I imagine the Egyptians felt about deaths of loved ones a lot like we think about autumn
It isn’t a passing
It isn’t a loss
They are just waiting for them to bloom again.
Plants are a fragile thing but maybe they aren’t as fragile as we think they are
Just as we are often not as strong as we think we are

It is easy to break a person
Especially one who does not want to be broken
Because they are the ones who will fight the hardest and tire quickly
It is much harder to shatter apathy than passion

Then there are the people who want to be broken
People who drink their own pain like water
Or maybe something more toxic like bad wine or good coffee
The people who look at their bruised arms and see lace
Instead of burst blood vessels

Some people need the pain to know they can still feel
They would rather feel agony than feel nothing at all
Some people need pain to create
Pain can be the paint in an artist’s brush, the keystrokes of a writer’s fingers

Some people feel pain because they are afraid to feel anything else
Happiness fades, contentment stagnates, but sorrow is a constant companion
Sometimes I worry
That I am one of these people

I spend my time reading, writing, inhabiting the minds of others
The stories of others
Because I am afraid to look my own story in the face
And see if I like the direction it has taken
Sometimes I live vicariously through the stories of others
Because I am afraid of what will happen in my own

I am trying to be passionate without being breakable
And I am trying to enjoy my water as well as my coffee
And I am slowly learning that I cannot write my story, it must write itself

Inevitably pain is part of every story
Including mine
There will be heartbreak and there will be bruises and there will be hairline fractures, cracks, fissures, schisms
People will leave, be it by death or by simply walking away
But every moment of pain is simply an autumn
A winter
And in time everything will bloom again
Stronger and more resplendent than ever before