after performing this person came up to me & said that they cried for themselves through crying for me & i was so touched. i started writing poetry to send an SOS to the world like does anyone else out there understand that something had gone very wrong? does anyone else feel this way: like everyone is just playing pretend, like you love & miss everyone even the people you never met, like you keep on being told you are too much because people are afraid of their abundance? most of the time i feel lonely & like the type of intimacy i yearn for in the world feels impossible. & when i say intimacy i mean the borders between people irrelevant — like that stranger is my potential friend, like i do not know them but i love them. but there are moments like this person tonight saying where i remember that i have found my people: the honest people. the messy people. the too-much people. the naive people. the people who can’t do small talk at parties people. the people who are trying to remember something else: a way of relating to one another rooted in kindness and transformation, humor and vulnerability, depth and superficiality (!). & so it’s hard really performing in front of crowds when all i want to do is take everyone out for soy hot chocolate and fall in love again and again as we talk about our daddy issues & how old we were when we learned how to tie our shoes & experienced our first death & skinned knee. one of the first rules of writing i teach is that the more specific you are the more universal it resonates. the paradox is we connect through difference. so i want everyone to have a microphone & an audience & a chance to scream & cry & laugh — to have people say yeah i get it the world is falling apart but you are wonderful and make me wish it wasn’t. so when i feel lonely i remember the people in the audiences: think about their heartbreak & coffee breaks & missed connections. think about their moms & their moms, and their secrets & exes. think about their indigestion & to-do lists, their Netflix cues & favorite recipe. i think about how different we are & how we are all the same. how many words we have created to pretend this isn’t the case.
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