You Don't Pass Or Fail At Being

I Was A Normal Child. Which Is To Say, I Was Selfish And I Was Not Entirely Convinced Of The Existence Of Things That Were Not Me, And I Was Certain, Rock-solid, Unshakeably Certain, That I Was The Most Important Thing In Creation. There Was Nothing That Was More Important To Me Than I Was.

There Are Stories That Are True, In Which Each Individual's Tale Is Unique And Tragic, And The Worst Of The Tragedy Is That We Have Heard It Before, And We Cannot Allow Ourselves To Feel It To Deeply. We Build A Shell Around It Like An Oyster Dealing With A Painful Particle Of Grit, Coating It With Smooth Pearl Layers In Order To Cope. This Is How We Walk And Talk And Function, Day In, Day Out, Immune To Others' Pain And Loss. If It Were To Touch Us It Would Cripple Us Or Make Saints Of Us; But, For The Most Part, It Does Not Touch Us. We Cannot Allow It To.

You Must Have A Bladder Like Lake Erie. I Think Empires Rose And Fell In The Time It Took You To Pee. I Could Hear It The Whole Time." Thank You. Do You Want Something?

Hearts May Break, But Hearts Are The Toughest Of Muscles, Able To Pump For A Lifetime, Seventy Times A Minute, And Scarcely Falter Along The Way. Even Dreams, The Most Delicate And Intangible Of Things, Can Prove Remarkably Difficult To Kill.

I'd Love To Think That People In The Future Would Gather In Theatres, At Conventions, And In Darkened Rooms, And Read It Out To Each Other.