Here is the deepest secret nobody knows

'what i want is to be needed.
what i need is to be indispensable to somebody.
who i need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention.
somebody addicted to me.
a mutual addiction.'

'let me tell you what you feel like when you know you are ready to die.
you sleep a lot, and when you wake up the very first thought in your head is that you wish you could go back to bed.
you go entire days without eating, because food is a commodity that keeps you here.
you read the same page a hundred times.
you rewind your life like a videocassette and see the things that make you weep, things that make you pause, but nothing that makes you want to play it forward.
you forget to comb your hair, to shower, to dress.
and then one day, when you make the decision that you have enough energy left in you to do this one, last, monumental thing, there comes a peace.
suddenly you are counting moments as you haven’t for months.
suddenly you have a secret that makes you smile, that makes people say you look wonderful, although you feel like a shell- brittle and capable of cracking into a thousand pieces.'

'i am half agony, half hope.'

and so it is; just like you said it would be

"i don't know! i don't know! i'm lost! i'm scared! i feel like i'm disappearing!
my skin is coming off! i'm getting old! nothing makes any sense to me!

nothing makes any sense!"

my heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

i might drink, and leave the world unseen,
and with thee fade away into the forest dim:
fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
what thou among the leaves hast never known,

where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
where but to think is to be full of sorrow

darkling i listen; and for many a time
i have been half in love with easeful death,

now more than ever seems it rich to die,
to cease upon the midnight with no pain,
while thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
in such an ecstasy!

she stood in tears amid the alien corn;
the same that oft-times hath

was it vision, or a waking dream?
fled is that music:- do i wake or sleep?


*parts from john keats' ode to a nightingale

words betrayed her: beautiful butterflies in her mind; dead moths when she opened her mouth for their release into the world.

*title quote by glen duncan