I'm So Trying To Give Up Meat.

She Was The Reason I Was A Reader, And Being A Reader Was What Had Made Me Most Myself; It Had Given Me The Gifts Of Curiosity And Sympathy, An Awareness Of The World As An Odd And Vibrant Contradictory Place, And It Had Me Unafraid Of Its Oddness And Vibrancy And Contradictions.

We All Stood And Gathered Our Backpacks And I Looked At The Floor Around My Chair To Make Sure I Hadn’t Dropped Anything. I Was Terrified Of Unwittingly Leaving Behind A Scrap Of Paper On Which Were Written All My Private Desires And Humiliations. The Fact That No Such Scrap Of Paper Existed, That I Did Not Even Keep A Diary Or Write Letters Except Bland, Earnest, Falsely Cheerful Ones To My Family (we Lost To St. Francis In Soccer, But I Think We’ll Win Our Game This Saturday; We Are Working On Self-portraits In Art Class, And The Hardest Part For Me Is The Nose) Never Decreased My Fear.

Ordinarily, Of Course, I Thought It Best To Remain Inconspicuous, But The Gesture Had A Certain Irresistable Theatricaility, And An Inevitablility. Sometimes You Can Feel The Pull Of What Other People Want From You, And You Sacrifice Yourself, You Risk Seeming Odd Or Sunsavory, To Keep Them Entertained.

I Guess Because Twins Have This Mystique, And Triplets - I Think The Normal Sibling Connection Potentially Can Be Very Powerful, And There's This Idea That It's Even More Powerful. It Really Is, Not Just Someone Like Me, But Another Version Of Me.

Ironically, Writing A Novel Is Not A Way To Sort Out Your Confusion.