Chelsea, Cry, Baby

I know you’re struggling and carrying so much right now, and I don’t know how to ease your burden or lessen the pain or fix this but I think if despair had a language it would sound like music. I think grief has a melody. And I have carried it with me since I was very little.

I don’t think it’s meant to heal us. I do think it’s meant to speak with us, speak to us, and bear witness to our pain; maybe even just to keep us company while we heal ourselves.

And I think it’s also a comforting reminder that sadness and grief and despair and all the sharp pain those things bring aren’t something to be outrun, but to be felt.

Because for so many of us, for so much of the time, ‘it’ll be ok’ is nothing but a broken promise, isn’t it? A thoughtless dismissal of our deepest pain; the kind of pain that we must eventually learn to carry.

My sweet Cheerless Chelsea, I made this playlist stuffed with all of the beautiful sad songs I have spent most of my life loving and listening to because I know you’re suffering and questioning the point of all this, and when it comes to pain, it’s one of the only languages I speak fluently. So cry, baby. And keep crying until you can’t no more.