Futility

That day at the church, she knew. She'd never been to churches before, not the traditional ones anyway, the kind you see in the movies or read about in books; where something poignant, romantic, sad, happy thing, or some bloody strong feeling happens to people. But this morning was different.

Redemption and damnation after all are just results of desire. 

Clarity. That's what happened, that's what usually happens when you're recovering from a drug high. Clarity like this make people take a gun and shoot themselves in the head. Or someone else. [No it's not just men who shoot, women do too. It's about accessibility, not gender that makes men shoot themselves, and women to take pills. We'd all like a little privacy for our private actions, so what are women left with at home when the men have taken the guns out to play?]

Anyway, about the epiphany in church. It was when the flowers were to be arranged on the pews for someone's wedding. She knew nothing about  what was to be done. She'd never done it before you see. Never was good at things like this. Arranging flowers, sewing, making polite conversation. All the things that's supposed to come naturally to anyone with half a brain. 

She didn't like flowers. Why anyone in their right mind would like things like flowers, things that are beautiful but stupid to get their heads chopped off and thrown into the bin was beyond her comprehension. But apparently, they make ugly permanent wooden pews look good for an hour of the service. Make a good photograph they do. A masquerade for an uncomfortable evening. Oh they're perfect for funerals. Dead heads on dead heads. That was apt.

But she tried. To be normal. Like her friends. To be with her friends. But then she started sweating. Again. Like when she has to talk to some stranger, or make up a story on the spur of the moment. Whatever she took to get her courage up wasn't working now. She was still nervous, shaking. Loud voices disturb her more than she lets on. She is so good that to the world she doesn't react at all like normal people to sudden sounds. But really her heart has stopped, she knows it. People think she's got a thick skin, but it's neither fight nor flight, just freeze. Then the sweating begins once her heart starts normal mode.

When heat is removed from a superheated gas, the temperature of the gas decreases as it is cooled until it reaches the saturation point. If enough heat is removed after it reaches the saturation, some of the gas will turn back into liquid. 

Remove heat after saturation point. Become liquid. You've got to love physics, it explains everything, don't it?

She realizes there's no getting away from the truth. She leaves without a word to anyone, takes a bus, and 12 hours later is in another city. Just for a day. Meets him. Has lunch. Doesn't touch him. Or him her. He doesn't see her off, but she leaves. Again. 

She didn't want to... she knew it that day among friends, among strangers, in a small chapel that needed beautiful stupid flowers for some strangers' wedding.

She may not have stayed. But she didn't want to leave. That day. And he never knew. 

He never will.