12.18.00

Why is it that we love stories? What is it about other people's experiences, that makes us go to movies, pick up books, dial the telephone, watch tv?

If I could sometimes I think I would give all of my stories away. Package them in precise, tiny boxes, tied with lovely pink and green ribbon, sealed with scotch tape, corners folded neatly in just the way Mom taught me.

Here.

Take this.

It is the things that have happened to me. A life. Have it.

Right now I am tired of being strong.

People are always telling me that I am the strongest person they know. (Or maybe I just imagined that once. Possible, because where would a conversation like that take place? McDonalds: My friend and I have just ordered burgers and Cokes. We sit down in silly yellow plastic chairs, facing the painted image of Grimace and the Hamburgler. By the way, my friend says, you?re the strongest person I know. Thanks, I say. Then we break into the fries.)

I am not the strongest person I know.

I am the weakest, scaredest, most unsure, most reluctant, do things only because I have to and people expect them of me, person that I know. Sometimes I feel as if my skin is paper-mache, covering a wire frame, with maybe, a single Christmas light in the chest cavity, standing in for a soul. Just a big carnival trick, animated by wind, moving where it's told, waiting until someone gets too close, folds back a paper corner...lights a match.