If I was a wasp, I'd sting you. If I was a venomous snake, I'd bite you. If I was a lion, I'd maul you. If I was a swamp, I'd poison you. If I was a mountain, I'd fall and crush you. If I was the ocean, I'd drown you. If I was a cat, I'd never let you touch me. If I was a dog, I'd run away. If I was a horse, I'd never let you break me. If I was a farm, I wouldn't grow for you. If I was a fire, I'd burn out without warming you. If I was a home, I would fall apart around you.
If I was harmless and small, and easy to hold, you would love me. If I was a worm you could put me in the soft earth and I would be helpless in your care. Of course you could love me, but could you love me if I stung you, bit you, pulled against you, hid and didn't understand you but wasn't harmless or helpless at all?
Could you love something for what it is, when that means you can't touch it or show kindness, maybe even never be near it, and it might never, ever love you back? Is it okay to exist and not belong to anyone, to not be useful to anyone, to be dangerous or poisonous or a failure but a part of the world all the same?
I know this is a metaphor, but if you take it kind of literally, there is an answer to this.
We build wildlife preserves. Often explicitly for the protection of animals and ecosystems that can and have killed humans.
Whenever a whale gets stranded on a beach, CROWDS show up ad risk getting bludgeoned to death trying to get it back into the water.
Every Zoo has a reptile house full of venomous snakes and a team of humans dedicated to giving them the best quality of life possible.
There are volunteer beekeepers who will travel for miles and miles and hours and hours to relocate an entire hive.
There are people who rehabilitate dangerous dogs and horses
There are people who restore structurally unsound houses
There are people who study the way that fire burns so it can rejoin the ecosystem and not be smothered on sight.
Every day, millions of people get up and devote themselves to things that can and will kill them by their nature. Things they can't touch or show kindness to. Things they can't go near. Things that are wholly incapable of loving them back.
And they do it because they love them.
Everything dangerous, everything poisonous, everything 'useless'- absolutely everything has someone, often many thousands of people, who loves them exactly as they are, without expectation that their affection will be returned.
It is alright for anything, even you, to not belong to anyone, to not be useful, to be frightening and dangerous and not adhere to any standard of success. It's all alright. You are loved. You are loved. You are loved.
