Sorry For Your Troubles

by Pádraig Ó Tuama

That you will learn most from the situations you did not choose.

That life is real and if you can survive it, well, survive it well with love and art and meaning given where meaning’s scarce.

That you must accept change before you die but you will die anyway. So you might as well live and you might as well love. You might as well love. You might as well love.

we know what it’s like to mine for our dignity in caves we never were shown. We remind ourselves frequently that things as we were taught that they should be need not necessarily be so – like nightmares, and screaming at careless frivolity, grief that eats at your soul, weddings where love was the first thing to go, kissings and greedy eyes drinkings and beady eyes bastards who won’t let you go.

We remind ourselves frequently that life as it might just be may not turn out to be what we were taught from the crib – grey days and copings with silence and choking down years of upsurging rage. Ah Christ, we both screamed in our own bloody nightmares and Christ, oh he seemed to stay away silent, And we both know the stilling, the chilling, the feeling of years of ‘don’t talk about that till you’re old’. And we both know the crying of tears of rejoicing at leaving those old cares behind, of ‘tell me’s’ and well we just might stay up late tonight might finish off that wine might toast the night while she cries.