Prologue: Time

To cling, Clingy. Clinginess.

cling·y

   [kling-ee] 

–adjective,cling·i·er, cling·i·est.

apt to cling; adhesive or tenacious

 

These are words I hate, words that slide reluctantly from my tongue like black, thick oil, choking off my air passages in the process, and filling my heart with dread. I despise and reject all of the other words that they themselves summon; words like need and want and own. There is no more wretched a label that I can place on any person or thing than clingy.

Despite all of this, I have been clinging. I have been clinging like a shipwreck to a piece of driftwood, with all of the earnestness and twice the desperation. I have been exhausting all of my energies into just holding on.

I am sure that anyone who knows a thing or two about anything could have told me that life was not some shard of broken driftwood that can be desperately held onto with grim determination and a heavy vice grip. If I had only known how to ask the right questions, I could have perhaps been spared an awful lot of trouble. Maybe if I had known the right sorts of questions I would already have my answers. And if not, then how could anyone possibly hope to articulate them to me though spoken words.

No, these things take time.