The only way I know that never fails to gain respect for my feelings.
Not a look, although it may be so full of love that you have to turn away and pretend you didn't see.
Not words, that come freely and unstoppable like the tide, but that wake fear of their meaning, embarrassment of their frankness.
Not a touch, even gentle and innocent, because anything so full of passion and tenderness calls up the need to run, to refuse, to hate.
No, the only thing that really speaks the truth, that doesn't break your boundaries but passes over them, through them, to the heart of who you are, where anyone can understand the emotion of anyone else, is music.
And so I sing. Every time, with all the passion I can possibly release into my song without destroying the vessel- for that is what I am, it seems, when I sing: a vessel, simply a container for all the emotion I've ever felt, and I can feel the cracks, at times, feel the pressure of everything that needs to be said pushing at the seams of me. And I say it there, and then, because song is one place where no passion is too much, no feeling too intense, no look too tender, no word too honest. That is why music is my home. Because I have no other home that will take me exactly as I am.

I used to be a dried up riverbed.
Desert sand ran in my veins.
I was the wasteland, the dust bowl of my sadness.
And somewhere inside for all those years, the waters rose, the storm brewed.
I never really noticed.
Until one day I cracked down the middle like a clay ***,
And everyone got to see the rainstorm of my tears.
They fell with all the force of a roll of thunder,
And all the searing heat of a lightning strike,
And all the hopeless endless downpour of a monsoon.
They fell and woke me up, and in my anguish little cracks spidered out until I was a web of fissures,
And of a sudden I fell away.
It feels odd to have no shell anymore,
It feels strange to cry in front of strangers when they pry into my heart.
I was never that girl.
I was a desert, dry as bone bleached by the sun, and as hard, and as abused.
And now I am a river, fed by the rain of my troubles drumming on my back, and my feelings show on my face not because I cannot stop them but because I no longer have the will to.
For months I was tired, and when I stopped drowning I realized that there was no going back.
I cannot drag myself to dry land, and so I must learn to swim the waters of myself, however deep, however dark, however painful.
I must learn to hold my breath, and let the tears fall when they will.
I am a river.
Stopping the tears never stops the pain.
This I have learned.

As much as I love you,
You are not the girl I love.
You wear her face.
You speak with her voice.
Your mannerisms and little quirks are like a mirror of hers,
And my smile is a remembrance of my joy at her beauty.
I am still caught by you.
I stay by your side to see the echo of her in your eyes,
Unable to leave her behind no matter what
Even though she has ceased existing.
It is ingrained in me to get as close as I can to her, you know.
But you?
My darling, the one I treasure more than life itself,
You are not her.
You are not the girl I love.
The girl I love walked away from me last January, when the world was bitter and bleak.
And she never came back.
Not even for a moment.

If not for pain, I think life would be a grand mistake. It is the roadmap of my scars that I will follow to my life's destination. Without pain, there would be no growth. No change. No movement forward. Pain is what pushes us, what bends us and breaks us and molds us into what we are. It erodes our weaknesses, it tests our strengths. It riddles us with holes so that the winds of time don't blow us backwards, into mistakes we've already made. It burns us to the ground so that we can rise again, better. Not everyone is a phoenix. Not everyone gets up. I get that. But those who do live differently. Pain is what makes each moment a precious wound, an ache in our hearts, a treasure so unutterably valuable that we must grab hold of it, cherish it, that any departure from what we truly believe is right is a terrible crime, for we will never live that moment over again. Pain is what life is truly about. The feeling of it, the surviving of it, the avoidance of it, the overcoming of it, the attempt to forget it. Life revolves around pain. How much of it you've been dealt, and how you use yours. You bond with those who have suffered the same sorrows that you have. You seek out ways and people and moments that alleviate your suffering, whatever it may be. The fact that we can feel pain allows us to feel joy, to notice the little twinge in every happy moment that keeps it sweet, and lends it the necessary tension of something that will inevitably end. Pain is what it's all about. And once I accept mine, I thank those who caused me pain. Not because they were right to do so, not because I forgive them, but because I love who I am, and I have grown because I have suffered. Change isn't pretty. Change isn't slow and subtle, soft and sweet. Change is a lightning strike. Change is cataclysmic. An explosion, or implosion, of everything that you are. A wrecking ball to your mind and heart, an earthquake reducing the city of your soul to rubble. Change is meant to be deeply disturbing, deeply upsetting. (Yes, you're doing it right.) Because we do not tend to change unless something forces us. Change is the most agonizing thing you can go through. But as somebody I am quite fond of once said, "Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation." The roadmap of my scars will take me where I need to go, and it may not be an easy way, but at the end I know I will find happiness.

Can you hear the cry
of the emptiness?
"You're pushing me
Out"
Can you
Feel the pressure
Of the open sky?
"Darkness is pushing me out"
Is the horizon still
Hidden
Behind empty wishes
"Save my soul from
Superstition"
Can your senses
Awaken
Beneath the rough blanket of
Life
Or does it suffocate you
Gradually
Pushing you
Out