"Love Sorrow"

"Let me be to my sad self hereafter kind."

- Peter Pouncey, Rules for Old Men Waiting: A Novel

" Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth."

-excerpt from "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye

How do you, or how would you, "be to my sad self hereafter kind"?

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"Love Sorrow"

"...For she is yours now and you must take care of what has been given."

Mary Oliver wrote these words, personifying sorrow as a sweet, lost little girl. I can see her there with her hair hanging in her face, too defeated by life already to reach up for your hand before entering a crowd. She is just so goddamn sad. Her sadness is heavy enough to be felt. This image works. How do you not want to speak softly, with kind eyes and no sudden moves to a sorrowful child? Waiting for the moment when she will trust you enough to let you cradle her in your lap and tell her it's not her fault so many others have let her down?

But. It's hard. I can see her as separate from me and feel this kind, gentle love pouring from my heart. When my eyes unfocus and I see that that little girl is me, I tremble. Because she ages and distorts till she becomes a weak mess. A 30-something almost woman with dull eyes and bruises from her last blackout. Children can be held. Women must remain upright. I get dizzy when I try to stand.

Kindness had lived in my heart. I had warmed my hands by it and lit dark hallways. Now, it hurts. It hurts to feel kindness open my heart. Cracking even the smallest attic window lets a barrage of sorrow come tumbling in, and I can only take so much.

Today, for example, my kindness snuck out through that window like a teenager in a short skirt with a cigarette on her lips. I turned on the news to the tragedy in Orlando and knew too well the horror of those families pleading for any information on their missing loved ones. And my kindness reached for them. I have spent the rest of the day crying in front of my niece, who I'm watching, and pretending like I'm laughing. She thinks I'm snorting and snorts back at me. I try not to think it's too sweet or I won't be able to stop crying.

I am harder now. I'm funny, I'm told. That I-can't-believe-you-said-that funny. Because my kindness is shrouded in dark, musty grief.

I know this post was supposed to be about being kind to myself.

I go to the gym
I make myself be around children
I ride my bike to work now
I let myself make a friend at work
I hug my friends hard
I told a woman at the park because she had kind eyes and a great sense of humor
I eat Brie and chocolate for dinner sometimes
I called the suicide hotline on a bad day
I go to support group though I never want to but am always glad I did
I keep seeing my therapist even when I resent her for how much it still hurts

I am trying to be kind to myself. Even after I've been very unkind to myself with late nights and ex boyfriends and whiskey tears. I try to remember that today is another opportunity to be kind to myself. Though it hurts. Being kind means seeing your own pain. It is looking in the mirror after a horrific accident to find your face forever altered, scarred. To see yourself as you are, so broken, is to see sorrow, to see that you and the little girl are the same, and it may be a very long time before you can reach for that offered hand.