dear_red pony No one is here without pain. 251221 ... pony I think of this place as the void, even though I know you are reading, I speak as if to no one. 251221 ... pony What is it that draws you here? If you tell me it isn't pain - I simply won't believe you. Love is another word, that simply means the same. 251221 ... raze pain has always been a part of it. but i think the main reason i'm here now (and i'm sure i've said this before, somewhere, in some form) is that i'm trying to write the autobiography of my soul the only way i know how, and this is the one place where that feels fully possible. even if it's out of sequence and broken into a million pieces. should anyone stumble upon this place after we're all just bones in the ground, i want them to know who i was and what i loved and why after sifting through the words i've left behind. 251222 ... ovenbird It’s true that pain often weaves its way through my words. There’s an ache underneath every day I wake to find I’m still drawing breath, and words are a way to make something of that tenderness. But while pain is an inevitable piece of what it means to explore being alive, and so Red has pain inscribed on its bones, I don’t see the pain as the foundation. It isn’t what brought me here or what keeps me here. The driving force is connection. Connections are often forged by a mutual sharing of the things that hurt and a willingness to bear witness, but it’s the crafting of community that propels me, not the pain itself. Red is a community that collapses time. Most of the people who have left their words here have been gone for years, but it’s still possible to have a conversation with the selves they once were. And I don’t have in-the-world relationships with most of the people writing here now, but there’s this sense of profound engagement that allows me to feel like I’m a part of something expansive, and I feel this incredible gratitude and warmth towards every person who is currently keeping this place alive. Being human hurts. But being here reminds me that pain isn’t the only thing—there’s wonder and memory and dreams and friendship and a possibility of reaching out across vast distances to grasp the hands of others struggling with what it means to be alive and saying in a thousand different ways: “i see you.” 251222 what's it to you? who go blather from