she thought she was pretty good at the grin-and-bear-it thing. and that she had it covered pretty well. no one told her otherwise, poor her.

so there she was, confessing all to strangers with half an ear, falling apart at innocent comments, so wrapped up in her own that she'd forgotten how to be a friend, and yet deluded enough to believe that she was holding up fine.

And she was too. when on her own that is. it's the relating-to-her-self-via-other-people bit that got to her. like that silly riddle they'd play in school. how do you make this line smaller without using an eraser? simple. just draw a bigger line beside it.

it's all gone now. thankfully. it's been neatly mended. and what was falling apart is whole again. hallelujah!

umbrellas, methinks, should be bright and cheery. it should add colour to the normally gloomy rainy day. i mean there is something so... well...appealing about colourful umbrellas isnt there? no? what are you trying to say? that you never put any thought in you choice of raingear?

anyway, so where was i? yes brightly coloured umbrellas. i quite like them. except for today. my umbrella is a very pretty darkish (also very bright) pink.
and i was wearing something red. and had a red bag. with a pink umbrella (yes i know i've said this before. i tend to get repetetive under stressful conditions) and there was this huge gang school kids (boys! so what if they were adoloscents. and i'm old enough to not be bothered). and it just occurred to me (and of course to other people present at the scene) that i looked something like an advertisement for, ahem, a certain kind of contraceptive.

oh, the humiliation of it all. my boring black chattri. am never deserting you again. sigh!

JANE DOE

the thing that had mattered to her most, then, was that it was real . 'S' was real . Here was one person who didnt see her for what she was maybe, but at least he saw her. She'd be out with him, all giddy, flushed and happy and all she could think then was, "yay i'm a couple too". It wasn't inside her head anymore. There were real fights, real tears ( oh well, at least real reasons to cry about), real conversations( so what if it involved her explaining how Robin Cook wasnt science fiction).

She doesnt miss him now that he's gone. No really. She doesnt.
What she doesnt like is that she's back inside her head again. Back to one-sided relationships. One-sided conversations.
One-sided fights with people who don't know her. Back to invisibility.