Gone With The Wind

In the last year of my life I rarely left my bedroom. My heart had been broken twice by then. Or should I say, my soul broke into thousands of pieces, twice. And also by then, I had learned too much about the nature of human beings, and that drove me to a despair from which there was no return. No I didn't commit suicide. But despite all the horror surrounding my departure from this world, I must say it was a merciful killing.

Timmy would visit me in my bedroom most nights. We would sit on the floor and light a candle, and he would tell me fanciful romantic stories about the outside world. Just before dawn he would go back home. Sometimes he would fall asleep on my round black shaggy rug. And I would sit still and stare at his long sad eyelashes and count the sweet risings of his chest as he floated in the comfort of sleep.

I would try and sleep through the days. The energy of the sun was too much for me. Mom and Daddy were worried sick, and tried their best to coax me back to life. But after six months they gave up and just made sure I ate and bathed every day. Mom would come into my room just before she went to bed and stroke my forehead and call me sweetheart. The torment in her eyes was killing me, but that guilt wasn't enough to snap me out of my despondence.

When I was eight years old, Timmy's Mom took us to to see Gone With The Wind at Clark's Cinema. Timmy was completely taken by Scarlett O'Hara, and wanted to be known thenceforth as Scarlett. I obliged, but when we were in public, I called him O'Hara so he wouldn't get bullied anymore than he already was. He would practice swooning, but after the twenty-seventh swoon, I was completely over it. Timmy was so repetitive and obsessive. But if you love your friends you have to love their neuroses too, so I kept quiet about my irritation. He'd swoon over beautiful things, loud noises and racy gossip.

I don't know why he identified with Scarlett, he didn't have a manipulative bone in his body. Timmy was Ashley Wilkes through and through. But I guess we are always attracted to the opposite of what we are. Or to what is buried so deep inside of us, that it never sees the light of day.