The snow-laden trees watch me, uncaring and indifferent, as my world goes up in invisible flames.

We fish around blindly in a pool of seven billion people, hoping one of them isn’t too crazy or too incompatible with us, and we get so desperate that when we find someone we can stand for two minutes we decide to marry them for life, when in reality they’re all wrong for us. But we keep pretending they’re right, until we can’t anymore, and then we divorce them or break up and we get up and try again, and again, and it chips away at our tiny human hearts.

Down the path of self-hate lies untruth

She motions out the window to the humans walking on the lawn. “They judge with their eyes alone. There is nothing wrong with you. There is something very wrong with them.”

I feel hands ghost over my head, my back, shades of unformed comfort. She doesn’t know what to do, but she’s still trying. I wipe the tears away and sniff. “I’m fine. You can go back to sleep.” I expect her to argue, to chime something happy and insist on staying up with me. She drops her hand and glides back to her bed without another word. It’s better than comfort. It’s respect - for my words, for my need to cry in peace, alone and in the dark.