Chapter 194: Day 193

Day 193,

Can a person be brooding and sentimental at the same time?  I feel like that about describes my current state.

It’s been storming since late last night, probably the last big one of the season.  It suited me well enough as an excuse to keep dragging my heels on going back into town, but it’s left me to stew in my own thoughts.

Maybe it’s because of the recent solstice stuff but I find myself dwelling on the idea of family.  More specifically my lack of one.  Or apparent lack.  For certainly I have no blood ties in this world, and I remember naught of what I had in my past life.  I want to say mine was good and loving, but is that a lingering impression of memory or just wishful thinking?  I can’t shake the feeling that sometime around now, days after the solstice itself was an important date to me in that prior world, but for the life of me I can’t say if it was a birthday, a holiday, an anniversary, or something else altogether.  Just that - among other things - family was a central part of it.

Then again, not all family is by blood or marriage.  Some is by choice or circumstance.  But, how much of that applies to me, really?  The list of people here that I’m close to is actually fairly short.  Pat?  I’m not sure what our relationship is, and while it’s mostly positive I wouldn’t call it familial.  Vernon?  Pleasant as it was, my last encounter with him reminded me how little I really know of him and his personal life, leaving him hovering on the border of “friendly acquaintance” and “friend.”  Cass and her family?  While there’s definitely a closeness there, I don’t think I’ll ever truly feel like one of them.  Always the friendly stray cat, never fully adopted.  Although Cass herself I’ve caught myself thinking of like a surprisingly worldly younger sibling before.  In a similar vein, I’ve come to view Lin as a close enough friend to at times be a bit like an elder sibling with a childish streak.  I can’t say whether those feelings are at all mutual though and I don’t think I could rightly claim anyone as “family” that doesn’t feel the same toward me.

And Maiko?  Out of everyone in this place, she’s probably the closest to qualifying.  She may have been born in this world, but in many ways she’s even more of an “outsider” than me, and I think we’ve both sort of recognized our mutual inherent loneliness and latched onto one another.  Talking to her often feels like talking to myself.  Not in the sense of talking to an empty room with no one else there, but like talking to a copy or another version of myself.  More so than the situational parallels, it’s a matter of cadence and speech patterns.  A propensity for long pauses and short, sometimes reflexively evasive answers.  In case it’s not apparent by now, the way I talk is not the way I write.

Enough of these thoughts for now though.  I fear they may turn  down darker paths if I pursue them too long.

I think I shall step outside to dance once more.  See what the thunder has to say.

 

Finally got Maiko to join me in dancing in the rain.  Too tired to wax poetic recounting the experience though.  I overdid it and collapsed in the mud.  Had to be carried in.  Was worth it though.  Laughed it off as no big deal.  Half because I genuinely felt feel that way, half to put Maiko at ease.  Probably shouldn’t tell Lin about it though unless I want an earful about pushing myself too hard while still recovering.

I expect I’ll sleep well tonight.

 

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