You move through the days like a machine--wake up, read your Bible, have a cup of coffee, classes, work, interact with people--but somewhere deep inside you is something troubling: a thought, a ponder, that maybe you don't fit in because you're not as real as everyone else (or maybe you're realer, and that might be worse).
You've stood at the edges of rooms and watched the grand dance take place around you. People talking. Laughing. Flirting. But wallflowers and shadows cling to the edges, like ghosts at the fringe of a living, breathing world, uncertain of how and where and when to join the dance. And once you finally step in and bat words back and forth with another human being, your smile feels stiff and false and your laugh a little forced and your eyes as hard and cold as diamonds (but maybe they're just cut glass). You wonder why the 'you' in a room full of people is a thousand miles away from the one who stands shimmering under starlight, like a tragic fairy tale or myth (your true form is only clear under the moonlight or in the dusk of evening, or when you're caught up in the mystery and beauty of a well written line of poetry) and you wonder if that's normal and everyone feels it or if you're just different that way.
You're pretty insecure about this life thing. Especially friends and goodness-let's-not-even-talk-about-boys because somehow, deep down, you feel like an observer on the sidelines, a reader of some epic tale in which you've accepted the role of a minor character. You don't deserve someone to love you, someone to sit with you in the dusk and listen to you spin your tapestries of fancy or woe. You're okay with being the sidekick--nodding and listening and "Oh, that's lovely!" or "I'm so sorry. I wish I could help," but some days you want to roar and don a crown and blast the hero to shreds with your diamond eyes (sharper than cut glass) because you are a person (and you matter too).
But mostly you just spend a lot of time listening and helping and hoping and loving and trying to believe that they actually like you because they like you and not just because they're being nice. Sometimes you catch yourself trying to earn their love and it makes you angry because that's not how it's supposed to work.
And then there's the future. A current tugs you along, persistent and patient as you struggle through the dregs of the river of indecision, but sometimes you just want to scream and smash something because you don't believe in destiny and why is it your fate to be human and limited to one lifetime, one century (or less--cut glass must shatter someday) on this spinning ball of mud and blood and angst and tears. You have had visions of yourself at fifty, at seventy, and you know that you cannot be contained by four walls and society's expectations
because
you are like ice and an autumn breeze, like
raindrops making ripples on the glassy surface of the lake
trembling with aliveness; quiet; and then still.
You can be anything. You can move mountains and write novels or be a pirate in the south pacific. You can open the best bookstore-library this side of Alexandria or lead little children on adventures that will shake their worlds to the core.
But some days you forget about the mountains (and the diamonds in your eyes) and it isn't until the moment when you realize that you are you that the sky opens up and you realize that you've been a character in this story all along.
(and no one, not even side characters, deserve less than a worthy ending)
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