Until that day it had never occurred to her that optimism could be cruel, minimizing the suffering of the sufferer, almost like an accusation. Trying in vain to stand strong there in the flood of third person pain, she learned for the first time that sometimes smiling just means you're aloof, cold and blind. Suddenly she was ill-equipped, insufficient for the role she had come to play, the comforter she had been for as long as she could remember. Her face, that panoply of compassionate confidence, became a betrayal of dismay. Her generous abundance became an imploring need, begging sustenance from these pitiful souls with none to give. Weeks later, when she spit out her apology like soured milk at the feet of the survivors, it turned to obvious selfishness before her eyes, a tasteless plying for something from them with nothing left. Her haunting failure was her ordeal and they could not complete it for her. Much later, when guilt turned to unconscious wisdom, she never entered a room again without some fear and respect for the gravity of what might lie within, the other people she had never really noticed before when comforting others was primarily something she did to herself.
Hello, friends. I hope you're well.
Later. Love.
