Sometimes, I think i'm invisible. Well, maybe not invisible so much as kinda...utterly and completely useless. Or maybe it's not that I--specifically--am useless. Maybe it's more like the world makes so little sense that responding to anything at all--any kind of protest, you know, or action or resistance--is totally pointless. I mean, thousands of years ago, we used to have rituals to remind us that life was sacred and divine. Ordained ceremonies sprinkled throughout the day just to awaken a sence of curiosity and reverence. Now it's like if we do have rituals at all, they're just mind-numbing and distracting. They're meant to turn us away from contemplation of the mysteries of life so we can spend all of our energy on trying to make money or getting someone to have sex with us. Why pay attention when everything's totally out of your control anyway? Why worry about where your mother is when there's this very REAL threat of cavities and gingivitis to fight? I guess part of my problem too, is that I've never had a good sense of what was "REAL". Like, how is it that a story isn't real when it's maybe something that someone has spent years of their life working on, pouring their heart into...but a customer satisfaction survey that never leaves the building--never changes anything and just gets crammed into a database to get manipulated into a string of statistics no one can read--THAT'S COMPLETELY "REAL"? Or, like, why am I concidered a woman just because of this totally temporary body that will get buried and rot up into non-existence someday...when every voice in my head tell sme that women are unreliable, and...and flighty...and if you want to leave any mark on the world, you've gotta be a...[logs onto guild chat room as a new user--a paladin named Sir Guilliame] The best thing about online role playing is that, without ever knowing your real name, everyone in your guild knows your true self. There's no confusion about your identity or your right to be there...you're expected and included. You have a role. There are no slights, no strangers, and no awkward silences. I think when someone offers you to let you into their storyline, you should try to play. So what if I don't go to work anymore? I'm immersed in a romance, a coming of age tale. There's a girl in the midwest who feels like a prom queen now. She gets flowers from her boyfriend "Mel". And she sends him ties. And she never for one second doubts his sincerity. He is sincere. I make sure of it. And it's better than real...it's her dream coming true. And mine too. Maybe, I mean, who would wanna be a cheerleader when you could be the high school quarterback? Who would wanna be Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink when you would be Tom Cruise in All the Right Moves. Who would wanna be the damsel in distress when you can be the knight in shining armor? I no longer think it's just a matter of people not caring who you really are. I think we don't even know who to be who we really are. When you let strangers meet in the electric-heated dark of cyberspace, they describe themselves as wizards and knights and vampires and princesses. We're all gorgeous and immortal and tragic and munificent and brave. Meet us in the cold light of day and we're rude and self-involved and distracted and weak. But what does it mean that we carry these other, stories, these other identities aroud inside of ourselves? At the end of the day, does that make us better for what we aspire to, or more pathetic for our delusions of grandeur? That I can hold on to something as beautiful as Guilliame in my heart--surely that MEANS something. Either that I'm capable of this extraordinary passion and valor...or that my heart is full of nothing but fiction. I can no longer tell if there's something wrong with the world, or if there's something wrong with me. Or, if it makes any difference. Maybe it's a good match--insanity in an insane world. Or maybe that's just what all crazy people tell themselves. People always say that you have to learn to love yourself before you can love anyone else. I think I loved myself once. I think I remember being a little girl and just--talking to trees and the moon and the froth at the edge of the ocean and feeling perfectly at home in the world. And I don't know when it stopped. I don't remember any particular thing happening unless it was something dumb like starting to bleed every month or learning to access myself in terms of grades, test scores, and earning potential. I just know that the self-loathing is acute now, complete. A hot, heavy, active disgust that burns my lungs everytime I breathe. I seethe with it. I live off the heat. And yet--! I found something. Someone. I found someone beautiful. I have this...this boy inside of me, and he's...resplendent. And he's mine. He's me. A me I could love. A me I could love with--love from--love as. Except that no one can see him. It occurs to me on I-10 that the problem isn't that people are inherently evil or even innately asinine. It's not that everybody's out to get you or even that we're all sheep who can't wait to be told what to do and feel and buy. The problem is that we hear our thoughts inside our own heads and keep thinking that we need to share them to be known. The problem is that we panic everytime we hear the echo, convinced that we're forever isolated in our own thick skulls. The problem is that we're all dying of loneliness. Which means we're all equally desperate to connect. Here's the thing--the curse and the blessing. You can't run away, and you can't kill dragons and you can't diss the damsel in distress. Because there's nowhere to go and the dragons and the princesses and the knights and the trolls--as dangerous as they may be--they're all yours. They're all you. You can go wildly off course, you can fail to read between the lines, you can even try to relegate yourself to a supporting character role--but you can't leave the story...I used to think that there were only four or five characters in anyone's life at any given time, and they all kinda traded masks. That's why you're always surprised by the shape-shifting: finding out your best friend is your worst enemy, or your boyfriend is your father, or you've become your mother. But now I think, as angry, and ashamed and grossed out as it makes me, we are all the same thing. The same entity. Reflections in some giant multifaced crystal. And at any given moment, you know, there are all these stories. Your story and the story of the stranger next to you and the story of an individual suitcase and the story of humanity and planet Earth and of life itself. And you don't have to love yourself every second of every day, or love all of humanity, or even uncritically trust and adore every mystery of the universe. You just have to love the stories.