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It's so hard to see a friend hurting. Particularly when you have nothing to offer them. They don't want favors or hugs or cooing, they just want the impossible for five minutes and someone with a black void for them to sleep in for a bit.

It's hard. What can you do? People who try too hard to cheer me up are annoying... and I would hate to be something I find annoying. Brings to mind the line from a friend's diary, "What's wrong?" "I don't know." "Oh... well, want a cookie?" "Thank you, Suzy Starshine, but no."

I would give anything to wrap them in a big hug and somehow make that fix things, even for that infinitessimal moment. Far too often, the times a hug would fix it are the times when no one's around to give it (or wants to give it, thus the basis of its appeal).

But I know that feeling. And that's the worst of it. I can imagine it, and far from wanting to share it to lessen the person's pain, I want to get as far away from it as I can because it's so bottomless and I can't handle the undertow.

Which makes me feel crappy. Call it survivor's guilt or whatever, but if I can avoid that kind of abyss I sure as hell will. I just wish there were a way to shed comfort the way we do sorrow. Tears come so easily... why not the words that will make someone lift their eyes to yours and let you see into them?

People tell me I'm good at this stuff, but they lie... my classic line is, "Do you want anything? Hug? Drink of water?... do you want me to go away?" That line earns a wry tearful smile and a hesitant nod. Every time. Sometimes you just need to cry and somehow purge that demon into your pillow.

Only problem is when you have sorrows like that candy from Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory... they suck and suck and suck and never get any smaller. Like festering papercuts. And hunger (no matter what for). Things that time cannot heal.

The Everlasting Gobstopper of troubles. And I'm useless in the face of that.

Would it help, dear friend, if I said I'd take it if I could? I'd hold it in my hands no matter how it burned and crush it to nothing? I'd cry it 'til it drowns? I'd hold you so tight it would leak and ebb from your eyes until you were empty? I'd do every and all manner of cheesy things to save you from sinking?

And I'd search every language for a better, less lame way to say "I'm sorry."

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