Awareness

As time passes, her life looks less and less unusual, but a diminished perception of oddity by no means makes her normal. The distance between her and others has been put to various uses, even used to manufacture a friendliness that can sometimes seem genuinely intimate. That friendliness isn’t so much a lie as a mimicking of her natural affections. She simply recreates what she feels for those she’s chosen and redirects it.

She regularly has to isolate herself for a realignment of the thoughts that bring about her feelings. She fears having the two separated for possibility of denying those who earn her devotion the distinction of having done so. She assumes nothing about that devotion, even that her chosen people should care to be distinguished, but her own standards demand she give what is earned, meaningless or not.

She’s learned the basic patterns of people and that her lack of concern is universally mistaken for cruelty. In truth, there is no cruelty in her, but not for the reasons one might infer. She’s not above meanness, she simply sees no gain to come of it. Given naturally, her words are flat, monotone, and she uses them with precise meaning, if self-determined from a broader official understanding.

She is concerned with very little, which gives the impression of one who takes adversity in stride, but when faced with something that holds meaning she is fragile and insecure. She’s survived circumstances that would mean great strength in another, but some combination of natural distance, honest self-concern and intelligence has not allowed her to be tried as harshly as most.

She is seen as tolerant, but isn’t. She ignores most things for a lack of caring, but on subjects that matter she can be dogmatic, even narrow-minded. She values her arrogance, believing that if a subject is reasoned to its natural conclusion, there is no need to compromise, but remains willing to hear new evidence or a new approach to old evidence.

She offers no ease in communication, she doesn’t extend the liberties common to people. Courtesy is offered as she knows it, but not overextended. She is no diplomat, although her fluctuating thoughts might be externally mistaken for such concerning matters on which she hasn’t formed a solid opinion.

She readily accepts criticism from any who offer it with reason, but feels that a character including the desire to cause unnecessary pain nullifies worth and with it any opinion offered. She apologises easily, but only when she feels herself wrong.

She never got back to feeling safe after violent circumstances, and sometimes still feels the need to protect herself with physical distance, although she acknowledges that such is most likely unnecessary. She also fully understands the options left open by such a phrase as unlikely, a fact that colours nearly all of her life.

She wishes for a world that allows her childlike qualities. She is excitable, which makes her impulsive, but also brilliantly and contagiously happy. She is curious, seen as a zealot, but she feels this quality makes her better. It enables deduction, observation and awe. Additionally, it mixes with her natural affection to give her interactions strong focus, which leads to unparalleled appreciation of those around her, should they fall into the very specific categories that she believes make people worth her time.

Her reaction to people she feels are not spectacular, which includes most, is apathy, a lack of concern so generalised that she rarely notices it. Those who are spectacular fall into one of two categories, the useless and the exquisite. Even thoughts of the useless are met with venom that is nearly physical. She feels that they have not earned the beauty and ingenuity they inhabit, and hates them for disappointing their abilities. The exquisite are wholly loved and treasured, as much as she hates that word. She feels the need to protect and care for those people, to give as much as she’s able to reciprocate the joy they give her.

She’s often seen as overbearing, too intimate, but she doesn’t understand such ideas. She only marginally understands that her actions are misunderstood for requests, whatever those requests may be. She feels that stating her requests clearly should create an understanding that if unstated, no request exists, but that is rarely the case.

She gauges in excruciating detail the importance of an action or thought, and makes decisions by comparing the resultant information. The dictates of this process are often mistaken for unwarranted enthusiasm to the point of unnerving those around her, but she simply accepts, and then ignores, the drawbacks of a chosen circumstance should it prove the more important of options.

She’s sometimes sure no one can see her, in the fashion of the young, but without the intentions most commonly associated. She rarely sees the level of passion she’s accustom to in others and believes this means they don’t share her depth of feeling. She’s aware that the difference could easily be a decreased depth of expression, but wonders how a person could feel so purely and appear empty. Her reaction to such is not self-congratulation, rather pity, but without the implied condescension, which is saved for those situations in which she believes dedication has given her something that is universally available.

Never Sure

Only another person, they mean little to anyone and less to her, although that was a somewhat inaccurate statement concerning this particular one. The words don’t fall on deaf ears, quite the opposite, but they carry very little weight unless the opportunity exists to turn them into fully developed ideas. A passing barb is useless against her, she reacts only to what she believes real. Regardless of origin, the only active service of an insult is to promote insight and self-awareness, should such things be made available by having been insulted.

This one wasn’t an insult, a passing comment phrased into what was likely genuine concern, but still the same thing she’s always heard. “It worries me that you don’t understand” was only a gentler phrasing of, “There’s something wrong with you.” Still another person saying that what is so natural to her could not be conceptualised into anything but wrong. In this case, wrong enough to inspire disturbance.

She trusted the man who commented, he’d shown himself to be good, reasonable and honest. He’d gone to great length in being kind, without meaning to he’d taught her the possibility for expanded social interaction. These things would have mandated that she investigate his statement further, if she hadn’t previously come to understand that she also trusted the comment itself.

She’d heard all her life that understanding certain things, primarily the power of words as they stood alone, was fundamental to an operating person. It followed that because she did not understand she was damaged in some way. She’d tried to learn, ferreting out the details of any situation to find commonalities that could be maneuvered into a standard rule, but the research proved to contain too many independent variables for a solid conclusion. For a time, she asked others, but her questions were met with anger or pity, never an answer.

Having been largely unsuccessful, with the truths found containing minimal opportunity for application, she stopped trying. She chose to approach the world as though it operated on her terms, but her wounded feelings wore off. They were replaced with knowledge that absent understanding, even as it was expressed with supporting reason, was no balm to those who would be hurt by a lack of necessary interpersonal protection in assessments.

She’s been called sociopathic by many, but the term doesn’t apply. There is no place in its definition for a girl who is so hurt by the emptiness seen on almost every sidewalk containing people who should be vividly alive. In her world, the people she passes are full. They aren’t flawless or fantasy driven, but they do stop occasionally to remember beauty. That reminder is written on every part of them, they walk differently than people she knows, they hold themselves with pride, limit themselves to strictly defined integrity, and love themselves for their devotion to those things. They are philosophically and psychologically consistent, and she sees no reasons there should be so few who look like them sneaking around reality.

It’s a beautiful world, created and maintained by the understandings that come naturally. To her those understandings immediately ring of truth, and lose nothing on closer inspection, but there is no place for such beliefs. They only set her demonstrably apart. She finds comfort in the idea that a minority of one can be right, but fully appreciates that such a minority must also be very careful. There is no honour in believing what is comfortable for the sake of that comfort, just as there is none in adjusting to what is uncomfortable for the sake of its discomfort. Belief in objective ethical guidelines dictates that she find truth and adhere to whatever moral obligation it demands.

She has done so. She’s hammered out a reasonably complete idea of rational operation, but one that is in conflict with the vast majority. Differences between her and others mean little in keeping with limited importance placed on anything excepting the honesty of a standard, but she is curious. The questions that were put away surface periodically to remind that they’ve not been answered.

Mostly her curiosity fades into a place kept for the mysteries she justifiably believes will never have answers, but intermittently, in easy company, it finds a place to enter her conversations. Once asked there is no retrieval, and so she moves ahead, hoping her mistake will become an answer that has proved elusive.

That has not yet been the case. This time the response was not impatient or angry, but it still carried with it understanding that there is no place for her. Being still now, and with the conceptual rejection that forced her to smile and leave quickly draining away, the ache becomes laughter. No irony lost at the idea of so hurtful a truth being housed in a comment about her inability to understand why words should be a source of pain.

A Two Year Old and a Balloon (from many moons ago)

Elizabeth wanted a balloon inflated. No one wished to inflate said balloon for her. She decided to inflate said balloon herself. This, as you might imagine, did not work out well. She first attempted to convince the balloon to inflate by impressing it with the amount of air one can push out of very small lungs. It was unimpressed, so she decided to increase the speed of the above mentioned air hoping to sneak past the guards. The balloon was only slightly impressed. Then she stretched the balloon out, I assume, to give extra traveling space.....and let go, slapping herself in the face and tearing a hole into the unimpressed balloon.

A Jesus Story from Many Moons Ago

He sat by a window and waited until the last of people had left the street. Stepping out into the emptiness that had been a city in the earlier hours he noticed a girl with a sad, pleading smile. The thought of stopping occurred to him, but her smile pleaded for someone else. And he knew any attempt he made to comfort her would only be crowding, leaving her without even the privacy of being alone. When he reached the place in his path that he could no longer pretend not to see her, he smiled a passing hello, with the silent hope that she’d speak so he’d have reason to stop. She didn’t, but returned his smile with eyes that spoke only to parting well.

He continued his walk, not remembering where he’d intended to go. The shadowed smile of a pretty young girl captivated his thoughts, and left him with only the comfort of the road he followed. Normally it was his time to be peaceful, here on this patch of road so rarely used after 10pm. Tonight it had become both rose and thorn. Offering him sight of the passionate emotion he craved from the human race, and then carrying him away from it. For the first time he felt torn. The urge to go to someone who’d not called for him, and the understanding that advice not requested is not often accepted.

He’d been called many things, for many years. It varied from inaccurate to libelously wrong. He neither questioned nor lied. He did, on nights like this one, wish for someone to walk beside him. Someone to see in his eyes that he was lost, and would have no peace until the softly wounded smile of this girl was removed from his thoughts. He’d seen many people, many with pain and confusion pouring from them. He’d been walking this street for centuries. It had been his favorite since long before there were people here to build it. In that time he’d not seen such true and comfortable pain as was most likely overlooked by everyone else.

When the sting of her eyes had faded to a mild emptiness he returned to his window. As he passed the spot where she sat he lowered his eyes and whispered, “I’m sorry you’re hurting.” She was gone, as he knew she would be, but in the place she’d been was a black rose with the thorns removed. He wanted nothing more than to take it. To hold it close to his chest and feel the remnants of what caused this strong creature to hurt so badly. Instead he produced a violently red rose to be its companion.

In the nights that followed he did not take his evening walks, choosing instead to watch the girl who’d taken to sitting in the grass behind a row of bushes where she could only be seen from a window such as his. Her eyes pulled him, but he didn’t go to her. Her pain was her own, and regardless of what some had said about him, it wasn’t his to carry the wounded. Every night between 10 and 11pm she came. Sometimes with a book, sometimes with only the shadow of goodbye that had caught his mind in the beginning. The nights she was without reading material were his favorites. She looked around her as if unsure of what she might see. He suspected the question so obvious in her manner was who, rather than what.

He developed a habit of sitting at his window waiting for her in the evenings. And she never disappointed him. For nearly six months he saw her every night. He told her of his day, and stories of the past. He told her everything. All the things he’d never said. He told her how it troubled him to be seen in a way so conflicting with his own moral code. He knew she didn’t hear the things he said, and had she he’d have been unable to say them.

One evening she didn’t come. He waited for hours. He walked to the street, looked for signs of anything and found none. In quiet desperation he said, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” No answer came and he knew that hell was here. Standing in an empty street with a hollow scream that made it no closer to reality than an expanding heaviness in his chest. That could be eased only by forcing himself to feel until it no longer had power. So he walked. Stopping now and then to rest, but never sleep. Days passed, he didn’t know how many, but he felt his eyes take on the comfortable torture he’d seen so plainly only in her. And he understood.

He knew that, like she had, he would go back to the place he’d last seen her and wait. Sustaining himself, at first, with the idea that she would return. Later, as he accepted what he’d known already, he added food and water to his days, but rarely anywhere except his window. Excursions to the kitchen started taking longer, and the things that reminded him of her were less easily found. Eventually he remembered her only as a beautiful dream.

One evening, years later, he walked down a street following a wee bird that had caught his eye and saw a smile that had not fully recovered. He traced the line of her cheek, buying time before he forced himself to see that her eyes still held their symphony of loss. Such incredible sadness, in no other way visible. She’d gone into her house before he was close enough for even the best of memories to recognize him. He produced a black rose, removed the thorns, and left it lying across her mailbox.


Ending 1

The years passed, and he thought of her less. He didn’t returned to being one who had never truly hurt, but he’d grown so used to the smile that was never without a touch of wanting, and the eyes that never really smiled he didn’t notice. It had become a comfortable way. One he wouldn’t allow to leave for fear it would take with it all that she’d taught him to feel.

Returning from his evening walk he’d remembered the book she so often brought with her. “Flowers for Algernon.” A young reader’s book. He’d read it in the days after she stopped coming, something to feel her presence if only by the slightest of commonalities. It was beautiful. A powerful love story. The irony of it’s primary relationship being between a man and a mouse was lost in it’s display of genuine affection.

As his mind tried to recreate the sensation of the first time he read “And if you have time, please put flowers on Algernon’s grave” he turned the corner to re-enter a stairway that would take him to the window he rarely looked from anymore, and saw a black rose. He knew it would have no thorns, but picked it up to feel that a great ambiguity had last touched it. After replacing the rose he caught sight of the tail of a light, airy dress he could imagine her wearing on a night like this and followed.

After she’d gone into her house, the same one as years before, he stood by what he assumed to be her window and waited. Acknowledging that there was no where he’d rather be, he listened, hoping to hear her breathe with the serenity only found in sleep for those who truly see the world around them. There was no sound coming through the window, and no lights left on in the house when he realized that seeing this girl sleep had taken over his thoughts.

He opened the front door and walked to her bedroom. The bedroom door stood open and he watched her eyebrows tighten and relax with what seemed to be alternating pain and forced composure. He wanted to hold her, but knew that his touch would only disturb. So he knelt beside her bed whispering, “Do you believe me?” She stirred, but didn’t wake and said, “You awakened a love I didn’t believe in. It’s empty without you. I will go on, and well, but I miss you.”

He knew she was talking to whomever it had been that brought her to his window. He lightly placed his hand on her arm and spoke so softly even he wasn’t sure if he’d produced sound or if his touch had given him ability to send her thoughts. “You will not be alone tonight” Still well within the edges of sleep she told him, “You are an easy feeling of sanctuary.”

"And you are a magnificent obsession."

She slept and he watched until just before light. When he saw her face begin to tense, and he knew she would be waking soon, he leaned to her ear and said, “Do you believe me?” She was not startled as one would expect to be waking to a stranger in their bedroom. He pressed her hand to his chest and said, “Do you believe me?” She turned her head to him with an involuntary stiffening of her eyes and asked, “Do I believe what?”
“I love you”
“Who are you?”
"My name is one that has been abandoned by most, and misunderstood by the rest. The strength of emotion you have taught me is my vindication."
"What is your name"
"I am"

The Mouse is a Mime

A good deal of what you are about to read was written in the head of a girl feeling the full weight of her relatively few years, shifting a standard transmission through the rain down Interstate 10/12 in Baton Rouge, LA. It may seem odd to you that at 26 someone could feel so close to dying for no good reason, especially this girl who is not at all apologetic about having walked through life in a bubble of protection granted by family members, enviable luck, and a touch of genius. To the outside I imagine she looks like Midas himself.

She appreciates all she’s been given, and not in the way that might inspire one to obtain a license plate reading "Thanks Dad", but in the only way she knows to appreciate gifts of nature; feeling bound by duty to be worthy of them, although in truth she rarely is.

But this story is not solely about her. The story I want to tell you is about a powerful love in her life and the augmentation of it as she’s grown. I will have to give a bit of background in order to effectively offer full power to the story I intend to tell. Time and circumstance taught our lover to make noise, some might even say required that she do so, but at heart she’s a quiet girl. She’s a corner dweller; not often overlooked, but almost never really seen.

She was 15 when what would prove to be an enduring affection was introduced to her life, by her father. He’d been in the United Kingdom and returned with music wishing her to listen. Obedient in the way only known to those who reasonably fear not being, she listened fully intending to dislike whatever she heard.

Delusion to the extent she has proven able must be revered as talent. While she was unable to deny the beauty of the sounds that came to surround her, she found the strength to be enraged with the musician for having altered her sense that the world was unfit for habitation. She insulted him regularly, questioned his integrity, and discounted all he sang on only the basis that he sang it, but was not able to be without the music. She found herself with many copies as insurance that she would not face losing it to anything short of nuclear war.

Over time our lover realized her ability to feel was one she’d removed as a tool of survival, and even this great hatred was preferable to the emptiness screaming almost silently that at one time it hurt. It did her little good as at that time honest emotion was something not only foreign, but unaffordable to her.

She continued to listen clandestinely to the music she’d come to feel was ‘hers’ due to less than enthusiastic reactions from anyone for whom she played it, and a strong desire not to share it with those for whom it could be only passing.

She didn’t attend her high school graduation ceremony, choosing instead to spend the time lying on the ground in the curve of her horse’s neck asking the animal to protect her and recognize the beauty of a song she had set to repeat. A song about a strong woman, seen in good light for the wrong reasons. The woman’s story moved her, as one would expect such a story to move a young girl who was universally seen for being something she not only wasn’t, but found wholly unappealing. This woman and her preservation of a life unworthy of the time it took to save was not what truly touched our lover. What began as powerful hatred had developed into honest and friendly affection for a man who would see and feel beyond the well lamented of a person nearing 200 years dead.

She’d been supposed to accompany a friend to Thailand the summer after high school, but decided instead to go to Scotland, where the music had originated. There was the chance of finding him in a pub somewhere the way her father had, but more than that she wanted to be close. What she craved was not known to her, but she knew Scotland was closer than she had been. Her friend, Mikel, was intuitive enough to realize that arguing would not regain her Thailand companion, and agreed to the change in destination.

They arrived at Glasgow International Airport tired and stiff from 16 ½ hours traveling, checked into their hotel, and set directly about determining how long a stay would be required in order to see the musician play. In the end it wasn’t their effort that led them to the information, but our lover’s father who called saying the musician was to be at a pub in Edinburgh that evening. Newly invigorated with fear of which the origin was unknown, our lover contacted a taxi service willing to take two young girls nearly 50 miles to a pub they were not of age to enter (Time and a few more trips to Scotland have taught our lover that the train would have been a speedier transport to their destination).

They’d not planned, for lack of ability to carry out any plan, what to say if asked for proof of their age, but they weren’t asked and they seated themselves as far from the musician as possible. Our lover had suggested before entering that they speak only when necessary in order to avoid attention not sensibly anticipated by two young girls at a somewhat dingy pub inhabited mostly by people nicely senior to them. Mikel was tolerant of the music, finding some interest but mostly observing the man she’d been dragged across an ocean to find. Our lover, being a creature of intellectual pursuit, spent half of the time taking in every detail about the musician, and the other half soaking in the sounds she’d come to associate with her moments of freedom.

He is a brilliant violinist and lyricist among other things. There is respect seasoned with admiration for that in the lover, but his eyes are what she’d come to see. And she watched them.

The music ended and the musician was speaking to people gathered around a table. Her friend urged our lover to approach and talk to the man she’d essentially stalked across the Atlantic, but they both knew this had been a trip that would end in the lover walking away from any chance to speak. She simply lacked courage to risk the musician being anything other than what her mind had made of him. And to be brushed off by what had become her saving grace would have done damage beyond any good that could have come of interaction.

For all the data that can be accumulated about someone by a powerful mind given time to observe, the only thing our lover left remembering was that he had eyes of trampled ice rimmed with the spark of a man on fire. She kept the memory of those eyes; they were comfort, and company.

She was home only 2 months after returning from overseas before moving to another state for college, and so the nighttime visits were limited. Just as she’d not allowed the music, she didn’t allow the eyes to ease her during the progression of sexual violence. She preferred their comfort while deciding which wounds she could hide and how, and what story she would tell of the ones too prominent to be covered by either make-up or clothing. Much to this writer’s displeasure, it must be admitted that our lover often stood alone requesting advice of the eyes she’d protected in her memory as to which story might work again, and which joke was likely to cover the shame she felt when people asked of her wounds. He never answered, as our lover remained at least mildly sane, but she attributes her ability to keep moving on certain days to easy sanctuary provided by the idea that such a man existed.

1996 she married. At her wedding reception she made the obligatory greetings and left her guests congratulating her husband for the safety of an unused room and a portable CD player. She sat in the empty room, in her wedding dress, with what she’d chosen to be her family; a man she’d created on the strength of a pair of eyes, her imagination, and limited insight to his.

Between the end of her freshman year in college and the late fall/early spring of 2001 our lover saw the musician at least once a year, always hiding in the back of whatever room held him, and never speaking.

I can only tell you that she was frightened by people. She’s not been mishandled since leaving her home when she was 16, but her fear was not of violence. Her fear, as she came to understand far too late, was of life in general, feeling, seeing or being seen. There are many psychological explanations of this, but I will suffice to say that she had her reasons, and has recognized the flaws of logic that formed them.

In May of 2001 she was accompanied on a trip to TX by the only person she’d met to know the music independent of her. She hid in the back of the room attempting to discover something worthy of saying to him as she knew her company this time would place her in a position of being required to speak. She’d worked out a passable greeting, but upon opening her mouth it refused to be said and left her with none but the options of either coming up with something quickly or hoping her friend would forego alerting the musician that she was not, in fact, a deaf-mute. She chose the former praying to a God she did not accept the existence of that she could offer a simple hello and retreat to the nearest restroom, the location of which she’d determined while deciding between the courses of action that remained available to her.

What exited her mouth was "You’ve beautiful hands". It was certainly truth; they were beautiful in appearance and ability, but hardly the comment with which to make someone’s acquaintance. After hastily removing herself from the company of the musician she berated her mind for the stupidity of her statement and the familiarity of a contraction used in greeting someone one does not know well.

She fought as she was able at the time, but in the end her deluded fear won. She decided that she would find, somehow, the ability to tell him that he’d been a driving force in her life, and she’d never be in the same room with him again. Once more, to this writer’s dismay, it must be admitted that our lover chose a cowards communication. On the back of an arbitrary receipt she wrote, "Your music is the only thing that makes me feel" and asked her friend to be sure the musician received it. She wasn’t able to find all the words for what she would have had him hear, so she rested on hope that from one sentence he would read "You’ll never be able to understand all the nights the thought of you made me able to sew a cut or lie still and not give him the pleasure of knowing how much it hurt" and the one she most wished him to hear from her note "Had it not been for your music, and then your eyes, I would have died or let myself slip into the cold comfort of insanity, and that makes anything I may have offered or have to offer this world a gift you’ve given. And I will be a great contribution."

She was not true to her decision not to find and observe, nor was she true to her decision not to speak, although she did so electronically. She did, however, keep herself from the thing that truly frightened her, the dreaded vocal conversation. She watched from the backs of rooms and the edges of tents, but never approached him, telling herself that she’d said all she could, and this man would have no interest in the only thing she could offer him; her friendship. He’d been more than kind to her, but her delusions were not such that discounted the distinction between civility and friendship.



In 2003, after her divorce, she spoke to our lovely musician again, in all but the right ways. She’d become something she thought was a strong person; unbending and harsh; residing in what was only another place to hide. She found that she was losing sight of her accomplishments because she’d outgrown sharing them so childishly with the character she’d based on him. She wanted him to see her, and she wanted to touch him, so she offered him her body. He politely declined the offer of sex, but allowed her request of a kiss. "The kiss by which all others in her life are still measured"; for no reason other than it shared the moment she had his complete attention.

Shortly after that she made plans to see him perform in CA only to be threatened with the loss of his friendship should she attend, and made aware that he would hear nothing further of the subject. She attempted being angry with him, reminding herself that no one talks to her that way (which is true enough, there’s maybe one other person who would be allowed), but anger was not at all what she felt.

A moment of rare candor saw her sit in the room that served as her library/music room and cry for a very long time. There was a lifetime of emotion released into those walls, but the overwhelming one of them was fear. She feared never again having the opportunity to pull this beautiful musician’s mouth to hers and feel as though she’d been something beyond a face in the crowd.

In time she has come to see life more clearly and developed an understanding that it’s not an ugly thing to be endured. She’s found the passions lost to a time when they could only drive her mad, although she’s not entirely sure yet how to express them well. She is gaining the confidence to speak without orchestration. It’s proving a slow process; learning to speak to him without the question of his reaction, but she realizes that she’d been approaching the situation assuming that he dislikes her, and that proved untrue.

She will never outgrow the debt of gratitude she owes him for being the peaceful, sanity protecting thing in her life through quite a few years, but she’s come to know that he is not the man she made of him. To our lover’s great delight she’s found the man he shows himself to be is worth knowing, and she greatly wishes to know him for reasons beyond nostalgia and weakness or a wish to be separated from the crowd.

She has seen her daughter dance to his music, and she’s regained the nod of appreciated accomplishment one can only give themselves. Her reactions to the world are still extreme, as I imagine they always will be, but they no longer frighten her. Sometimes they hurt, but it’s a splendid pain, because it’s honest and it’s hers, and she’s paid for it. She’s finally realized that true levity comes only with self-acknowledged merit, and anything less is a fool’s escape. She offers thanks to the other person she’s been lucky enough to have close for most of these realizations.

I wished to convey to you the story of a girl who has loved without expectation or need of understanding through what can be appropriately described as unusual situations. I hope that you too will come away from hearing it with the feeling that love is something with many expressions, formed by intensity, commitment (to oneself rather than the object of ones affection) and honest internal emotion rather than another’s acceptance or even knowledge.

Our lover sits, somewhat dizzy, at 2:21am on a computer typing a story about herself and her attachment to a beautiful person, experiencing a pang of lonelines that she will probably relieve with sleep before much longer. But before she leaves she has one more thing to say;

She is scared and unsure in a way she’d all but forgotten, but she’s coming.