Letting in the light

Ask any of my writer friends and they’ll tell you.

That I like happy endings. That I like uplifting stories. That I am a seeker of light.

(If you want a blog like that, you'll have to read yesterday's post on Fairies. Or check back tomorrow.)

In life, I know bad shit happens, but in my writing, in my reading, on my blog, I want to find the positive angle. I want to be left believing that there is hope.

But there are days, oh yes there are, when I just can’t see it.

• When I hear of the couple in the UK who starved their baby daughter to death because they spent all their time at an internet café caring for a virtual baby. Or the mother who webcast….no, I can’t even talk about that one.
• When I hear of the horrors inflicted on innocent people by suicide bombers. When I think of the children without food or clean water around the globe
• When I hear of bodies being found, of police officers being killed for doing their job, of senseless kidnappings, of the beating of a man in a wheelchair.
• When I hear of people just giving up, jumping off the bridge. Or of people who want desperately to live dying of cancer/aneurisms/heart disease before their time.

On a day like today when I already feel despairing - for reasons nowhere near as big and awful as any of these - these threads converge brutally and threaten to crash down.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

I feel cracked, broken, empty. What saves me, today at least (alongside the sympathy of the world’s greatest mother-in-law) is something I read on my friend Betty’s blog, one of those little nuggets of perfectly timed wisdom.

On Twitter I passed it on: Feel like I'm cracking up - and am holding tenuously to a friend's belief that cracks are important because they let in the light.

I have to tell you, I was overwhelmed by the support of the on-line community. People I have never met, some I’ve never even heard of.

And the day got a little bit brighter.