25 Times.

It felt good to have her see me in my business duds, black wool trench coat, tailored skirt, sparkly earrings. And it’s all so surface but it was the first time she looked at me without that damn judgment in her eyes, there was the potential for respect. Stupid is as stupid does and it felt relieving, to be on an even keel for the first time. Dignen’s words echoing in my head and reverberating in my heart, "I’m not always as confident as I appear to be," and it always comes back to this pathetic cycle of insults and one-upping, cutting words said behind your back or under the cover of night, the loneliness system.

"And there are people who never go crazy, can you imagine how boring their lives must be..."

She’s saying things again, words with my voice, when I concentrate enough to listen. Stories about the wild geese and the being alive and the millions of adventures waiting to happen. Six billion of which I am one. (And how do you know how to act? Because you are you.) So much pressure sometimes, too much. I am not yet dead! Don’t forget that. Life is fucking long as hell, but still far too short for the unflinching judgment, the condescending, the belief that one person can possibly know how the rest of the world should live. I’ll go away before long, this adventure has grown cold and lumpy like oatmeal left out too long. Ahniwa embarks soon and I will ask to borrow some of that entrepreneurial spirit. I will stop being embarrassed to just exist, with all of these failings of the mind and human leanings and so many squelched and beautiful microcosms! Humanity and we never even had it.