1. the child's birthday
Once upon a time there was a child who had the best birthdays ever. There were mounds of brightly-wrapped presents and relatives with smiles making a fuss and birthday cakes and slumber parties. Once they had even gone to McDonalds with all her friends. And not just any McDonalds. but the one with the huge playground inside.
( But she hadn't had a birthday like that in ages. )
Finally the Friday came when they would go out for dinner. The child stood at the window, nose pressed to the glass, watching the cars pass by. One two three four five silver cars. Surely the next would be theirs?
She had counted up into the twenties when one finally slowed down and turned into the drive. The child spun away from the glass and bounded down the stairs. The wait was over!
She skidded to a stop as the mother opened the car door. "I'm sorry, we can't go out today," the mother said. "I forgot that we promised your sister we'd go to a baseball game with her and the kids." She ruffled the child's hair. "We'll go out some other time. I promise."
The child nodded. What else was there to do but nod? She stood and watched her parents drive away. And then she went back upstairs and hugged her cat and cried.
2. part of that world
The high-schoolers sat in groups of twos and threes as the bus jostled its way down the street. They were chatting and laughing, talking about boy friends and girlfriends and god that teacher was so unfair, wasn't she? Their chatter was a cacophony that made the adults frown and give disapproving looks, flicking their newspapers open to read the headlines and the Dow and the obituaries.
The teenager sat alone, watching. Always watching, never a part of things. I'm an alien , she thought. They are human, and I am Other. I don't belong. In that moment on the bus she really, truly believed that, believed that she was from someplace Not Here. ( Just a bubble on the bus, taking up space, separate from everything else. )
Occasionally the teenager would speak. Life is passing me by, she'd say. The others are going to parties and meeting boys and experiencing so much and I'm not, she'd say. I'm not part of that world. I'm afraid. I'm afraid that someday I'm going to slip into my little world and never return.
The posh woman would try to get her to talk more about this, but the teenager would go silent again. Because how could she talk to this woman, in her business suit and nylons in her plush office overlooking the lake with her coffee and Pollock? This woman wasn't from her world. She wasn't from a world the teenager had every been to, or cared to visit.
And as much as the teenager feared her life passing her by, in truth she liked her inner world better. In her real world she was having adventurers and laughing and learning and being kissed by boys. In her real world she wasn't wasting her parents' money or making her sisters angry because she didn't do her chores again or making everyone sigh in that way they did. In her real world she was safe.
3. I need you to care about me.
The college student paced around the basement, crying. She stomped and wailed and beat the pillows and the couch, and every once in a while she'd stare at the ceiling. Check up on me, she'd think at it fiercely. Check up on me. Come see how I'm doing. I need you to care about me.
But nobody ever came. Why would they? Since she got her bedroom in the basement, she had withdrawn further and further, until she was spending most of her time down there, only venturing forth for meals and visits to the bathroom and to scritch the dog. She didn't even need to go up there to watch TV, because she had her own TV down here.
And so they learned that she wanted to be alone. So they left her alone, and as time passed they learned not to think about her at all. They'd go through the motions, telling her of when they'd all be going out for a family dinner or to visit relatives or that one of them was sick and needed to go in the hospital, and they'd always be surprised that she didn't already know, they thought she knew, they thought they had told her, didn't we tell you this already?
But they hadn't.
And so she'd cry--not about them. About school and friends and finances and papers due. She'd cry and stomp around the basement and think fiercely at the ceiling CHECK UP ON ME, but no one ever came. And so she'd cry some more, but this time she was crying about them and how they never seemed to care.
4. there's just me.
The woman sat in the chair and looked down at the floor and played with the keys on her lanyard. But unlike that office with its Pollock and coffee where she couldn't talk, here she could. Here, she was safe.
( And so she talked. ) "I get up and do work and eat meals and go to bed. The only time I go out of the house is to do errands, and come here. I'm not a part of the real world."
"What is the real world?" the therapist asked.
"Having friends. Going out. Calling family. Paying bills and keeping the house clean," the woman replied. "But that's the real world for everyone else. It's not mine."
"What is your real world like, then?" the therapist asked.
"There's nobody," she said with a sad smile. "There's just me."
5. love me. need me.
She cried and she prayed and she begged. "Love me," she screamed at the world. "Say that you love me. Tell me you need me."
Whispers came: laughter on the wind, all too fleeting. And there were words, too, words such as "strength" and "inspiration" and "are you okay?" and "is there anything I could do to help?"
This isn't what I want, she thought. It isn't want I want, it isn't want I need. It's not enough.
The laughter was good. She liked laughter, and needed it. And she liked being inspiring: it was her touchstone, after all, her truth behind her What I Want to Be When I Grow Ups. And she liked having people who understood her crazy mind, and enjoyed the same things she did. Those were all good.
But it wasn't enough. She wanted more. And so she sat on her couch and scritched her cat while tears rolled silently, slowly, down her face.
"I'm mourning," she realised. "How long have I been mourning?"
Months, the answer came. Perhaps years.
6. retreat.
I want to take a retreat, she thought.
A friend said maybe that wasn't such a good idea, because hadn't she been complaining about being lonely, and a retreat would cut her off even more?
Yes, I know it's nonsensical, she thought, but I need this. I need to go away.
Because she had learned that to go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow(*). It was only when she retreated that she could gather her inner strength and make those giant leaps she needed to make.
And so she turned off the computer and closed the door to the library, retreating, and became a singularity.
7. fly.
( It seemed as though he had been falling for years. )Every flight begins with a fall, the crow said. Look down.
"I'm afraid..."
LOOK DOWN!
Bran looked down, and felt his insides turn to water. The ground was rushing up at him now. The whole world was spread out below him, a tapestry of white and brown and green. He could see every thing so clearly that for a moment he forgot to be afraid. He could see the whole realm, and everyone in it.
Finally he looked north. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.
Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live.
"Why?" Bran said, not understanding, falling, falling.
Because winter is coming.
Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had three eyes, and the third eye was full of a terrible knowledge. Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid.
"Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?" he heard his own voice saying, small and far away.
And his father's voice replied to him. "That is the only time a man can be brave."
Now, Bran, the crow urged. Choose. Fly or die.
Death reached for him, screaming.
Bran spread his arms and flew.
--A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) grrm)
8. advancing.
November. A month had passed since the retreat had begun. No, more than a month.
"I'm not ready," she said. Not ready to tell my mom how much she hurt me, not ready to burst the bubble, not ready to step out of the inner world, not ready to find the boy, not ready to tell (and to let) people check up on me, not ready to have others there, not ready to love and be loved and be needed, not ready to fly. I'm not ready.
No one ever is, another part of her answered.
She opened the door to the library. The retreat had ended.
(*) Another grrm. The full line: "To go north, you must go south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow."
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