Shelter From The Storm by dvd7936

The year before last I was happy. I do not mean that in the usual way. Not the fleeting sense that at this exact instant, I feel all bubbly and warm inside and I just cannot help but smile. You were near then, but you did not inspire that feeling in me yet. I was content: I was living a hard, but rewarding life which gave me personal satisfaction, the respect of my elders, and everything was buttressed by the love of my peers. I do not know if I was content because I had others respect, or if I was content because I was living a good life, and so others saw this and respected it. Whatever the reasoning, when I look over my life, that is the year in which I smiled the most.

What has changed since then? I still have a difficult, and rewarding life, although a different one than I had before. I have self respect most days. It must be then a supporting structure of arches and columns I lack. In a vain attempt to ignore this fundamental flaw, I push on, throwing myself into my work. I am foolishly hoping that I can hold this roof and these walls up by sheer effort. I have succeeded so far only because I am young enough to bear pain, disciplined enough not to question if my actions are possible, and have been lucky. Ahhh, the beautiful stupidity of youth.

I wonder though, what will this orbit of the Earth look like to me in two years time? Will I recall it all? Struggle is easily forgotten when it becomes routine, and so I consider for a moment that I may never recall my nineteenth year of life at all.

Sometimes it scares me that the instant I loose focus, these walls I hold up day and night threaten to crush me. I find this theoretically troubling. I can go down this line of reasoning no further however, and so I must conclude only that these walls which shelter me from the storm require my full attention and all my strength. So long as I do not venture outside of them, I am safe. Imprisoned, malnourished, and slowly becoming more and more deformed, perhaps, but safe, which is all I can manage alone.

Now that the rain has slackened a bit, and I can see the cracks in my mortar well, I imagine how nicely you would fit into the rapidly expanding network of structural imperfections I see all around me. How your smile would be the perfect grout for this. How your hands could catch the rain that pours through the leak in the roof. How your arms would alleviate the pressure on mine, and finally how your hair might be tied into a rope, which when fastened to that bell high in the tower, could create a makeshift doorbell for our cozy little keep.

What of you? What has become of you since I saw you last? For surely time, which changes every living thing, has not forgotten one so lively as you. From the bits and pieces I gather, you are also struggling to make a home in a hostile environment. I have heard stories of you, both good ones and bad ones. Included in the latter are accounts that, had I heard them in the present tense, would have made me let gravity have its way with all that is mine and fly to your aid. Yet, I cannot and should not do that, and so I must guess at your state from many states away.

I consider briefly if it will help you at all to know you are in my thoughts. I think it might, maybe a little. I object to myself as a new batch of lighting rattles my world; any thought of me is a thought not spent on how to survive your own storms and so is wasted! I cannot wish you to waste even a second thinking on something so distant and of so little import to your personal blueprints. Indeed that is the very heart of it: I cannot in good conscience ask you to change your designs so as to better accommodate mine.

This paradox vexes me more than the tornado I see brewing on the horizon. If I can neither spare the effort to change my plans so as to mesh them with yours, nor morally ask you to do so for me, we are left at an awkward impasse. What is to become of us and our two shacks?

Perhaps when there is a respite in this damnable weather long enough, I will run to you, and we can together consider our options. That is the only feasible possibility of change I can see. I frown at the sky searching desperately for a clear patch that might give me hope. Then again, fate is unpredictable and perhaps the weather will never change. In that case it is we who must reshape our destinies. No matter what creates the circumstances, merging two blueprints into one, let alone actually building such a hybrid, is hard in the best of conditions.

Weather and construction are not our only foes I muse, far from it, time itself whittles away at us. Upon meeting one of us might find time has done away with the person they recall, and the replacement is not to their likening. Maybe change has warped us both to the point where these is nothing left that could bind us together. Or perhaps one of us shall encounter a fine carpenter or mason in the interim and so our plans will be much complicated. This other need not be a superior builder, merely a good and a closer one who can get the job done. I understand this and so resign myself not to feel badly if this is the case.

After much searching I can find no gap in the heavy cloud cover for miles, and so reposition my arms to better withstand the next natural barrage on my house. Either these thoughts will keep until the skies are blue again, or I will know that they were never worth speaking to you at all. Until they dissipate however, I will bite down on them hard, because if only by placebo, I think they will help me get through the cold pain of this winter.