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It’s only because I have a broken heart and a broken mind. I don’t mean to say they do not work. They work well enough. I have lived a pretty amazing life actually, they are just not “normal”. They just don’t seem to “fit in” to the world in which we now live. They never have. This has been true ever since I can remember…

I am too “soft”. Too sensitive. I have to be careful watching TV with others because there are certain commercials that will form tears every time. I pick up worms after it rains because I don’t want to see them get stepped on. I kiss my pointer finger and point to the sky as I am silently saying a small prayer every time I am driving and I see a dead animal on the side of the road. I just want their souls to go to a better place and their families to be ok because I know they never got a chance to say goodbye. Small eccentricities. A bleeding heart. Whatever you wish to call it, this is simply who I am.

And who I am has NEVER felt totally comfortable in this world. EVER! Since I was fifteen years old, there has always been a desire to “leave”. To not be so strange, so different, so weird, so crazy, so problematic, so difficult, so… whatever! As I have gotten older, the desire to leave this world has never completely left, and it never completely will, but there is a new desire that is much more dominant.

I am not the only one who struggles to be a part of this world. I realize, acutely, we ALL struggle. Whether we show it or not, there are moments we all want to cry. There are moments when we would welcome a little help picking ourselves up off the pavement. There are moments when we are absolutely desperate for a prayer or two being sent our way. There are moments, for all of us, when we simply need a little help.

As the new year begins, I only have one wish for 2018.

There is a girl I know, 15 years old, who sometimes thinks it would be better if she did not have a part to play in this world. I know there are thousands, maybe millions of 15 year olds, girls and boys, who think it would be better, easier at least, to leave this world behind. To simply get away from the crushing pain and suffering that dominates so many of their days and does not seem that it will ever end. I know this feeling well and I also know there is very little I can personally do to help them in their struggles.

My only wish, this year and forever and ever, is that every girl, whether four years on this planet or 104, knows, from the deepest, downiest places within her soul, she is full of beauty and valuable to this world. My only wish is that my 15 year-old friend, or any 15 year-old like her or 16 year-old or sixty-five year old or whomever, knows, from the deepest, downiest places within their souls, they are not alone. My only wish this new year, and every new year forthcoming, is that the world is a better place. From the deepest, downiest places within my own soul, this is my wish.