Fear

In the hectic, hopeful years that I was busy having children and building a life with a charismatic and broken man, I’d stay up late reading your magazine with a flashlight so as not to disturb my kids. Some nights I’d wolf down the whole issue in one sitting. The Sun touched me in a way no other publication ever had. The writing was gritty and reverent, unadorned and unpretentious.

How can I say this? Somehow, without meeting any of you, I felt like I had found my tribe.

My subscription survived a move to Canada and the dissolution of my marriage, but life as a single mother was hard, and the day came when I could not afford to renew. I still remember that final issue and the silence that followed.

One of my kids is now a goofy engineering student. The other is mostly through vet school. I own my own house, surrounded, almost fiercely, by flowers. And this spring I could finally afford to subscribe again.

I had changed so much from the foolish young mother who was confident she could change the world. The world had won. The world had changed me. I worried The Sun might seem saccharine and contrived to me now.

I am partway through the June 2020 issue, and already I have cut out a poem and taped it to my fridge. That man who brings people together to listen to each other’s truths? That woman who struggled to stay alive, one careful breath at a time, with COVID-19? That woman who wrote poetry to prepare for her suicide? Every single reader who wrote about “Fear”? I feel, for the first time in a long time, proud to be a messy flop of a human. I’ve missed you guys.