Owen had a bad sense of direction. And a bad sense of time as well. No matter how many times I tried to trick him, he was never on time. But I was alright with that. I enjoyed quilting him into buying me gingerbread cookies.
Don't you ever get tired of them, he asked.
In the middle of a park where students lied to themselves, thinking they could study in the grass with immense concentration, were Owen and I, sitting and staring straight ahead. I was munching on the cookies that Owen had already bought for me on his way there because he knew he was going to be late for my class's modest exhibition.
No, I told him.
Owen sighed.
Do they mean so much, he asked.
He was too bright. It was refreshing and annoying at the same time. As if I was angry that it occurred to him and relieved that I didn't have to tell him.
Yes.
Owen hummed in interest. And I continued:
They remind me of love.
He looked at me puzzlingly. As of to observe in my features the words he wanted to tell me. He was not surprised by my answer which concerned me. I wanted to know what he saw-
You know what I think, he asked.
Does it matter, I asked back.
It didn't. Owen ignored me.
Even though you are all alone all the time, you are the most feeling person I have ever met, he told me.
It surprised me... what he said. There were few moments in my life when I had been thinking about how I might look to others. I may have cared too little to wonder or rather I understood too little about myself and others that I have ignored the question.
Do I seem like someone who does not feel much, I asked.
Not anymore, he said.
I wanted him to tell the truth. I did not believe him. But could I handle the truth?
We were silent and I was there in my head. All alone and I realised perhaps that is why I seem so emotionless. To Owen that first day we met, to my elementary classmates who feared me and to the high-school students who were one step away from bullying me. I was always in my head because it was the only place I knew. I was afraid of the outside world and the darkness I carried inside. I never dared to show it to the world, not realising without those shadows in my soul there is nothing to show.
I do feel a lot.
This time Owen only listened.
I have many thoughts to share. But frowning, smiling or talking to the outside is too intimate for me. I can't decide if people hate me or love me for my thoughts. I can't see it in their faces or their gestures. I've never felt the desire to live outside my head.
This confession was in itself the very violation of those principles. But Owen was a friend. And I knew if he judged me, he would say so. I didn't even have to look at him.
There is nothing wrong with living in your head, M, Owen said.
Isn't there, I asked.
Sometimes the best things life has to offer are not in the world we occupy but in the world we create, he said.
I suppose he was right. But sometimes when you create a world in your head... you soon realise you are the only one in it.
I do feel, I said again.
I believe you, said Owen.
We stared at the painted drawing of a mossy forest and the shadows between its trees.
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