Me, Myself And Melancholy.....

I've always thought of myself as a strange kind of melancholy. Even when I'm not sad, I can simply feel my heart swinging it's feet like that little girl who would sit on ledges and dangle her legs, staring out onto the spaces where the sun splashed buildings with gold.

I was that little girl once, dreaming of sitting, bathed in that same golden light, or running untethered in the smooth blue moonlight that I could see from my bedroom window late at night--on those nights when it was so late that I was sure I was the only person left in the world.

Loneliness.

I grew up lonely. There were a million secrets to keep, a million reasons not to be innocent or safe.........

.......but really, really late at night---when it was so late that even chaos and monsters had to submit their weary eyes to the quiet force of sleep--I was all that was left.

Me and my melancholy.

So I could never see my melancholy as bad or good. It just was, and always has been. Melancholy came right along with freedom from noise and confusion. Melancholy would sit right along with me and dream into the moonlight. Melancholy knew where the tissues were after a bad day and melancholy didn't have the capacity to judge me or anyone else.

I grew up with insomnia--it was both an affliction and an escape. Honestly I came to like it--because the truth is: day or night, I've always been lonely, but late at night there's less to be afraid of.

Although there is also more time to remember the things that scared me.

My secret joy--that dream I held so tightly to as a little girl and still relish in now that I'm a grown up little girl--has simply been to have company on my late nights. Someone to fill the space that melancholy has kept warm all these years. A caring hand to hold and remind me that mine isn't the only heart running through the clean silver-blue moonlight and dipping it's toes in the golden light of dawn......