When I hear him, my son, wanting his present to have been an elephant, rather than Jenga bricks, my heart breaks a little.
The imperfection of the world beating (so lightly!) at the door of the safe house we’ve tried to build for him. Each knock louder, not to be withheld. The sea crashing into the shore, inexorably breaking it down. The bell tolling.
And it breaks on me too, the fear and tightness, anxiety about whether I’ll be OK, whether I’ll be able to keep caring for my family, whether others will turn on me, whether I’ll turn on myself,.
For all the suffering that exists - the hardly-perceptible, the intended, the suffering that is passed down beating grandfather and father and son on the way, the fledgling struggling its last breath, the casual snub that causes a private sob, the rumination that cannot break free of itself, the trivial-but-not-trivial, the …
And it feels heavy and solid to me, a dark mass at the heart of life, nudged away, hidden, distracted-away-from, but still just there, ebbing and flowing outwards from its solid centre.
I’ve been with it, on-and-off for the last few weeks. It asks for stillness, for me to be with it rather than act against it. Not to accept it, but not to fight it - to sit with it.
But as I sit, I long for us to be free of this. I long for it, but I do not have hope in my heart.
I see ways to beat back the darkness, to cause this thing to ebb slightly - a spring tide on this sea of pain.
I can tell stories where we beat it down to nothing, and build something bright and glorious in its place.
But I do not have hope in my heart.
[Meta: you don’t need to worry about me, I’m OK, this isn’t my usual state.]