you broke six of my arms when i tried to hug you

“For me, writing these stories about my actual life is a way of imbuing them with meaning. Even though I know that rationally my life is completely meaningless. It gives me pleasure to find meaning in it."
-Alison Bechdel

"I didn’t wake up to find myself as a bug
I’ve been one for much longer than I care to recall..."
-Showbread, Naked Lunch

Life often feels hopeless.  What does anything matter?  Ultimately, I'm not sure anything does matter.  Yet, we keep on going.  We keep working and drinking and hurting and loving.  We are pushed up from the earth and ride this big swirling planet until we are planted back into the floor.  Nothing changes and the world is no better for having us stomp all over her.

But here we are.  We carry on.  We do it because we have to.  The world, life, responsibilities, money, rent, bills, and family push us forward.

I am also pushed forward.  I have to go to work because I have student loans to pay back.  I have to pretend I like people to keep my job.  I have to hurt because that has been my designation in life.  And I have to write because of that hurt.  It's one of the only forms of therapy that eases the pain, like  a grip loosened on the heart.

I have to catalog my bits of brain matter.  I am not a writer and I am not an artist but I need to put something out into the world, to break off pieces of myself and send them hurdling through time and space.

But why?

Is it because I have gone unheard for so long?  It seems that way.  Over the years, my existence has morphed into an insignificant insect.  I have my place in the world, just alike any other bug, but I keep getting swept into a corner.  Unrecognized.  Unheard.  Yet, I have a voice and a mind and an essence that feels compelled to be acknowledged.

But what can a bug contribute to the world?  Not much.  But maybe it can contribute to a select few compassionate enough to acknowledge the bug's being, as minuscule as that being may be.  When you've spent your life on the floor, observing from a distance, being stepped on and shooed away, you learn a few lessons and see things from a different perspective.

But the lumbering hopelessness still whacks at me like a shoe.  What kind of reach does a bug have?  What if it can only touch others in its size bracket?  What if I'm relegated to reading to the worms and water bugs?  And if that's all it can do, isn't that enough? Is it better to change one life or many?  If life is so precious, then wouldn't making a difference in just one person's life be worth the effort?

Is accomplishment measured in quality or quantity?  In mass or meaning?  How many people or pests will it take to feel satisfied? 

Bugs carry on, too.  Ants march in line and spiders spin their webs.  Some are crushed, some are swooped up and eaten.  Most are never known.

The butterflies and beetles are just trying to live their lives the same way humans do.  Who said they never mattered?  

I keep trying to measure my talent.  How good am I?  Am I good enough?  Will I ever be as enticing or shocking or endearing as those I compare myself to?  I'm different, not so much better or worse, not even that unique.  What can I offer that someone else can't?  What good can I do?  What's inside that matters to those outside?

I will never be Hemingway or Rembrandt but that's okay.  I have these pops of clarity and I realize I have thoughts and opinions to offer and some like it and some don't.  Everyone has critics.  Everyone has inadequacies.  It's when you can stomp on the insecurities that you find yourself free to feel and express and create. 

You don't have to be the best.  You don't have to be the most eloquent or articulate.  You don't have to be amazing.  You don't even have to be that significant.  You just have to make a connection, have to hurt and hope you learn from it, have to be brave enough to share it with others so that they may learn as well.  We're all so much more alike than we can even comprehend.  Words and sounds and images all send us to the same place, evoke similar emotions, define pain and praise people.  And you don't have to be a wordsmith to strike a chord.

You just have to want to.