3 June, 1997

I like being alone. The silence of an empty room. Writing sentence fragments without anyone looking over my shoulder. Suddenly bursting into song because there's no-one here to laugh at me. Talking to myself because I always understand. I don't have to be anything, anyone. I am nothing when I'm alone, and it suits me quite nicely.

Manly Man insists it's because I'm an only child. He tells me I'm selfish, detached, critical, brooding. He the youngest of five, though. What the hell does he think he knows? And, besides that, by his logic, I'd have preferred being alone all my life, but I haven't. I haven't always been this way. I didn't hatch from an egg on Neptune yesterday, fully grown and set of personality.

And my step-father's voice rises up in my throat. "You ignorant, arrogant, controlling little prick. Run along, now. You're irritating me."

_{(but i never say it)}

I set my alarm to go off twenty minutes earlier than I needed to get up. My newly appointed position as girls' dorm monitor carried with it a string of responsibilities. Among them was the task of getting up and showering early so that I could wake the other girls, make sure they showered and did their chores. Really, it meant adding 10 minutes to my day. And I'd done it that way, gotten up just 10 minutes earlier than before, and rushed through a shower, rushed to wake them, rushed their chores. Rushed. And all that day, I'd gotten no break from the madness of other people's voices swirling around me, other people's thoughts churning in my head, other people invading my space. The next morning, I set the alarm back.

Standing barefoot on the icy marble floor of our dorm, I liked to think I was "stealing time." Looking over the sleeping forms as I passed their beds, I thought that I had something in that moment that they never got anymore. Alone. To do as I pleased, as my mind and body willed. To control my time. Long before Stephen King wrote The Langoliers, I existed in a half-world where time had stopped all around me, yet I remained animated. Every morning.

I was a Langolier. A wee beastie, my life experienced to its fullest and greatest extent when I plucked myself from the collective reality of everyone else's day. I existed while they dreamt, in their dreams. In a handful of minutes that they'd never remember. The real me. And once they awoke, once time caught up, that me was gone.

The simplest, most mundane of activities became my joys. Sitting on the pot first thing, not having anyone bang on the door that they needed in, relishing the thought that no-one would know I'd been there. Shuffling, grimacing, selecting clothes and shrugging into them without anyone pestering me with the incessant questions: "Are you okay? Do you feel well? Why are you wearing black?" Sitting on the porch and having that first cigarette, as I looked out over the dew-laden grapevines. Feeling however I wanted about it, and not having to consider that someone else thought it might be shaping up into a lovely day, or an ugly day.

All things have their price. The sin of stealing time is no exception.

Not long after I came home from The School, I began getting stuck in my half-world. Sometimes, I am the one for whom time has stopped, and everyone else is animated. That, though, is not being alone. That is adjusting my karma, repaying my debt to the keeper of the clocks. Its name is Lonely, and has a different entry in the dictionary for a reason.

Alone. Lonely. Sometimes both. Doesn't matter. Neither has anything to do with the number of siblings I have.

I think there was more to this, but I'm tired now.