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Hollow-Holler

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2004-02-06 - 10:02 p.m.

I have spent this day doubting my character, and dredging up negative vibes and hate-affirming interactions. Despite, I trust that I am not the ruthless mountain goat that I have believed I am, in on and off bouts today.

There are certain tender vignettes that I will never forget.

I know I am five years old because it is in the house on Ada before Noah was alive. Lindsey and I are seated at the table across from Jeremy and Elijah. We are having insult wars, the topic being why it is that girls are better than boys and vice versa. I declare that females are better than males, because the word male could also mean the mail that you get in the mail box. I immediately recognize this as the lamest of come-backs, and I want to shrink, but my sister looks me earnestly in the face and tells me that I am the smartest girl in the world.

When Lindsey went through her angsty teen years, she acted as if she couldn't stand me. I read her journal once though, and a page was devoted to me. How much she loved and respected the girl that I was at 10. I was stirred, and one tear fell on that page smearing the ink, which I was sure would come back to haunt me. If she knew that I had read it, she never mentioned it.

This summer I called my sister from Anacortes, WA. Who was I to turn to, because jaman had showed up with his new girlfriend at this shipwreck day festival. I wanted nobody more than her, and she quietly consoled me that she is quite sure that he recognizes that I am the most beautiful person he has ever known, and that he must be quietly regretting. I recognize this as a slew of lies from the sweetest of hearts, but she tells me that she means with severe sincerity every word she speaks. She thinks this much of me, and if at least it is not true, I try my mightiest to feel worthy of this ladies esteem.

Today while I spent time with Lily, she kept repeating: "I don't like people, I like Rachie. I don't like people, I like Rachie." In the calmest, and most matter of fact manners. Lindsey says that she had been saying it all day yesterday after I called and said I planned on visiting the next day. I figure that Lily has somehow seperated me from the human race. As in: People? Nah, don't care for them. But Rachel? Top Notch. Either way I take it as the loftiest of accolades. She feeds on her Mother's lavendar aura. It is true that I will eternally associate this color with my sister. Ever time I set about to make her something it's always "It's got to be a delicate lavendar hue."

I will never forget the day I totalled the Hobson's car. The children were being attended to by accomodating gas station attendants, who gave them candy and soda. I was still in driver's position, seated at the wheel, my sobbing sorry form hunched over the column. I was hurt, but not too much. it was for Marianne, this lady who I had found I had such a heart-bursting love for, that I was shedding tears. I was such an irresponsible wretch, I had endangered the lives of the people she loved most in this world, and I had added stress to her already overwhelming existence as a professor and mother. When she showed up to the scene of the accident, it was not her children that she rushed to, but me. She took my shoulders and embraced me and told me that she loved me, and that she thought I was a wonderful nanny still, all the same. She had tears in her eyes, too. Tears for this girl here, who she knew would be torturing herself to a state of anguish unparelled. I don't think that i've ever been touched so intensely. She had every reason to treat me with flippancy and cluck over her already soothed brood. We hardly even knew each other. Intense empathy was flowing out our pores, one for the other.

I was once sitting on the floor with my back to the sofa, and my mother was seated behind me. She said something, I don't remember what, and I turned to look at her her. she stopped still and practically gasped "look at that face." with no feigned outburst of emotion, but rather a sigh of sorts, and she cupped my chin in her hands and we looked at each other, my cheeks red hot with emotion at being addressed in such a way.

Elijah once found me in my bedroom dazed and bloodily bruised because I had bludgeoned my temple against the semi-dull metal corner of the chest that lie at the end of my bed too many times in a trance-like dance to the rhythmn of some music that is made for wallowing in misery. I was 15 years old, and at this point our age and sex difference had kept us from communicating in the ways that I had wished for us. We never said that we loved each other, and we had only a bantering type repoir. when he found me this way, he took me by the shoulders and said my name. I saw that he was deeply troubled, and I told him that I was tired because it seemed a reasonable explanation for my state. he said "no, Rachael. Do you even know what I would do without you?"

revealing a vulnerable love that I had thought had been only mine un-reciprocated.

There is more that I would like to recall in order that I may remember that I am loved by the people who matter the most, but I find it striking at the moment that most of the instances I have cited deal in a physical touch and face to face/eye to eye communication. Also, these more notable dialouges find me in a state where I am either dumb-founded, or limp, or un-responsive, or sobbing. this must be the way to cut me deep.

Hold my shoulders, find my eyes, and silence me with soothe sayings.

at your feet.