Mirth

So there I stood, a pile of brightly coloured envelopes in hand. All of these were in my mailbox. All of these were addressed to me.

"How very odd." I enunciated carefully as Hamlet looked on.

Hamlet had that look about him, that look that told him that he knew that I was standing en pointe on that line between Public Sanity and the neurotic/cathartic breakdown.

"Well!" I continued with a frightening sense of cheer in my voice. "Let's go back to my room! Yes! Let's do that."

Hamlet nodded: this was familiar, the strange propriety, the rambling...

My room seemed larger for some unfathomable reason. There was something magnanimous in the air. As I breathed it in, it burnt and was caught in my throat.

"Why..." I pronounced, my words gelatinous.
As Hamlet proceeded to calm me down, I begged him to leave. To leave, because I thought I was going to cry...O God! I couldn't possibly cry here! I never have! Not even when I moved away from the Eternal City! But that THING that was caught in my throat was debilitating me! I had to do it, I had to...cry.

Hamlet (bless him) is a gem, and so he left me to exorcise my insecurities.

I was alone. In my big room. The Thing in my throat squeezed tighter, and I gasped loudly. The rains came then, the dessicated fields of my eyes were a-flood, and it. felt. so. good. I was trembling tremulously, the kind of trembling that accompanies an object on the verge of explosion. I gripped the side of my desk, and I made out the colourful envelopes through the teary haze that obscured my vision. The pleasant shower amped itself up to a tempest, and by God, it was the most alive I have felt in a long, long, long time.

If you imagine things the way I do, then imagine this: a foreign kid of average build, weeping piteously as 'Never say Never' by The Fray plays in the background...It was very 'Grey's Anatomy'!

As beautifully tempestuous as that was, it was now time to compose myself: I washed my face, applied cooled Earl Grey tea-bags to my eyes, moisturised, refreshed my perfume, readjusted my scarf, made myself some coffee, grabbed a few Lindt bonbons and sat down to read my mail.

There is an infectious mirth about those cards: almost the entire RA staff wrote how much they valued me, how much they enjoyed having me amidst them. I laughed at their witticisms, in my mind I hugged every single one who had taken the time and the trouble to write to me. Such kindness, so much more than I deserve...

That very afternoon, my therapist, Dick Diver II, had asked me if I had ever been truly, truly happy. I said that I had come close, but every time a foreboding sense of 'oh-this-is-going-to-end-soon' spoilt it for me. But this was different: for once in my overly analytical, worryingly neurotic existence, I was truly, truly happy: it was an invincible happiness, and for that one moment, the world was mine.

One of my R.A. friends, also a part of the project, told me that my gracious Lord Kengleson had facilitated the whole thing. I struggled with myself: I wanted to go thank him, but I was afraid I'd break down again. Who needs that kind of drama? I went up to his door three times in an hour, and each time I came back trembling, on the verge of fresh tears. Finally, I did make it up there and gave him the warmest, tightest hug I could muster. He kept saying that it was no big deal, he kept reducing the fact that he had gone around campus to the different buildings to collect the mail to a mere trifle, but he shall always have my everlasting gratitude. You see, it gets very cold here in this Spitsbergen, and Lord Kengleson has given me my own private sun...

Until the next time,
GossipGuy!