This is so you know you’re not alone. You, who wonder what went so wrong that you always feel one step off in a crowd, either moving too fast or pausing too long. There was no mistake, you are exactly who God meant you to be.
This is for the ones who never told anyone how many books they read that week, because no one wants to be labelled the geek. This is for those who’ve written miles and miles of ink, trying to making sense of the hidden, the abstract.
I see you, over there enraptured by the art that’s been made around you, simultaneously dying to create more and dreading making anything at all, because, how on earth could you ever REALLY create anything unique enough?
I hear those sobs caught on the Ikea lamp’s plight. Don’t pretend you didn’t weep years later at its triumph, either.
I, too, revel in the warm feel of a worn leather bag packed full of books or the paper or laptop you create worlds with. Crave the slow sink into the soft, deep chair that will hold you for hours while you lose yourself in thought or story. The warm mug close by that fits and feels like safety, even though we both know that’s ridiculous, but there it is.
The ridiculous is where I sometimes like to live for a few minutes, can you imagine? We can.
I listen when your eyes light up and you start then stop and trail off, either bouncing wildly ahead in conversation, or finally catching up and collecting thoughts to form that one, perfect string of words that now just empties onto air that’s moved on to the next thought, the next joke, the next concept. I stop and hold that idea longer, too.
You also build worlds? Full of emotions that don’t fit every day, beings that dance only in your mind on technicolour wings, epic tales we were supposed to leave behind when we picked up our diplomas and time sheets and bank statements.
Our eyes still light up at unicorns and dragon tales, we stop when the light hits a certain way so we don’t miss the sunbeams on our faces. We still see the stories we saw when we were young as magic, as hints of the real world, the deep behind the mundane. We notice all the hawks soaring outside our car windows.
We feel alone, yet are finding like Anne that “kindred spirits aren’t so rare as I once thought”. On our own in the wild we are never alone. There’s always a sympathetic tree within earshot.
You’re not alone, your soul is poetry, your hurt can turn into fearless love, your heart is never alone, and your feet always stand on holy ground, even when only you can see it. We are Lucy, glimpsing Aslan before the rest know to look for Him.