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want it, the outsiders looked to me for leadership in hard times because of the things I had done
before, and because of this, the rest of Gary's life was in my hands. Metaphorically.

By the time I get back home, the world had begun its day. Cars on the street, people and their dogs
on the sidewalks. School buses eating children one by one as their parents watch with that
distasteful smile and that redundant wave goodbye.

I wish someone could give me mathematic or scientific formulas to apply to these things that I see
so I could figure out why people are always smiling when there are few things to smile about in
life. Maybe I don't understand because I don't smile enough myself. Maybe I don't have the right
people in my life who can tell me why smiling is so popular or important. People do it all over the
world. It's one of the few words that share the same meaning in the perception of a civilian versus
the perception of an outsider.

Why do these human tendencies plague me so much. No question mark. I accepted who I am a
long time ago, but I'm starting to think that maybe accepting who you are and knowing you are this
way simply because you are this way and you might never change may be the first sign that you
should not accept yourself. That is, of course, only if you despise the pain you receive for being
this way. Some people don't.

Chapter 45:
BLOODTHINNER

You can keep pretending to live these lives that are not yours, believe you are these people that you
are not, but the fact of the matter is your dreams will not save you. They will not fulfill your desire
to live. These are the words of a therapist I was suggested to see many years ago. "Everything is an
illusion." Those are the last words of a woman before her execution.

Depending on who you ask, dreams may be many things, which is why it is almost pointless to
ultimately define them. This notion that a certain thing may mean one thing to you while it means
something completely different to me does not only apply to dreams but to many other things. You
know this because you've been in at least one debate or argument in your life.

The therapist doesn't tell me what dreams are, but he does tell me what they are not. Of all the
sentences he's said to me, the ones I've previously mentioned were the only ones that stayed with
me. Even though I chose to argue with him, even though that was my last visit, in the end I knew he
was right. "Your dreams will not save you."

Never "my" therapist, using such a pronoun would implicate my submission to the idea that I
actually needed to see one. I never agreed with Maria, but I did it for her. Instead, I often use the
definite article "the" when referring to him. The therapist. Just another proper nounless character in
a story within a story. The aim with the whole therapist idea was to help me more easily and
socially express myself, to not seem so indifferent on every subject and so cold to the people who
loved me. To escape the stoicism.

My question then was, how can I function in a society that is constantly clotting my blood. A
society that all too often disappoints; where the stories of redemption are much too few and too far