I feel sad.  It sounds so simple, weighs so much.  I have watched the world crumble so many times, watched the people I love suffer and fade.  I have pretended the ground is solid, to help others feel less afraid.  I hide emptiness in the pit of my throat and weave rage into the air around me.  Sometimes it is easier to feel anger than to feel despair.

I have thought a lot about writing about the current shattering of things, but I can’t.  It isn’t my intention to be cryptic.  I am just not ready or able to write about what is going on, not with clarity anyway.  It is as if my sadness has drained the ink from my pen and the energy from my fingers.  I am escaping into the bottle more and more, but it is failing as an elixir.  I no longer hear it’s lies.  I am not depressed.  This shattering isn’t about me.  I am a witness and helpless.

For years, I have been watching an unravelling, tried to stitch pieces back into place, to salvage some of what was, while being demoralized and damaged by someone who has no ability to look or listen or feel compassion.  I wake up every day filled with anger toward her, end each day enraged by her inability to be patient or kind, about her prolific lies that stain my character.  I have to consider that it is easier to focus on being angry at her than being sad about what is putting me in her line of fire.

I am afraid that if I write about the textures of this sadness, it will become real in  ways I am not ready to have revealed.  I am afraid that in trying to help, I am failing someone I love.  I am afraid that I am doing it all wrong.  I am afraid that I won’t be able to bear the weight of it all.