Moving deliberately, each move a postured dance, feeeling sadness press over me. Knowing that whatever I do, I will still be me. Flawed, cracked, and yet so perfect. Perfect only to my eyes, and even then they're shadowed with reality. It's a resentful sort of sadness. . . I am tired of people demanding from me and not giving back, of smoothing my tangled knots of feeling into blanks of serenity. Always, it seems that it's somebody else first, someone more important or beautiful or troubled than I am. I'm fading, not falling, and that's never noticeable enough to seek the problem out and comfort me.

I don't want sympathy or reassuarance. I know that my friends love me, and I know that I'm basically a good person. I want to be told lies that the giver believes are true.

That's the paradox of human need.