sometimes I avoid saying the things I want to say most

All because I want people to like me.

It’s something I’ve struggled with my whole life:
I try not to make others feel uncomfortable,
so that I might not feel uncomfortable.

I was thinking about the story I wrote about the piece pictured above.
I reread the story in my notebook this morning:

It is as gritty and raw as the morning I wrote it,
and my first thought was:

Do people want to hear this?
Is this the thing they most need to hear this morning
over a cup of coffee?

But that was not what made me pause.
What made me pause was this thought:
What if people don’t like what I have to say,
and they tell me,
or worse—

they unsubscribe.

And I sat with that for a while.
I’m sitting with that right now as I type these words.
And you know what I’m thinking?

I don’t want to edit myself.

The work was made with these thoughts in mind.
The work deserves the words.
If you don’t like it, that’s okay.

You get to have your own thoughts about things.

So here it goes:

This year began with an explosion,
A fury,
Unleashed by a madman,
Who was elected by a population angry—
Angry at the world.
They felt cheated and treated unfairly,
And someone said:
"I understand your pain, and this is why you feel this way.
I have the answer."

And they voted for him.
But here’s the thing:
That angry feeling you have inside, that rage, that disappointment—
Those feelings are not going away,

Because they live inside of you.

You can point your finger and say
That’s what I’m angry about

Instead of looking at your own life.

It’s easier to be angry at someone else
than to solve for the emptiness and sadness
inside of you