My Greatest Regret: Act V

Time. We molded its essence from nothingness, labeled it with importance and applied to it tangible parameters. To protect order and reason, strict frames became necessary to apply to time. Yet there are people who dare to raise the hammer of defiance, just to shatter the rules set in stone.

For not all events in life can be reasoned through.

The encounters between Ellie and I were fleeting, emotional, and never seemed to truly signify continuity. We were cheaters of clocks. We decided when the present would slow, so we could savor the good, and speed time up when interaction died away. Our meetings were mostly or entirely random, usually started by chance, continued by burning the fuel of passion, then ended with unspoken words left hanging in the surrounding air. I can't accurately tell you what she felt about our fleeting meetings, but I can tell you this: I never wanted them to begin and never wanted them to end. It might as well have been a long, scattered dream with mixed messages and meanings.

Contrary to my prior statements, I did see her again, though not on my own doing. Nor were there meetings of any kind. I may have been in the local department store, looking for some forgotten item of my mother's shopping list, or driving beside the beach. Then I would see her. Not her physical self, but her emotional essence. It lingered, and I would immediately spark my memories back up like a match against the strike strip. Though, rather quickly, the thoughts would subside and the effects wore away like an ineffective drug. It seemed like she was everywhere. But why?

Ellie herself had angel-like qualities. Her combination of beauty and intellect only added to the mystical nature of the encounters. She appeared when I least expected her to, dipping in and out of the pool of my conscious memory. Yet she was so much more than some ghostly shadow eerily looming in my subconscious.

She taught me what it meant to be human. She taught me how to embrace emotion. She was the starting match to my eternal creative fire.

She made me who I am today. Ellie was, is, and always will be my muse. We defined humanity, and its brief truthfulness. She gave me a thousand reasons to become a writer.

And she was not some idea or symbol of philosophical musings. She was vividly real! No other girl in my life has ever been such a flawless embodiment of pure, natural perfection. She was simply the ultimate queen of the angels, and all I could do was sit back and sigh with wonder at my futile quest. Why chase perfection when it is unattainable? Well, it can't hurt to try. Right? Right?

Oh, you bet it hurts. How the hell will I ever know if she longingly sighed back at my reflection? Or did she let my face fade away, rippling into a puddle of forgotten memories? Forget all. Turn away. The stone is thrown, sinking into perpetually darker depths. Now I will go to embrace the sun.

And live.