"i can't go back to yesterday. i was a different person then."
-Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
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Some people have a way of talking. This way is usually used by many psychologists, because they can tell you how you are feeling. They tell you how you are today. So sometimes when you say:
I've been using blue a lot recently-in paintings and drawings and clothes- it's not even my favorite color. I just use it. A lot.
And then they can either diagnose you, or make you feel better by saying something that sounds as though they know how you feel. And they go:
Okay.
Even when it's not.
(And mind you, they don't know how you are feeling shockingly a lot of the time- if they went through everything their clients tell them, they'd be crazier than a shithouse rat.)
RECENTLY, IN THE EMPTY CLASSROOM I FREQUENT BEFORE SCHOOL, 6:57 IN THE A.M:
ME: *sigh*
I've been doing that a lot recently. Sighing, I mean. But I don't tell my psychologist in our session because I don't want her to go:
Okay.
Because I don't want to be lied to. Not again.
SCHOOL CORRIDOR: squeak. tap, tap.
DOOR: *opens*
GRANT: oh. It's you.
He says this a bit like how you would say,
I've been expecting you.
As if I were that predictable- a weather forecast. I nod in his direction vaguely, then open my notebook, the one with a simple Disney drawing on the cover. I'm deciphering a couple of poems from my English teacher last year. I like her because she supplies me with constant poems and passages to decipher.
GRANT: That's a nice cover.
ME: Thank you. I drew that.
GRANT, looking surprised: No way. I never knew you drew.
ME, mildly shocked: And why not?
GRANT, looking sheepish: You don't really look like the type to- um, draw. Not that you can't, I mean- you're usually cooped away in a corner. Your own little cave.
And here is why I don't talk to people much- they assume. People are not made for assuming- they are born to be solved. Proven. Deciphered. But I won't let this get in the way of my conversation with Grant- he is nice. Doesn't act like he's all that and a bag of chips.
ME, chuckling softly: My own little cave?
GRANT, grinning: Yes. A cave of solitude. A barrier of isolation. An island, if you will.
ME: an island.
GRANT: Yeah.
And I can't help but start to think- maybe that's why isolation and island share so many letters- sometimes they're synonyms. And I feel myself start to break away from the peninsula.
YOU ARE READING
If You Will
Teen Fiction"every night, she would look up at the stars she could see, and pick the brightest star and give it a name. meanwhile, he would observe every single one of them, and give the brightest a name; her name." - anonymous.
