We Are No Better Than You.

We sat in a circle, us again, meeting each other after a long time. Acknowledging each other's presence after a prolonged separation by the hectic and distracting confusion that is life so far.

Missy was hunched over in a defeated pose, her shoulders slumped, her hair limp and lank and bounceless, much like the wilt of her limbs and the downward cast of her eyes. She has had a rough time and the weeks have taken their toll on her. Much so as it had wrung her out like a sponge and hung her out to dry under the rain and the storm before being wrenched from the clothesline by an errant gust of chilly wind only to be dragged back in by the cat and left in a sodden heap on the floor.

"I'm sorry..." she intoned softly, full or remorse and guilt and burden. "I'm so sorry. This is all because of me."

And she was not necessarily wrong. What she did was an inconvenience. A burden and a pain. But somehow, in the fabric of this strange human existence where people feel that to bleed and to feel pain is to feel alive, what she did was also in this strange, nonsensical equation, necessary.

We cannot live without her and she was an essential part of the puzzle. Much as we hate to admit it at times.

Mademoiselle sat in the corner, the black in her hair bold and strong and solid. The firm set of her jaw and her eyes, the flashing of her look as she sat, a presence in an otherwise limpid room. When did she regain her stature? I wondered. It was somewhat an unforeseen though not necessarily undue consequence.

And I as always, sat on my armchair, my legs crossed in a casual and a neutral position. I didn't know what to do, and when I don't know what to do or to think, I always adopt the neutral position.

We sat in heavy, loaded silence. Much has come to pass since and much pain has been brought into the periphery. The room sank under the weight of it as it pressed down and in from all sides like a pressure, making one's eardrums pop as we try to equalize the inside and the outside.

I sighed.

"No Missy. Maybe you are a mistake. Or the sum of all mistakes. But I am a mask. And Mademoiselle is bitterness and anger and fear. We are all broken pieces of the same puzzle. We are no better than you."

Maybe that is why we need each other. Maybe that is why we have each other. Because if each of us on our own is a disaster, then maybe together, we can find some semblance of something that works.