i'll take you as my queen

It is amazing, how we get by, or perhaps how we think that we get by remarkably well. But really, it's only going to take you that one question, one song, one person to realise no, you never did get by at all. Then, naturally, the world as you have conceived crashes down upon your impenetrably thick skull, and you shall never, never get by again. For it is not enough, it is never enough.

And guess who said that and made the world a bleaker, wetter place?

It is one thing to say it when you have someone by your side, in your head, in your heart. It is quite another thing to admit it when you are all alone safe for a messy concoction of memories and sensory perceptions that have come together to form the dubious notion of someone. These days, however, I would much rather not get by, than pass my days in seeming content, never contending for more.

Well, really. What is happiness if not something as fleeting, as unreliable as fluctuating bouts of loneliness? I have been happy: watching the piano ensemble concert and managing not to abuse the circumstances at all, building supernatural worlds inside my head, surviving lit lessons and drawing unnerving parallels between Mrs Bennet and myself, speaking to old people, walking beside you and wishing your face away. Like loneliness, happiness is really a state of mind; wished, rather than bequeathed, upon your consciousness; created, rather than perceived, by the mechanisms of your mind.

Until I drop to the sidewalk, graze my knee, graze my heart (as Cathleen Schine so delicately put), all of this shall mean nothing at all. It is, after all, but a shallow, simple, and possibly stolen happiness.

(And here, I admit, no, I am not nearly as distant or distraught as I sound. But yes, it gives me inexplicable and unintelligent joy to be at least able to convey some emotion with success and (ha!) full self preservation. To prove my point, GIANT SMILEY: (: Or would that be interpreted as over-compensation? Ho. Ho.)