have killed myself.

I would have given up all hope and ceased eating.

I'd have dwindled away to nothing.

But because I did not know, I lived each day in hope.

That hope, even if only briefly, would scare away the darkness, and allow me to live another day.

That hope keeps me going still, even though it is routinely dashed - another of life's cruelties - when each day brings no measure progress.

And that's the tragedy of omniscience - it doesn't allow for hope.

If one already knows the outcome of everything - even if that outcome is good - it doesn't allow for hope.

So God will never know the thing with feathers

that perches in the soul.

He/She/It will never hear the tune without the words

that never stops - at all.

...

That's is, perhaps, the saddest thing I have ever contemplated.

Because God IS hope to most of the people I know.

God is MY hope of ever beating this disability.

God is the source of rest from all our suffering.

But who is there to tend God's suffering?

What hope is there to ease His fears?

Can our sympathy provide Him comfort?

Or, as He already knew the sympathy was coming, will it calm no sorrows and dry no tears?

Despite already knowing the outcome, does God cry?