Dear reader, do you feel broken too?

Do you live in defence mode, terrified of something you can’t name?

Tears carry seconds of hurt and lifetimes of pain all at once. Hollow. Numb. What if I’m not enough after all?

You could read every mantra, cherish every compliment, list every reason to be grateful from cinnamon buns to the Irish Sea, but maybe there would still be a cold truth, staring you down, everywhere you go.

An alarm rings one day and slaps you with all the brutality of 6am on a Monday. Time is up, you didn’t reach your potential. Someone guesses that you’re 5 years younger than you actually are, and you don’t remember the ins and outs of your memories well enough to recount the time that’s passed. You may as well be 5 years younger, but the lines deepening in your face say otherwise, because you never caught on to skin care, forgetting you’d become the target audience by now.

People won’t look you in the eyes because they’ve already mentally dropped you. They don’t care for who you are and what you have, they found someone better. There is always someone better. You exist as a CV that doesn’t make the cut; a customer number in a long line; a random friend of a friend; a series of symptoms to diagnose. Even the personality type you discovered/your star sign/the clothes you bought/ the emojis you hand-picked for your bio don’t feel like they fit anymore, like personal identity was an illusion all along.

I’m haunted by every look of sympathy that made me feel so much smaller than I thought I was, and wanted to be; every time I started telling a story only to trail off when nobody listened; every time I hovered with a lunch tray unsure of where to sit, terrified of missing an important social cue.

Amongst laughter and love and birthday cards, there is still a fragility that leads me to spiral shamelessly.

I end my letters with hope, with positivity, with reasons to love life and be grateful. There are so many reasons to note, after all, little cracks of light where we dream. And endings, they’re supposed to be bright, who needs to read tragedy when so much of the world is living it outside of paragraphs and poetry?

But what if spark and hope doesn’t come from me. What if my head is so much more grey than that - what if I can’t find yellow this time around.

Would I be a fraud to you?

Would you leave?

It’s there in Substack comments, “this moved me”, and a subscription, but what if my words never do that again? What if they start to get tiresome, and I don’t live up to the one thing you expected of me?

If it’s not the self-pity that drives you away, maybe it’s revealing a different part of myself - I’m a lesbian, I’m a swiftie, I don’t believe in God.

I’ll be removed like I’m nothing, and I won’t exist in your world anymore. That action from strangers makes perfect sense.

But what if the next person to walk away is my best friend of a decade? What if it’s my partner? What if it’s my brother?

No one can or should reassure me that they won’t. I have to live through the anxiety, and breathe in the love. I know the love is there, I do feel it. To some, I’m far from nothing - I’m the sun, or one of their stars.

But if you put me in a room with everyone who loves me, cross-legged on the carpet with nothing to hide behind, and you asked me to be earth-shatteringly honest,

I’d say I don’t know why they do. The reasons they love me are ghosts I can’t see.

And if someone were to leave, how could I blame them? Have I not left people before?

I’m not very good at hard goodbyes, but I’ve drifted, too many times - lacked the energy to keep myself afloat in sync with someone who said they cared about me, sometimes with regret.

Every time I take too long to reply to a text; every time I leave the country for a few months, or this time, even longer - the guilt weighs on me. It will be my fault if they forget me. It will be my fault if their love disintegrates.

Because I actually want to owe things to people, though I’m not always sure what is reasonable to owe. I’m not okay with loneliness and solitude. I love the love I have in my life so severely but I’m tortured by the way I feel like I don't deserve it.

I’m not religious, but sometimes I pray for people I love. I pray they’re not lying to me when they tell me they’re okay. For those who admit they’re not okay, I pray they get better.

I don’t want to be helpless, I want to make everything right. And yet I don’t, and I won’t, and I’m so sorry,

but that’s not enough.

I fear my clumsiness won't be so endearing anymore, and I’ll let the best things slip through my fingers like a shattered vase.

People are dying.

People are dying.

I’m not face-to-face with death yet but I’m in a staring match with the fear of not doing life well enough. It’s pathetic, and I can’t even let my privilege force a smile out of me. I don’t know if the world inside my head is better or worse than the one I was raised in. Either way, how dare I spend so much time inside it that it’s a debate I’m even able to have. Can’t I escape myself, touch grass, be an adult and wear my gratitude on my face. How can I say I’m lucky over and over again but still bite my lip with anxiety.

But it’s still there, my fear of what people see when they look closely, concerned they’re seeking a reward for breaking down my barriers.

Because I’m not hiding something better, there’s just… this.

They could read my work and see contradictions in every corner, even though I meant every word at the time.

Not to reference the musical Hamilton right now, so many years after I had that phase, but when they sing,

“look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now” I get choked up, I feel it in my bones. And I just want to feel that all the time because I know it to be true, all the time, but feeling it is different. And I have no good reason not to be kissing the ground and laughing.

I want to shake myself.

There’s an urge to add a disclaimer and explain that I’m not always like this, to make a promise that these moments don’t define me, so please don’t think I’m ungrateful or broken…

But that would erase the point, no? If I’m to be raw, I’m scared that it’s not a moment I can discard as unimportant. I’m scared that this comes from somewhere deep in my core, simply forgotten when I'm happy and living and distracted.

In dark episodes, I return to anxiety, and although it makes me sick to ask it, what if the darkness is home?

Look at our planet. Are we on a good planet where bad things happen? Or are we on a bad planet desperately trying to find the good? The same could be asked of my head, and I don’t know how to answer the question.

And because I’ve revealed this, will you still believe me when I say I’m okay? Will you hold me like a kaleidoscope and let my complications unfold with colour, or will I forever be tainted grey?

Maybe I can’t resist, and I actually do have to end this letter with hope, with yellow, even if it’s just this:

Dear Reader, we are not alone.

In the way we break our own hearts - over beautiful or terrible people; over glorious or unspeakable times - we make mosaics. Our bodies are art. Our tears water gardens and flowers bloom Somewhere, Softly.

There’s hope in language, no? Maybe a reason to be grateful tonight - a reason visible even to you - is that I’m daring to let the words out. Maybe that gives me a new strength.

Maybe.

Hopefully.