Finally…

For the first time she had been recognized for her talents. A quiet, unassuming woman who had been talked down to the majority of her life… She had never known a compliment and when she’d finally received praise, she grasped it tightly within her clutches and would die to protect it’s memory in her heart.

Her work efforts were more intense than ever now.

She painted, painted and painted some more until she developed blisters on her fingers from the stem of the paint brush.

Her love, her passion, her secret work was now driving her more steadily and like a team of bulls pushing a man into a mud pit, she could not stop…

Although her work was no longer entirely secret, it seemed to her that it was only barely exposed to the world, but that tiny bit of exposure was stardom to this woman who had starved for affection, attention and compliments her entire life.

She was not blind, nor was she deaf…. She could see the love displayed from one person to another as she walked down the street and watched other people interact.  She heard the sweet nothings men whispered into the ears of women and the shrills of delight from women experiencing one form of exciting attention or another. She knew there was more to life than was ever directed at her.

Thus, when she had that one moment wherein someone saw her and not only saw her, but appreciated and nearly worshiped her….treated her as an equal or even a superior for the skill of her paintings that they delighted over, she could not help but feast on the moment and later on the memory of what had been so short-lived, but so rapturously provided her.

It was the one meal she would never forget. The meal she would think about when she woke each day….as she worked and as she fell asleep.

Now More Than Ever….

Now more than ever she worried about his sanity. The reflection she was beginning to see was different from any she had ever known of him so truly, but especially was it different from any she had ever imagined could have been directed toward her.

It is difficult to imagine what people who are truly disturbed are capable of when they feel a sense of failure or when they feel a sense of loss.

Although she believed him to be less of a blame spraying sort previously, she now wondered if he didn’t live the majority of his life claiming to himself that others were to blame in one way, shape or form. She began to wonder at every one of the stories he had ever touched upon and how many of those stories were told from a specifically skewed perspective in order to present himself in a different light.

There were many people in the world who lived hidden behind masks and she knew for a fact that in many ways, he was one of them.

She worried diligently about his sanity and his capability for retribution if he felt in any way wronged or harmed, regardless of whether or not there was any truth to his belief system.

Certainly she could see many ways where he might have considered her to be guilty of wronging him, just as she felt toward him, but without malice of any deep sort that would cause her to feel any kind of hatred whatsoever.

She did hate being taken for a fool, but it was okay that she may have because there was much she could learn from the experience and this was a very odd experience indeed that she chose with full knowledge of the risks. She may not have been aware of the risk factors involved in the early stages, but long before the termination finally occurred, she was well aware of the risks involved.

Now she found herself falling briefly into morbid reflection with concern for her safety.

There were some people who it was difficult to know what they were capable of and when one sees such extreme degrees of bravado and fantastical wondering as she had most certainly recently experienced with her ears from this man, it became apparent that the ledge had been jumped off of a long time before she was aware that the ledge was even close.

Now that he felt her to be an enemy of sorts….now that he had derived all sorts of odd illusions about her capabilities….would he think he needed to strike out at her first and cause her harm?  She was not a danger to him….but so often, people who are the least of threats are considered the easiest of targets.

It had become more and more clear with time that she’d never really known him at all. He was a fabulous actor, although unable to allow himself to act in accord with his acting abilities, but that was, perhaps the trick of it all for him.

To land the prize and prove to oneself that they could do it….to show off that prize just enough for the ego boost and then to mock that prize because he himself could never see what a prize he actually was, but rather felt that he had been downtrodden his whole life and so why would he not take advantage of this one with whom he had the opportunity to make a fool of.

He knew her to be intelligent enough to choose to avoid his tactics if she had really wanted to and so in this matter, he felt justified and like a hero of sorts who could not imagine losing and wouldn’t take a loss. Now that the loss had actually occurred, his anger raged and her fear grew.

She would put it all as a distant memory and hope for the best, only enjoying what life she had left to live and hoping that her fantastical imagination was only half as elaborate as his and that in fact she was in no real danger whatsoever. He was much too busy to be concerned with retribution for her.

She must imagine that he would quickly forget her and that she had been sweet enough to him that some part of his consciousness would prevent him from lashing out at her any further…..  Hadn’t she already paid enough of a price for the bad behaviors of others?