it feels good to be

Alive! And healthy, finally, after four long, long weeks of disease and weakness and self-pity. Free at last to do whatever it is I do, that is, nothing important.

I feel like fasting forever. I feel like running around and going to school and reading for hours. It's been so long since I've felt like doing anything at all. Just for the sake of doing it.

On days like these I'm just invincible. Nothing can stop me unless I let it. Even when every plane of my existence is crumbling at the edges, I can prance around like it isn't happening because no one really knows and I don't really care.

I want to go some place new. I'm suffocating again. There are too many people in my life, but it's mine, so get out, get out, GET OUT! Away with you all. Let me read and breathe and be. Let me laugh because everything you think you know is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Amaris Starshine, your name says it all. You were meant to shine, and you do. But if you hide in a forest forever, you will grow dim and ordinary. And what shame it would be for all those with whom you could have crossed paths... We love who you are. With all our heart.

Maybe we shouldn't be disappearing. Maybe we should be growing brighter, our minds exalted at the expense of our shrinking bodies! For everyone else to see and love and fear.

"Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out."