Me Too.

What are the hurts you’ve carried, unvoiced by your own heart for all of these years?

What experiences lurk in the shadows of your story, unexamined for if you looked them directly in the eye you’d risk seeing yourself clearly for the first time?

What wildernesses have you traversed alone?

Is this gauntlet finished with you? Are you a victim or a victor?

The continued choruses of Me Too, and ME TOO, and me too, ring through my head like the pealing of church bells. They toll for you. They toll for me.

“Me Too” is a shout. We scream into the void. We send signals into the sky. I am not defective. I am not an island of experience. This is a broken world.

“Me Too” is a whisper. An admission in the mirror. A turning around to face the beast that has always lived in the corners. Sometimes when it’s quiet I can hear its ragged breathing, echoing through the years. It’s an ugly, wretched thing. I own many beautiful things. I own this too.

I struggle with the words, the language of it all. I have only just begun to look at the beast. Naming it is another trial for another day.

For now these two words will have to be enough. Me Too.

These are lonesome memories to shoulder. They may always be. “Me too” is a laying down of some of that weight. I will carry yours if you carry mine.

Me too.  It is the prayer I repeat as I take up arms to parry with the beasts in the darkness. It is comfort. It is weaponry. It is the truth.