I think I missed my soul mate by nearly two hundred years. At least I found him, though, in the yellowed pages of leather-bound, ink-smelling books. No, that is a lie. I wish I had found him that way--in a thick, dusty, ragged book on the top shelf of some grand old library somewhere--but that’s not how we met. We met in the glossy pages of a sixth grade English textbook. The pages smelled like chemicals and I sat at a fake-wooden desk, praying for class to end. Beside the childish cartoon of a scruffy black bird, I read his name and didn’t like it. It was old-fashioned and silly. But I was made to read the poem, and I believe I fell in love with him then, though he would pursue me through paper for years after before finally keeping a grip on my heart. And even now, I have still far more to find out about him; still more of myself to give.For him I’ve been Lenore, and Helen; changed my name to Annabel Lee. I’ve dreamt of being Virginia—to have been his muse. To have been the inspiration for so many brilliant black roses, scrawling their dolorous vines across the parchment. To have been the reason for such deep throes…Fifteen years of life is enough, and two as his bride the best of them, I’m sure it would have been. Maybe his heart was not the purest, but neither is mine and in his verses and tales I can tell we would have connected deeply, if in a stygian way. He is known for darkness but knew so much of beauty and recognized it as no one else, the beauty that lay in the dark. “The pleasure which is at once the most pure,” He said to me, “the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.” He saw the mystery in a cat, the wisdom in the irrelevant, and the value of dreams by day. His mind penetrated the truth of man, and saw what we really are, not what we so blindly pretend to be. He would have understood me in my silence, I think. He would not try to fix the clog in my throat or my dislike of small talk. Upon meeting me, maybe we would have sat together in silence for a long while before uttering any sort of acknowledgement to each other. Then, when finally he spoke, he would dispel all apprehension, not by asking me how I’m doing, but by asking me if I, too, could feel the secret pleasure when my mind reveals it’s more masochistic capabilities. And I would tell him yes, but that I’m afraid to tell anyone. He would tell me not to be afraid. Or maybe he would tell me to be very afraid and to cultivate my fears of any kind and then when I can no longer stand the level of terror, to charge into their gaping mouths and let them consume me while my pen scratches desperately at scraps of paper, recording the chaos in my mind. He would tell me the chaos is beautiful, and no, don’t try to organize it, dear; don’t try to clean it. Let it out raw—bare your red, pulsing heart for others to see and hear. Listen as some of them run screaming from you, but take gently by the hand those who stay, and lead them from the light to show them the intricacy of what is beyond. Drown them in luscious, tenebrous depth.Yes, I believe Edgar and I would have understood each other. Well, he would understand me. I don’t presume to be able to even come close to understanding the wonderfully deep, aphotic labyrinth that was his mind. I would give very much to have been his pupil; for him to have guided me through his winding mental maze. What more could any wanna-be writer wish for? Finding a mentoring mind still living is as hard as anything else, though, and nothing is very easy anymore.No one told me life was going to be easy. Or that it was supposed to be. Or that it was supposed to be mostly easy or easy at all at any time. So why do I get upset when it’s hard? Why am I disappointed when it doesn’t go well? When I get hurt or when I hurt someone else or when I thought I’d found the answer but it was really just a thousand more questions in disguise, and I know that in an eternal quest for happiness no one’s ever really found it and that can make me feel so hopeless…But Amy Charmichael said “In acceptance lies peace”, and I suppose that makes sense. If pride and laziness will allow me to stop fighting—or start fighting; I’m not quite sure which I need to do at this point—maybe then I could move freely enough to escape most of the cramps. Because life is supposed to hurt, I think. I think we’re supposed to stub our toes on the uneven trail and we’re supposed to fall down and break and, no, we’re not supposed to heal completely. Keep the itch; keep the cramps. Then the end matters more. Heaven will be all the sweeter when we’ve lost everything we have to lose here. Besides, mistakes are the best of teachers.And yet, I still grasp so selfishly at tiny means of luxury…I wish self-improvement didn’t require such self-control.Because I have no self-control. It’s not very often one breaks one’s own heart, but I pulled it off with my lack of discipline. Because I’m like a rabbit or a deer or a bird or squirrel and I frighten so easily, dashing off before I can even see if I’m really in danger. I wasn’t, at least not so soon. And I dashed and I left something behind that I hadn’t realized had grown roots inside me, so now I have a hole in my gut where it used to be.I’m trying to fill it up, trying to stay busy. I’m writing, I’m writing; I’m exercising and playing my guitar, though I’m tired of all the songs I know. I’m running errands and running with my dog and running to outrun the sense of pointlessness and futility that’s always catching up. But I run slow cause I’m always tired; I haven’t been sleeping. So I’ve been taking pills to sleep, and they make me sleep late so I sleep a lot and I don’t have time to live the life I want to live between all the sleeping. And that’s getting old but there’s nothing I can do about it.But there are things I’ve realized in all my sleeping of late. I’ve realized how delicate, how thin and lace-like, my ideals were; like spider webs. I thought I had them for a reason, you know? I thought I’d been made especially with them inside me—my specific ideals that would guide me to where I am supposed to be and to whom I am supposed to be there with and what we are supposed to be doing. How fine is the line between faith and the naïve, book-fed fantasies of a shy romantic? Apparently it is thicker—no, thinner….it is something other than what I thought it was and I’ve been forced to take another step towards realism, because the world just can’t bear to let me hang on to the shreds of perfect dreams that I actually--foolishly--harbored some hope for. I’ve figured out I can’t have it all, not all in one place. I’ll have to choose. Prioritize. Settle. For awhile I wanted to scream, “Is it too much to ask?!” but now I’m feeling myself slide towards the point of resignation. Of resigning myself to what appears to be the fact: being easy is the only way to not be alone. Not “easy” as in “whore”, but easy as in, easy to get along with. Easy to understand. Easy to be with. Easy to read. Easy to interpret. Easy to catch. Easy, easy, easy. So suck it up and break. You’ve read too many books if you’re waiting for someone to gently chip their way to your core; if you think someone actually wants to get to know you--really know you--so much that they’ll put in the time and effort it takes to extract the elixir of your true essence. Society screams constantly for ease of personality; for the smooth-thinking, unflawed mind. Psychology may be the new religion, but outside the therapist’s office those subjects are taboo. Even inside that office, the object is to be “fixed”; to become simple, really. To avoid conflict. To embrace difficulties and ponder their meaning and reason and clarity—that’s not the goal anymore. Maybe it never was. Regardless, now it is a search for emotional anesthetic; a honey-coated reality check meant to numb and placate. Remove the cloying margins meant to accommodate spoiled fragility and all that remains to do is cash in:Afraid? Get over it. No one has the patience to coax you out over time.Complicated? Too bad. No one should have to work hard enough to unravel the mysteries of you; stop being so difficult.Confused? Get used to it. Everyone is too busy looking for their own answers to help you find yours.Shy? Deal with it. If you’re not going to easily offer up your deepest secrets and thoughts, no one’s going to bother to dig for them, no matter if you want them to or not. They're not mind-readers. That’s your problem; fix it.I too often make the naive mistake of assuming that everyone is willing to labor for intimacy at a soul level. I always thought it went without saying that if you cared for a person—in any way; platonic, romantic, or family—you would want to really know them. How they think, what they think about and why. I want to know these things, and more, about everyone I care about. I want to delve into their minds and know them as well as I know myself. Toss away social standards and propriety. I don’t want to ask where they went to school or what their major is. The brushing of souls—what I want in theory, but what I am too reticent to attempt to gain.I wish I had finished that Rubix cube. I wish I hadn’t given up on it. I wish my resolve hadn’t dissipated in the presence of more pressing life issues.Cause it’s those kinds of little things that can etch the word “failure” into your mind, sometimes even more deeply than the bigger things. Or it’s the pile up and that little thing—that unfinished Rubix cube—is what finally makes things push hard enough to make the engraving. The wrinkles in my brain…I wonder what they look like. I wonder if they might make pictures, like the dots on my ceiling, or if they’d make words like the swizzles in one of those kid puzzles on the back of the Cheerio’s box. I wonder if they’d say anything more meaningful.It’s been a long time. Since a lot of things. It’s been a long time since I learned a new song on my guitar; so long the calluses on my fingertips are fading. It’s been a long time since I held someone’s hand and it just seems like a dream now. But that’s ok; I meant to wake up.It’s been a long time since I’ve gone swimming. I know I’m not the only one who thinks swimming is as close as man can come to unaided flight. Someone else said it; someone important. I don’t remember who but it doesn’t matter. I just know that it’s been a long time since I felt like I was flying.Birds can fly because they have hollow bones. And special feathers, but the special feathers would be useless if their bones were not hollow. Maybe it’s only a matter of time before my bones can be hollowed out, too. I’m sure it would hurt for awhile, but then maybe I could fly, holding a plastic sled behind my back like I did when I was a kid. Only this time, maybe I wouldn’t fall.It’s been a long time since I was a kid. It’s been a long time since I was born. Six-thousand nine-hundred and forty-six days. It doesn’t seem that long written out like that. And it seems even shorter when I say nineteen years and eleven days. But it feels like a lifetime. And maybe it is; if I died today it would be. The only difference is that it keeps feeling longer because it’s getting longer. The time between the memories, I mean.But I’ve been making fresh new ones, freezing them while they are fresh, and they get sweeter with time like a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. They will be so rich and nectarous that I will save them until a night when I have nothing else palatable, and I will savor the bouquet before I sip their essence slowly. I will make them last until their sweetness washes every last acrid taste from me.It’s been a long time since I’ve been cleansed like that; since summer began. Now it’s half over. I haven’t done anything with it yet.I had a list of books to read—books and plays and poems. “A Tale of Two Cities”. “Of Mice and Men”. “Hamlet”. “The Scarlet Letter”. “Song of Myself”. Things I’ve always wished I’d read, or that I’ve read part of and never really finished. Closure is important with books too, you know. I thought I’d have them finished by now, but I’ve only just started one. And time slipped away without telling me so I don't think I will accomplish any of my summer goals now.Maybe I’ll make new ones for the fall. I’ll be living somewhere else then; not too far away but far enough that it isn’t home. It’s new. Or it will be. I haven’t lived in the city for so long, I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep. Not that I sleep well now, anyway.Maybe my new goals will be about being independent; self-sufficient. That would be a good place to start. After all, it’s come to that. But maybe that won’t be so hard to achieve. I like to be alone most of the time. But the constant of home—of family and pets at home and friends at their own homes and everything remaining in its place so that I know exactly where to find things when I need them—it is something I have always had and therefore something I’m not sure I can do without.It doesn’t matter, though; I’ll have to. Do without, I mean. I’ll just keep some music playing while I get used to it. As long as the music doesn’t stop, I’ll be ok. Can someone be addicted to music? It’s nearly like self-medicating; an escape. A healthy one, as far as I know. A new form for emotion to take—to give you the power to cry without tears; maintain your dignity and feel your pain at the same time. Maintain control of ecstasy. What does that besides music?My own or someone else’s. It doesn't matter. As long as I can lend it my voice when I’m alone and pretend it’s mine, it is fix enough to get me through emotional extremes with sanity intact. Or almost intact, anyway. But would it be so bad if I was addicted to music? It makes sense, doesn’t it? It makes sense that if the music that has once kept a heart from breaking stops, the heart might crack a little.It’s irrelevant though, because I’m not addicted to music. In fact, I haven’t been playing it as much recently. My thoughts stumble over the notes blowing through my head and it didn’t used to bother me but these days I haven’t been thinking as clearly as I once did.I’ve been thinking more about California and the nights on the beach when I would go jogging. There were tall lamps, but they only provided a small circle of light every ten feet. And for those ten feet, those few moments as I ran in the dark, I felt the thrill not knowing. The light ahead made all around seem darker still and the deep, undulating hiss of the ocean filled my ears and blocked out other sounds. All before me a point of light and I must get there before something reaches out from behind or beside to pull me somewhere because I can’t hear or see and my feet crush crush crush slowed in the sand and I’m hindered. But then I would reach the light and with the return of clear vision my ears ceased to amplify the sea, and I looked and listened and knew I was safe; until I stepped out of the lamplight again. And I would step out again, and again and again, and even when the salt-breeze began to scrape my throat I still ran. My muscles worked and the lapping waves numbed the sand-blisters on my bare feet as they were rubbed further towards calluses and I could feel myself growing stronger—making myself stronger. The thrill of it all invigorated the appetite of my stride and so my legs ate six miles before climbing back to the shelter of the veranda. Now days though, my legs are only hungry for maybe two miles on landlocked gravel roads, and I run close to home, in the safety of sunlight. And I miss the night-blackened sea, though I know I’ve grown too cautious to run with it now, were some miracle to take me back there.