I think I have been alone most of my life. When we look outside we think people are alone or lonely because of economic reasons. Sometimes we think it is education, or culture that separates people. Sometimes we think it is geography. But that is not what I see.

I wrote letters to the world when there was no internet. I would say things that were deep in my heart but no one heard them because they only went into my book where I wrote things.

I want to share with you what things look like from my eyes, what I see and what it seems, I was forbidden to say.

For some reason I am different. I feel people inside me. Sometimes I am more them than me. And when I would talk about what I felt or knew, it would upset the people whom I spoke so. And so I learned to be silent.

This is what I know. That there is a wall that separates us. Not just me to you, but between yourself and others as well.

I think these are the loneliest things. When people cannot say what is on their hearts, closed within their perceptions and walking in pretense, pretense of being OK, of being great, of being important… all the while the insides are desperate, shrivelled, sad.

When I saw you sitting on park benches, feeding the pigeons, or standing at the bus stops we did not talk. I saw you but I did not speak to you because you did not want to know what you were feeling. You did not want me to know either and so began this dance where you hid your face and your soul and the words that were spoken were sad ones and ones of barriers and defence. They were of distances, of polite conversations and meaningless banter. How can it be that words separate? That past sadnesses and traumas become the walls? That life is lived in the past?

And so too, I am a prisoner of your silence, outside and alone.

Neither of us can speak. Neither of us share.

And so my life became about helping others because I can see people and also, because I can see God. I can see Him in the trees, the water, the air… and I see Him in you.

It’s not something I have talked about much because for all the words I have said, my life has been one of silence.