The thought of her can become the drain into which the weakest, meanest parts of you slowly feed your strength, your ambitions, your purpose, until it feels like there's nothing left in your soul but regret. Or the opposite.

Then she walked away. And that's the way it was always going to be, in the end - for if people were rain, I was a drizzle and she was a hurricane.

Let's get some narrative, here.

The funny thing about success is - the funny thing -
My plastic earbuds bounce off the laptop. Its screen glows with a paragraph and a half of self-centered drivel, my concentration playlist, and the accusatory time and date. Late. Overdue. I did promise I would be done.

The funny thing about success is that you don't know what it is even when you have it. Except it's not funny at all. People treat you differently, people you thought you knew, people you did know but don't know anymore, maybe. There was a this boy who lived upstairs from me - tall, taller than me, which is hard to find in a man - and yesterday we finally talked.

And I was nervous because, you know, I get nervous in situations like this. Nervous is a normal thing for a girl to be. In fact, if a girl wasn't nervous talking to a boy she liked then I, for one, would say that something was wrong, and that she should maybe spend less time flirting with boys or something. Not that I'm judging, much.

Anyway, we finally talked. <Hey, so...>
<Hey!>
<Yeah, uh, I actually saw you online! That's - >
<Oh, ha.. >
< - that's so cool. That you're, like, famous, I mean. Mind if I take your picture? >
This last said like <mind-iffeye-taykyer-pitcher?> and a cell phone camera's bulbous eye already in my face.
<Oh, sure> I say as he walks away, a lingering <Thanks!> drooping in the air behind him