a story, in three parts.

Walking, he knew something was wrong. The air felt as though it had died the night before, cold and still. Things did not even look as they should. The sun's glare from the storefront had softened, and was a smooth as a tumbled rock. He stood still in order to maintain composure as the world speedily crept around him. With eyes close he saw the truth: that he never belonged here. Life was his to have, just not the life he was living. Death was never an option, for it would take him away from his purpose, if he could ever find out what that was.
The trek to work always seemed an insurmountable task, beginning at the first step. Not because of anything physical, but mainly due to the mental exertion he place on himself from the moment he stepped outside. Preparation to deal with a world never meant for him. People he was never to meet, conversations he was never meant to hear. Every step meant moving closer towards that chaffing feeling. A feeling that doesn't necessarily end in anger, but constant irritation.

"How was the weekend?" "How are you feeling today?"

Words stripped of their meaning is a tragic circumstance. A bird without wings, or even a notion to fly. He could not join in, could not add more empty phrases to fill the environment around him with nothingness. To have this vision of the world, to see emptiness as it was, is often viewed as a pessimistic quality. Negative was the word he most heard most often to describe his demeanor. True, he was negative. As he saw it, most everything in this life was a ghost, remnants of an existence once had. We worshiped the vestiges of what was (and in turn what could have been), but yet he refused. His vision allowed him to distinguished nothingness from somethingness. Somethingness was everything to him.

She approached everything with the exuberance of a ten year old child. Mainly, because she was a ten year old child. New and fresh every experience was to her. She was never afraid because everything was an adventure to her. After everything she saw, heard, smelled, tasted, accomplished, she realized that she changed. That she was, different. Started out one way, but ended up another. She relished that moment of realization. As she would grow older, she saw the virtue of good experiences that made you better as opposed from those that did not. No sparks or colors, just deep rooted change. Deep rooted in the sense that these small changes coupled with experience would lead to the foundations of the principles upon which her life would be based. At 10, she didn't know this. Or care to know. What she did know or care to know is that after spending time with her nana at Byrd's Sanctuary, helping to serve food to those layered in clothes that no more belonged together than crabs and ice cream, allowed her to view Mr. Buddy, who spent every waking moment on how to get wet and how to stay dry a little differently. She heard his words as kind, even wrapped in the slur of intoxication. These changes softened her, allowing her to bypass passing judgement based on appearance. The hue of skin, amount estrogen in a voice, or lack there of, meant nothing to her because she never noticed it. She saw, better yet felt, what made them, them. Goodness felt as warm and sweet as the crook of the neck of a woman loved. Sadness was thick and slow; anger, blindingly bright. A living, breathing canvas of emotional color, forever changing and remaining the same was her world, and she never wanted to leave its comforting embrace.

10 would teach him how to live.

it's either or.

People are seemingly never content with the cards dealt to them by the lord above. They want to play a game that their cards don't allow them to win with. Can't win at poker with a good spades hand.
If your weird, you won't have alot of good friends. Just a few. But those few will ride to the end of the earth with you.
If your selfish, you can't expect people around you to give you their last.
It's impossible to have it both ways. People consistently and carelessly run into this fact of life like flies into a windshield. And then choose to get pissed at the result. It's the balance of the world. Balance hates those "have their cake and eat it too" bastards. Just too damn greedy. Then scale starts to tip.
At some point we all have to determine what is truly important to us, in all aspects of our lives. It gives us a standard by which we can base our decision upon.
Is it more important to be true to your cards, or to have what we want?
Sometimes they coincide, but don't hold your breath.

It's either or.