The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.  –Confucius

Hope…what a cosmic joke, this name her parents had given her at birth! She’d been through the fire, fought so long, and now, sunk so low. Letting her hair down, she eyed the bathtub full of water, the almost empty glass of wine, and the sleeping pills.

Somewhere along the way, she’d gotten caught in all the snares. We all start so raw, she thought. Believing we can change ourselves, change the world. Then the mistakes start happening, and we think we can undo them.

She had carried her burdens, never asking anyone to share them, but hoping nevertheless that someone would offer to. Damn, there is that cursed word again. She was set up for this fall at birth, and now his last words to her took the last bite…

“I told you so.”

She sat there in the darkened room, invisible to her friends. They were too embarrassed to see her any more. Just one step further, she’ll just slip into the tub, and she’ll have fallen, and then they will know, they will see her.

Unless they are right, and she is wrong, and she doesn’t exist.