A Letter To My Aching Friend

And everyone else who needs it.

I worry about you, seeing through the illusive fake smiles to the sadness lingering underneath.

I hear the hollowness in your laughter: nothing has filled those long-empty spaces within.

I feel you getting colder, freezing from overexposure to the wrong things. Heart, iceberg, same thing.

But friendship is a shelter in the storm, two extra arms wrapped around you and a comforting voice to keep you from losing your mind.

It is the hands that help pick up the pieces, and good company as you find your way back to inner peace.

I am here, pay attention, not just for the days when you can laugh genuinely at my jokes or make me laugh with yours and not just for the moments worth stretching.

I am here for your tears and your groans; here for your fears, as irrational as they may seem; here to have your back as you fight for your sanity.

I am ears that will listen, hands that will hold you up and the heart that will warm yours till it thaws and your joy flows again.

Don’t be afraid to lean, I won’t break. Let me stretch for you, I won’t snap. Let me carry half your burden as we take it to God together, I won’t collapse under the weight, He won’t let me.

We will make it, you and I, neither one of us left behind.

So smile a little, put some heart into it.

I love you, always.