I was an idiot. That’s all I can say, really. I thought the world was brighter, thought the world was a place for only happiness and joy. But the world is broken and its buckled pavement is not meant for smooth rolling, only tripping through the dark.

It’s the eighth rising—the stilted ways in which we pick ourselves back up again to battle on against the ironies and absurdities heaving up through the road.

I dreamed I was a pebble, tumbling along in streams of others, once here, once there until I settled in a little pool and found that everyone trickles on in their own broken streams, now settling into soft earth, now cascading on to open waters across the blue.

I never thought I would settle here. But then I never could have expected any place in particular at 30 years. It’s just where life has gone. I’ve allowed it to take me, allowed myself to fall into the debts I feel I owe the world, pulling me in and covering me in dozens of little eddies of uncommitted obligation.

I’ll try to remember the world was not meant for regret but for fullness, that the only place happiness is found is in chosen joy, joy pulled from the ashes of a tortured and smoldering world, fresh it may seem from the ancient battle for the souls of its newly formed, walking upright, now bent upon the earth.

I’m sorry to everyone I thought needed to rely on me, as if I could provide some kind of saving grace or passageway to a better life. I’m sorry to all those whom I tried to convince that my own life was clinical or pure. If I’ve learned anything in the last two years, it’s that nothing has escaped corruption and vanity covers all, covers me and my little kingdom of swept dirt.

I’m just one drop in this fantastical ocean, broken fully again and again upon massive stones, tossed into the air where brilliant light has shone through every speck of my being, casting a rainbow of colors across the mist of a thousand others, equally broken upon the edges of life.

I’m not alone.

So I’ll climb out of bed. Make a phone call. Throw some discs. Forgive me for trying to be anything other than human. Forgive me for ignoring you, for withholding from you, for demanding to be your only option. I’m just one of many, needing to find my own little hexagonal comb of joy, to snuggle in sweet abandon, resting in the comfort of home, that place where I am known.