Perhaps an overdone idea.

Dearest Juliet

That’s what we’d agreed to, right Juliet ? Or was it Julius? I do miss calling you by your first name. Given the circumstances, I suppose it’s understandable. Either way, I’m sorry it’s taken so long to send this. I’m sorry I missed our train, and I’m sorry it took me this long to discover your current location. And I’m very sorry that by the time this letter reaches that sweaty, dry, dusty temporary home of yours you’ll be gone. Could you even call it a home? Do you even have a home? Has the entire empty little world become your home? If you were here, I know what you’d say. I know you’d smile that half smile, your cat eyes narrowing and your lithe body curling into my arms. “This is my home,” you’d sigh. And it is. It always has been. It always will be.

Do forgive me. I know how you hate such sentimental talk. I suppose I’ll get straight to the point, then. Things have gone a little awry in your absence. We can’t seem to keep organized without you to guide us. The other day, I found Jeremiah in the study with an old looking glass, reading the pages of a book reflected in it. Evidently, he took a few of your old notes rather literally. I wish you had been here to see it. The kitchen is an absolute wreck. Most of what is cooked is burnt or undercooked or something in between that still just isn’t quite right. These blackened pots are missing you about as much as we are.

But I do have good news, my dear. The date has been set for the nineteenth of Octorbre. Recognize that date? Yes, our anniversary. Well, it was just unofficial at that point, but still.. it is the earliest day of our togetherness and as such I hold it quite close to my heart. Or, more specifically, I hold it in my breast pocket behind the pocket square. You know what I am talking about. Damn these codes. Of all the people for me to love, did it have to be you? Stealing my heart had to have been the easiest thing you’d stolen over these years. Which reminds me, please send the packages to the warehouse from now on. This home is getting rather cluttered and I daresay Jeremiah and Francois had nearly broken most of the more fragile (and exquisitely rare) pieces. I would hate to have you think it was all for nothing when you get back and your collection is in ruins.

I will cut this short now. These damned guests of yours have been in and out all day, bustling with news of this and that and cluttering up the place. If we weren’t already under watch, we certainly would be now with the suspicious crew you’ve gathered for us. It really makes me wonder, the sort you associate with. Wonder and fear. You wretched thing, you had better return in one piece.

Come home soon. You know where it is.

Romeo

The letter was clenched in my hands and a quick examination revealed the digits were, indeed, stained with the black ink from the pen I’d shakily used to address the letter. It was only a short note. Well, compared to the others. An excuse to get away, pushing past men with gold monocles and women in their furs. I half-nodded to the constable, watched him give me a once over before returning to his post outside of his car. Outside of my home. Damn. Damn damn damn. I could only hope Jeremiah and Francois had the whole thing under control. One slip, a glance backwards showed the constable with his binoculars, and it was all for naught. But, oh, we were trying. We were most definitely trying.

My shoes slap against the rough stone streets. It’s different out here. Here, the people aren’t decked in ‘missing’ jewels or clothed in the skin and fur of animals both endangered and undiscovered.. or generally thought of as ‘untouchable’. In the Emporium, we cater to one and all. Anything your heart could desire. It’s there, on our shelves in our little shoppe disguised as a home. A large home, antique and falling apart, but a home nonetheless. There aren’t many who live there, just myself and my love and our two shoppe boys. It’s easier to keep the secrets that way. If the Emporium were to be breached, it is not just we who would fall. Francois keeps a very accurate guide to all of the items and to whom they disappear to.

I stop to adjust my top hat in the restaurants window, ignoring the looks from the patrons as I slide it into a more proper place, pushing my glasses up higher onto my nose. I always look so frantic when you are gone. I think that, more than anything, tips them off to our going-ons. Or, maybe, just to the fact we have goings-on at all. They would never, not in a million years expect that Alfred Bodley, the fifth, would be involved with anything too torrential without any sort of tip off. No, never. All of the Bodleys, including the Alfreds prior to myself, were quiet, tall, thin and frail looking men with soft blonde hair that often went prematurely grey. We’re a very nervous, gaunt looking bunch who walked quickly and kept our nose out of gossip and drama. Quiet, nervous, the appearance of one of those light posts in the middle of the night. All of this is in my genetics, as it will be in the Bodleys after myself.

All of the previous Alfred’s had been bookkeepers. It was supposed to be my lot in life, too. It still is. I do keep the books. I just keep other things, as well. Dangerous things, illegal things. Horrifying and rare things. Special deliveries and special requests for common place things that had to be made out of much less common items. A necklace to be fashioned with the eye of an Iberian Lynx, papyrus scrolls from ancient Egypt that supposedly hold the secret of the meaning of life, bags and shoes and jackets fashioned with leather of human skin, water from the rumored ‘fountain of youth‘. Things that do not look extraordinary, but, oh, they are.

It isn’t always requests to bring things back. Sometimes, we are sent to do things. Drop a penny into the original, true ‘wishing well’ and make the wish for that person, scatter ashes out in some far off area, find out if something or someone still exists. Some people don’t want to have things, they just want to know things. That is where you come in, my love. You travel this earth, know everyone on it. You steal if you must, haggle and bet on the others. If we are paid in advance, that is used to buy whatever was requested, or used to travel to whoever we might have you go in order to fetch it. A cursed scarab from a mummy’s tomb, Atlantian gold, paintings from civilizations long since past. You’ve found it all. Some people barely believe it, come in as a joke and expect us to fashion what they might expect. But I know you. I know you and I know what you give to them is never a lie. But if that is what they believe, the object become one of our collection pieces until someone else needing one comes along. Saves you a trip, in the end.

Shaking hands deposit the yellowed envelope into the postbox. I was to come along on this one. It was an anniversary gift. We were to go on ‘vacation’. It was going to be exotic and fascinating for me. You were just happy I’d come along with you on one of your trips. I am always home, you say. I am always home and I have experienced none of this world. You want me to see your world. You could never stand to be in mine. It’s too bookish and dull. You need to stretch and grow and spread out across all of these lands. Amazon one day, Egypt the next. The arctic, the city, the forests and the deserts. Even the sea. They all belong to you. I am content with my somewhat large home, except when it is filled with men with gold monocles and women in their rare furs. That is not my world, not anymore, and I am antsy and more frantic than usual when thrust into it. You would not have me any other way, you said. You love that I am homely and quiet and bookish and too tall and too thin. I am your opposite. Yin and yang.

I miss you far too much.

Far more than I can handle right now.

Leave me alone, I'm lonely.

Christmas.

Maybe it's just the holidays that bring out the absolute worst in me. And by that, I don't mean I am particularly rude or spiteful. What I mean is that the holidays tend to bring out everything in me I particularly dislike. The loneliness, insecurity, hopelessness. Every feeling that rots my insides, leaving me cold and hollow and so damn tired come in for a visit. By Christmas, I am absolute nothingness.

Maybe it's accelerated this year because of the ulcers and stress and insomnia I've faced for a long, long time. Maybe it's because I watched Requiem For a Dream and have since felt like any and every good feeling have been clawed out of me like a wire hanger abortion. I don't know, I really don't. Maybe it's because as my four year old cousin screams and runs about and watched her Christmas cartoons, I sit and read Fight Club and realize the truth of everything. That I am nothing. According to Tyler Durden,

You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.

And it's true. It's true. It's so fucking true Socrates couldn't argue against it. So I sit here, and Lexi sits on the floor taping up her notebook so she can rip the shiny, silvery paper off and imagine it's Christmas already. I think she just wants to scream some more. I think my head is going to explode. It's throbbing, white hot pain building up. All of this Christmas cheer goes straight to my head. Maybe I should just go take another nap, sleep for twelve, thirteen more hours. I don't know. Whatever it takes. I just want to feel alright. I just want to feel better. I just want to be loved.

It was, all in all, a rather eventful morning.

Memorials are quiet places filled with quiet people all wanting to be loud.

And the reverend speaks like a comedian on television, his voice loud and strong as he tells jokes about Jesus and eternal life, but the punchlines aren't funny.

And everyone crawls into themselves, stretching their skin tight until their faces pinch into forced little smiles while her daughter reads off an essay in life too fast, with emotion tucked in her pockets to save for a rainy day.

And half the family cries silently, sitting in front of the rest like animals on display. Look how they break. Look how they fall.

Then we all march up in silence, hugging and shaking hands of a husband who clutches his Kleenex like it will save her soul.The children smile empty little smiles and the ones that don't cry laugh and shake in their black patent shoes, teeth clenched, holding back the flow of angry words as women with fake smiles and forced apologies put themselves on pedestals, acting in front of the crowd like players of a stage.

"Why are you here now when you were never there then?"

And we all walk back to our cars feeling hollow and lonely with the weight of death on out shoulders, distanced from the rest in all of this togetherness, just wanting to close out eyes and sleep.

I am Alex's Shattered Mind

What happens when the insomnia and the anxiety and the stress and the depression all kick in is that suddenly, your whole body feels too big for itself, except all of your organs are all crammed in together real tight, and all of your muscles are twisted into little French braids, delicate and thin and red with bits of blue and white in between where the bone and the veins show through and your heart beats too fast and you can feel it thump-thump-thumping right in your ears and at the roof of your mouth and the palms of your hands, in the tips of your fingers and your toes and pounding at the fat on the insides of your thighs. And while your organs are packed in tight with the little vines of muscle snaring them, there's too much empty space left where the organs should be and your stomach fills it, feeling full and bubbling with the empty, burning sensation that crawls up the back of your throat. Like all of the acid decided to make a break, hunting for an exit from the desolate, dilapidated organ that's shrivled and wrinkled like an old paper bag all tied up in the string that are your muscles.

What happens when the insomnia and the anxiety and the stress and the depression all kick in is your mind goes into overdrive and everything happens too slow but too fast for you to really concentrate, so you find yourself focusing on things without really focusing, your eyes glued to something while your mind goes far away to process all the information while the noise shifts to the back of your mind, behind the thudding in your ears and the acid in your stomach and the aching, dull feeling in your sunken eyes and the caked-on makeup that feels too heavy but society doesn't want to see your face, not really, not if it's imperfect with little scars and angry, red spots and the purple under your eyes and everything just sounds like it's gone underwater and you're swimming in your mind until you realize what your eyes have fixated on is a person and that person is uncomfortable and awkward under your stare because no matter what you do, how much makeup you put on, the distance in your body will show through in the eyes. It makes people uncomfortable to see someone separated from society, even for a moment.

And what happens when the insomnia and the anxiety and the stress and the depression kick in is that your mind and body distance you from society and you feel empty and lonely and broken, like a little wind up toy that was dropped and no longer turns and sings the way it should, like a car with old, broken parts from other cars that nobody wanted that goes around and around but something is always not quite right in it like the heating is broke or the radio sticks or the seat just feels wrong, like nobody should be there, like this car should just be tossed away where nobody should have to see it or deal with it or have anything to do with it because who really wants something broken anyways, even if it get fixed up every morning with it's paint caked-on and it's fenders all shined up.

What happens is at first your feel numb besides the aching and straining of your muscles. Mentally numb, everything is on repeat. Get up, get dressed, get to class, go back to the dorm, go back to class, go back to the dorm, go to dinner, go to bed. Repeat. You're the broken doll turning yourself around, the same note over and over again. And then the note cracks, the doll falters, skips a beat, and your mind cracks open just a sliver, just enough to let the loneliness seep slowly in. Just enough to enlighten you to the situation. And because of the insomnia, it stays all day and all night and fills your skull to the brim and it's all you think about while the stranger in the room beside you twists and turns and sighs and the girl in the hallways sobs and vomits in the bathroom and you wonder what went wrong and suddenly the doll won't turn anymore. You sleep through class. You don't have the effort to eat, the acid churns in your stomach. You start to forget, to lose things. it takes you longer to recognize voices, faces, your own name. People call you time and time again before you notice it's you they're looking at. You feel them looking through you, not at you. You're not there. You're on a different level, distant, alone.

The essay sits undone. You fail one class, two classes, three. Your life feels like it's spiraling. Nothing goes right. Paper cuts on your hands, glass in your fingers, a burn on your face. The acid churns. Your eyes feel so deep in your skull, if you could turn them around you'd see your brain floating in the sea on loneliness, the crack letting light shine in and illuminating the grey tissue. You crack again and it feels like you can never stop crying. Crying makes you so tired. Another crack, it's pouring in like water in the bathtub, not a trickle but the full force. You can't cry anymore, not even if you wanted. It's pouring over the edges now, soaking into every pour, dripping down your face in a sloppy, black mess, coating your skin like filthy and grimy and dust and it's as thick as fat and black as tar and no matter how hard you scrub it's still there, in your hair, your eyes, your blood. You're filthy, human waste, nothing. You don't belong here, but you;re not there anymore. You're gone.

What happens when the little train that is your life falls off the tracks is that the wheels keep turning, but you're going nowhere, just laying on your side, steam pouring out and whistle filling with dirt. Everything rushes by you, moving on with life as you keep going ever onward into nowhere, into nothing, slowly deteriorating. You keep trying. You don't want to let the world take you, to let the mud pull you down into the sinking, stinking pit your life has become. You pull against it. Your wheels keep turning, the gears straining. Everyone else tugs along, following their little paths behind one another. Different tracks, different beliefs, everyone following one another like little lemmings. You want to be them, clean and bright with ideas funneled into you like coal to be burned, to be used to go on. You long sense burnt that up. You don't know who you are, what you believe, where you're going. You're everything and nothing and it's cold and empty and you're tired and the wheels turn slower and slower and you haven't moved an inch and you just want to give up.

That's what happens.

So, what do you do next?