Incognito Strength
Looking around the festive hall, we gather like swarms of locust around her, dwarfed by the amber-lit high ceiling vestibule and the brassy chandelier. I do not know if everyone who wished her merry years, or whisked her to a dance onstage with one of the eighteen roses, or gave her treasures she was meant to keep for the rest of her life truly made her evening, but she looked happy. That was 15 years ago. She probably does not recall as much of the details as I do, that is if I even really do. From an era where debutante balls perfuse social dictates, it is almost hard to tell which one is from the other. But why do I remember hers? The next bit is probably as new to her as it is to you, because I never got around to telling her, but that was the night I said yes to the man I would marry eight years later. Now that marriage may have been short lived, but my friendship with her thankfully eluded the temporal nature of constant companionship.
People do not see Kath and I walk around the campus , elbows locked as we galavant through the halls, or share late-night shots in bar tables in our college uniforms, or go to rock concerts hours before midterms, burning lungs instead of eyebrows. No, they did not. I did those nonsensical youthful prances with some others, while Kathleen spent the turbid years quietly, outside the prying eyes of social judgment. Or did she?
This is Kathleen now. In the last two decades I have known her, I see the child behind the curious eyes, the woman behind the regal smile, and the soul behind the pained but strong tears she does not show she cry. Of all the many friends I have kept and those who have kept me, Kath is one whose connection I have with, I daresay, is transcendentally cosmic, or just probably odd. Absent of daily chats or naughty memories or shared lifelong dreams, ours is one that is a category on its own. One that makes me send her a message when I feel that she needs it, and one that makes her endearingly welcome me when I am just being sociably pesky.
Because this is Kathleen. Like the people whose imagined existence are now as tangible as the pages of Antiserum, its readers bear very real narratives of very real lives. Like she holds the book in her hands, Kathleen is a breathing character whose agonies and victories inspire the words, evoke the emotions, and create the humanity behind the fictional story. Like how you read this publication, families and cities and nations will know the genuine tribulations of your world, for the made-up names tell your story, the ones no longer waiting to be heard.
I also write this to tell you something else. Outside of the words that I try to keep lightly is the strong message that I am a bit of my friend, Kath, as I feel she is a bit of me. I identify with her inner conflicts, personal wars, and human heartaches, and if you have someone in your life like that, please remember to drop her, him, all of them, a line. One day, it may just be more than that.
Penned by Zane