I've sat here for about an hour now. My mind is speechless-- the depth of the pain I feel is well beyond describing although I'll probably try regardless. It's softer, yet deeper than anything I've ever felt before. It's a profound sadness and frustration with life-- with the events over the past year that drove me from Las Vegas away from my daughters and my inability to find sufficient work here in Portland to take them from that sewer and bring them to me. Katie, my second born, turns ten years old next week. Her birthday wishes are some books, a new bike a pair of rollerblades and one other thing, that if she got she wouldn't care about the rest. Thats for me to be there for her birthday.
I wont be able to make it. I already told her this. She said she was sad, but understood. Katie certainly has the gentlest soul of all three-- Very much like I was as a child-- always lost in books and thought, sensitive to everything around her, fiercely shy and imaginative.
I recieved a letter from her today-- we write to each other every few weeks. This letter came in a piece of loose-leaf paper folded up and taped to serve as an envelope. Here's what was inside:
I feel wholly broken and helpless.
I've been busting my ass for five months now trying to find salaried work and contract work. Projects are put on hold. I'm under-qualified. I'm too qualified. Move to San Francisco, we'd hire you. We're not ready yet. Etc.
The fate of everything holy and righteous tied up in a neat little word- yes or no.
I'm tired of no. I'm sick of the pain.
I am ashamed of myself and the people I've trusted the past two years.
I'm ashamed of this world.
Littleton. Kosovo. Rwanda. Central America. Corporations, finances and ethnic cleansing. The world us humans created for us to all live in is a horrific anomaly of freakish proportions.
And the only true victims are our children.
I am *so* sorry Katie.
The sad truth is that love just isn't enough.
