ripples

I've found that sometimes what hurts me more is when people close to me are hurt and hurt badly.

It's one thing to be able to handle myself and my own life circumstances, and another thing to watch helplessly as someone dear metaphoorically gets bitch slapped by life.

What can I do apart from giving advice and assurances of my own love?

It's especially painful when it's family, because apart from the ties of friendship, there's the flesh and blood you share, in addition to the fact that you've known each other and lived together for years under a single roof, sharing times good and bad.

Unlike fiction, life circumstances refuse to be nicely structured. Unlike a play, dialogue doesn't go the way you want it to - from beat to climax to denouement. Life is placid then rabidly unpredictable.

No wonder that some of us don't have a fear of dying. We have a fear of living.