Lost Souls

Some people seem to have gotten lucky at birth. They look good, they do work they actually care about, they’re in solid relationships, and they can pick whoever they want from their circle depending on the occasion—someone for sports, someone for going out, someone for a movie. You look closer and all you find is more luck: love for life, understanding, hope that barely dents under pressure.

I seem to be a magnet for the opposite kind of people. The ones who aren’t handling life very well. The creatures of darkness dealing with depression, loneliness, everything on the outside. People fighting torn-up love and loneliness and bitter thoughts about ending it, whether they chose that or had it forced. Every friendship, every relationship, everything in my life has come from that dark space.

I take them in and walk the hardest roads with them. Wine-soaked nights, surreal adventures, conversations where you say things you didn’t know were inside you. Somewhere in there their will hardens again, hope reignites, and I let them go back out into the world with it.

And the more destroyed they are—the more tormented, the more ready to be done—the more clearly I hear them, and the more I take them on. Because they have so much to say. They’re overflowing with it, their heads swimming with passion and the secret paths available to all of us. Outsiders, the rejected, the misunderstood. We recognize each other.