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This is a story I can’t tell without starting over a hundred times to tell the good parts again.
It was fall. She was scattered bits of who she had once been, with scars to show for every step away from who she thought she would be, one day.
She was lost and she was lonely, and she was a piece of a puzzle that no one understood was being put together, except the Jig Saw Man himself, and he didn’t let anyone else in on his secrets.
It was winter. She was hurting but still managed to plaster on a smile over the fake-real face that actually belonged to her; her dad was an acting major and tricks like faking honesty rub off pretty easily.
She was smart and brave, even though she didn’t like being left alone when the snow was falling so heavily outside that it made the streetlamps look bright.
It was spring. She was on fire, and doing well, and breaking hearts without meaning to, and she was her own person up to a point. That point was where she became someone else, but it was only for an hour at a time, at first, and no one really noticed anyway.
She always liked to pretend that maybe she was someone important in a far off land, but when it came down to it, she was beginning to understand that she was just another heartbeat.
It was summer. She discovered importance and self-worth and someone asked her what it was like to be well and truly alive. She had an answer for him.
She said that being alive began in the fall, when the trees shed their colors like old friends they couldn’t hold onto any longer. She told him about herself, but from a distance, and how she had been lost and lonely, scattered and broken.
He looked at her and said she was still broken, still lost and lonely, but that only the wanderers of the world ever truly can get where they’re going.