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30 Apr

Hearts and Darkness

I started the Basement just over one year ago. I started the Basement – my secret space, my hidden lair – so that I could write about the stuff that I didn’t feel comfortable discussing in the bright light of blog. But I realized very quickly that a publicly listed blog with my primary blog name in the url wasn’t all that private, and so my foray into semi-private confessional blogging ended before it even began. Then a friend e-mailed me, and asked if she could ‘borrow’ the space, so that she could write about something that she didn’t feel comfortable discussing on her own blog. And then someone else asked, and someone else, and The Basement – as a collective safe bloggy space for rants and confessions and cries for help – was born.

I’ve received and posted some heartwrenching posts. Some that have had happy endings, some that have not. All lot of fear and anger and anxiety and pain have been spilled across its page, and a lot of warmth and love and friendship and support have flooded back. The voices in the Basement have kept me up at night, but the chorus that always responds – so warmly, so generously – has always soothed me. The Basement constantly reminds me that we are all so fragile – that there is so much that causes pain in our worlds – but also that we all have such big hearts – generous hearts that we open to each other and with each other and which can (can, if we will them to do so) keep us from breaking.

Someone, right now, is breaking over in the Basement. Someone is breaking, hard. Harder than I’ve seen in a very, very long while.

This has shaken me to my very core. This breaking has so many cracks, there are so many splinters, they run so deep – I fear that the Basement isn’t enough. I know that the Basement isn’t enough. My anonymous poster, locked in her darkness, needs much more help than the Basement can provide. But it is all that I can provide.

I’m shaken by the insufficiency of this. Which is why I’m writing about it, here. Because this is my confessional space, and this is my confession: at the moment, writing feels insufficient in the face of all that is horrible in the world. Writing – or, in this case, providing a space for writing – is all that I have to offer. I have no other resources; I have only my keyboard, my words, and this space. And it feels horribly insufficient. And the insufficiency of it makes my heart hurt.

But however insufficient, it is something. And sometimes, something is everything. That’s what is going to help me sleep tonight, however fitfully.

Your voices, your warmth, your support – those will help, too. Please, if you have anything to offer – advice, resources, sympathy, empathy, love – do so. I need your hearts in this – she needs your hearts.

Please, and thank you.