The Value in Nothing Left to Give

   This is a story about a girl who one day woke up to find out that she was suddenly twenty six years old with and husband and a son living in an unfamiliar home full of boxes because they (her and her family that appeared overnight) had just moved in... and truth be told this little girl had always been rather lazy. Looking around her new quarters she quickly realized that not much had changed. Not in regards to her natural tendencies and abilities anyway.

   The night before this shock to the system she had been scrolling endlessly through her ridiculous number of open tabs on her two different browser windows that were simultaneously buzzing out the faint "Choose me! Look at me!" song she had grown so familiar with... when something caught her eye and made her heart sink. A post on some strange social media site or another by an artist she had admired for quite some time. Someone who not just created art but lived it... who had made mention of her upcoming birthday. Her twenty. fifth. birthday. The one that the girl doing the scrolling and browsing and reading had experienced already, the year before. Only one year before. Not two or ten or five... but one felt like more than enough. Because the girl was in fact reading, not writing. On writing she waited. Waited for the right topic or inspiration or input... that same damn trap. Again. A. Gain. How? Why?

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   This is another story. A story about a guy who gives and gives and gives. And gets frustrated. And sometimes says hurtful things without thinking about it... because he cares so much that his heart has to put up barriers to keep itself from exploding in his chest. Who woke up yet another morning to an unsatisfied wife. A sorrowful woman who had in her this radiant light but instead chose to mourn every moment as it passed by. He wondered why she didn't notice that everything they have between the two of them, all the things that she now seemed to despise... he bought because at one point she said she wanted it. Maybe not with words. But with her eyes or a hint of the smile she withheld from him much of the time.

   She began to tell him one night how she was broken, after he had carefully, with every last word he had in him, told her all the things she made clear that she was longing to hear. And instead of rightful disappointment or hurt he reached out and healed her. He forgot for a moment about his walls and he chanced explosion... it was the perfect amount of electricity to jump-start her hardened heart. And though it depleted him for the moment it was a good exhaustion... to finally see her exhilarated over words he didn't think he had. For they had been hiding cleverly behind those heart walls of his. 

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