I guess for her it really is about the cover and not the book. She would rather not read the book at all actually, she’d prefer to have someone summarize it for her and point out the parts that were the most shocking. Happiness, of course, means that you have a great answer to the question “How are you doing?” To her, it matters most what your life circumstances sound like while they hang in the air in front of another person.
She can’t tolerate loneliness. She finds no need to dig deeper into life’s complexities, she avidly seeks distractions from heavy silence and things resembling solitude.
There are cracks in this persona, however. There are times when all her efforts fail her and I can see something trapped in a cracking egg she stuffs deep in her pockets. It is a long, keeling wail that is partially visible when she opens her mouth in genuine awe. When she is caught off guard, there is a person who is present in my company.
She may never scream the way she deserves to; she may never empty her pockets all the way to the bottom, but I see how real she is. She clings to her life by absorbing herself in distractions and I don’t blame her. It is so wound up in her. The knots inside her couldn’t have been tied by human hands. The rope is too tough to cut and the slivers of twine cut your hands as a warning to leave things alone.
She protects the world from her secrets with 150 pounds of armor that she shamefully drags with her everywhere she goes. She is judged by strangers and her insides say, “Don’t you know I’m doing this for you?” She attacks them back by commenting how lovely the fall is and how stunning Oprah looks on the cover of her latest magazine.
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