tender is the night

To her, the most touching moment was when the waves licked the shoreline, when the shells tumbled out of the womb, thrown out into the wide wide world.  The earth teased, revealing only reminents of its mystery, giggling at the idea that humans could discover it all.  She wished she was a mermaid, so she could be in on the secret too.

She liked taking naps, making pancakes, and the boy who lived next door.  He was her favorite person in the world, and nobody could ever understand why.  He walked with  a swagger, he cursed and spoke in mumbled fragments, and he wanted to be like everybody else, a trait she despised.  But one day, she had gone to drop off something at his house, and she saw him, a shadow through the doorway of his younger brother's bedroom.  He pulled the comforter up to the boy's chin, he kissed his forhead, he whispered goodnight.  And when his brother yelled "wait!", he turned, and checked under the bed, in the closet, in every drawer and outside the window for monsters.

She had an odd fear of feeling safe.  When she was absorbed in fear, in stress, in worry, she was able to forget herself, able to forget her sadness, able to forget that she was more than her worldly accomplishments.  She shivered when she was alone, feeling the thoughts ring in the back of her head.  She could never trust the right people, and was constantly consumed by this wait for pain, this patience as she watched the guilitine come closer to her neck.  Dependancy was worse than death.

She always felt guilty when she broke hearts.  Not only for those she hurt, but for herself.  Everytime she got to know someone she would bring herself closer, closer to them.  Laughing and touching their shoulder with her forehead, smiling when nothing was funny, looking into their eyes and trying to find their souls.  She loved knowing people.  But she was always let down when she realized how little they knew about her.  Then she would become cold, and they would question.  She hated questions.  The relationship that had never begun was destroyed with her silent frustration, an emotional atomic bomb.  Everything deteriorated into dust.  Everything gone.

photos via marie claire italia editorial, march 2010