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Life Is More Than Who We Are

If she wanted it that way, then it was going to be that way. It had to be that way. There was no other way.
Everything was black and white. Even if others did not want to admit it.
Did it mean she felt an overall bleakness towards the foibles of humanity--no. Did it mean she escaped overwhelming emptiness sometimes--no.
She was twenty-three years old when she left her hometown. She would not return. She knew she looked at everyone differently; she saw the things others did not, chose not. She knew their truths better than they did and they could read it on her face; she could hurt them with it. Sometimes, she did.
She did not want to be cruel anymore.
She left for somewhere new. Things would be better.
And they were. In Los Angeles. That's where she went.
Some nights she would dance in her living room to ZZ Top or paint pictures of fairies and Snow White on the cardboard of cereal and Hamburger Helper boxes.
When it rained, she would put on blue jeans and her favorite sweater, sit on her apartment balcony, coffee mug in hand, and call the day her own.
It was selfish, her whole life, she did not care.

Sincerely, he was a good man. A good-looking one, with lips that could pout. The kind of man all women look at. Her first true lover.
Three days after moving to Los Angeles, she met him. She had told him her name was Susan, and it was not. She did not think he would call her, when she left him her number in the morning.
But he did before she even arrived home.
It began as purely sexual. Sometimes she would stroke the side of his face after lovemaking, and think, "I hope you are my toy too."

And then it changed.
He liked her.
She liked him.
And she let it go on.
She told herself, 'I will end this next week.', 'On Tuesday', 'I will just stop answering the phone', but it was as if she never really heard herself.
Until one night, she was drunk, she told him.
And he asked her to leave; he did not ask her real name.

She worked harder than most out there, and cried herself to sleep listening to old Elton John records.
They found her 'refreshing', and she knew in this day and age, she was just a novelty that would soon wear off. She was twenty-eight and a half when she wrote and directed her first feature film; 'raw', 'honest', 'painfully truthful', they said.
She told them her name was Linda, and it was not.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Came to you via wiseling.
Nice. We will be into touch.
Anonymous said…
Please take off the links on your site under the Pliner.Net hit counter!!!!!!
Brian said…
Happy New Year, Queenie. :)
~AprilD said…
Oh Queenie, I am sorry I did not see this sooner. I missed this. The raw honesty only you create. *sigh*

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