I hurt for you.

I've had a lot of thoughts in my head my whole life. They fight for prominence on a daily basis, rarely going quiet. It's one of the hazards of being a writer, I suppose, to be constantly thinking about things. The anxious overanalyzing is more my neurodivergence, I suppose but I like to think that my constant observations of other people's interactions - with themselves and with me - is part of what makes me good at writing interpersonal things.

Even as it's something I struggle with for my own life. I have never been very good with people.

I am not a person who makes friends easily. What I once thought was just paralyzing shyness but is, in fact, social anxiety makes social situations difficult for me. I don't trust easily. I don't open up easily. I sometimes have gotten so desperate for friendship that I trust the wrong people. I worry people only like me because of what I can provide, and worse I have been proven right more than once that if I set boundaries I am easily discarded for doing so.

I have spent a good chunk of my 49 years on this planet outside looking in. Never quite fitting into groups. Never feeling comfortable. Being forgotten or treated like an afterthought. And always, always being surprised when people actively want to be my friend.

If you are my friend, know I would move the world for you if it were possible. (and sometimes I will try anyway) I love too much and too deeply and it tears me apart in so many ways. Even when I am scared I try to say I love you because I think we just don't hear it enough in this world and that the world would be a far far better place if we all said it a little more and without so much hesitation that someone's not going to say it back.

"I hurt for you, that you don’t even think you’re someone people miss—that you don’t think I miss you."

When I wrote Jenks into being, I wasn't trying to put any of myself into the character, but as these things go authors often leave little bits of ourselves all over the story in a thousand ways we didn't intend. (In the end I'm more Max than Jenks, but I am also both and neither and all the other characters in my books combined.)

I had an interaction on Helldivers2 the other day, where a squadmate jokingly commented that some days it was like pulling a very big number in a waiting room to get onto my ship and me replying that it was so strange because I have never in my life been as popular as I have been in this game. I was told I was competent and a part of me lit up because that is a normal and healthy thing to want to achieve. :P My therapist finds my constant talk about this game fascinating, I'm sure, and I often wonder what I'm giving away by sharing so much of it with them.

When I wrote Jenks, in the original draft of A Pale Light in the Black, I didn't realize things were this serious with Luis until the scene above happened. (and subsequently had to go back and do some serious fixing to introduce this whole relationship sooner) I certainly didn't anticipate Jenks's reaction or the deep well of sadness from the way she runs from her feelings. It's amusing in a way that only Jenks can be but also heartbreaking in how much you realize in that moment you want her to turn around and go back.

As I grapple with the idea that the people I play with accept me for me, that they enjoy my company, that they think I am competent and good at the game. I come to realize that I, in turn, actually want to be around people I can trust and people I value. Much like Jenks, unconsciously reaching for some form of connection in this difficult heartbreaking world.

There is still that ever present voice, the one whispering that if I wasn't useful, if I could no longer play the game, would any of these people stick around? After all, that's happened before with other things and could very well happen again. So isn't it safer to stay closed off, to not let people in? I don't know, maybe? Somedays I agree with Jenks in the first NeoG book and other times I find myself more like the Jenks in Hold Fast Through the Fire, the one who learns to open herself up fully even in the face of so much pain.

In the end I don't know. In the end I'm not sure it matters. I do know I want to be seen as someone who is kind far more often than not. I do know that I care about the feelings of strangers, sometimes at my own expense, though I am getting better about not setting myself on fire to keep others warm. I do know that at the end of all this, all we will have had is each other and that is more important than anything else.

I leave you with the poem Royal Heart by Andrea Gibson, Colorado's former Poet Laureate, who touched me with their poetry years ago and touched all of us with their life right up until the moment they said goodbye.

Just to be clear
I don’t want to get out
without a broken heart.
I intend to leave this life
so shattered
there’s gonna have to be
a thousand separate heavens
for all of my flying parts

Love,
K