She has a wonderful giggle, the type that is warm and soft. It makes her eyes light up. It's the sort of giggle that had you heard it, you might understand that she has been hurt but is able to see the humor in life. But no one knows that about her, no one hears her giggle.

She has many thoughts. As she goes about her lonely day, her mind is always spinning with ideas. She often has random thoughts that would prompt long and lively conversations. But they never do, because she has no one who cares to hear her thoughts.

She possesses a caring nature. She is kind and comforting, it is somehow embedded into her very core. She would help anyone in need, in any way she possibly could. But she is not allowed to show her kindness, because no one calls out her name.

She has had a sad and troubling life, raised in a highly dysfunctional family. As a child, her way of coping with her life was to hide in the little closet of her bedroom. It was the only place where she got a feeling of safety, as her parents screamed and yelled at each other.

Quite often, it was in that closet, that she would remain hidden and feeling helpless as she heard the pleas and painful cries from her brother and sister as they were being beaten with leather belts. She remained frozen, not knowing what to do with the one piece of information she DID know tossing around in her mind...She was next.

As she grew a bit older, she began to take walks with her little sister, this was in an effort to break away from the misery of the house. The two of them would walk for miles. They would daydream that they had a wonderful life to return to when they got back home. They would stretch out those walks as long as they could, returning only when the sun began to set. What should have been a beautiful sunset was just a sign that it was time to return to a place they had a deep fear of.

Years passed by and her walks became longer. She would leave for two or three days. When she realized that no one asked her where she had been, it did not surprise her very much. As the household grew more insane, she took longer and longer walks. Sometimes circumstances would not allow her escapes and she remembers that those were nights of confusion and terror.

One of those nights, her older brother, fifteen at the time, was allowed to have an alcohol party with a slew of underage friends. Her mother forced her tag along to the liquor store in order to help carry the heavy kegs of beer. As the party ensued in a downstairs room, she sat quiet and alone, atop the staircase...listening...and thinking, "Why?".

When her brother brought home a girl to live in the house, she was baffled. She barely was able to catch a glimpse of the girl, as this girl was always in one room: Her brother's bedroom. When she was able to catch that glimpse, it was as she passed by and saw her through small the opening of the door.

It was on the nights that the door was closed that were the worst nights. Awakened by the sounds of heavy blows, she would tip toe past that door and hear her brother's girlfriend crying, pleading, screaming in fear and begging for the punches to stop. Sometimes, she would run to her parents and beg them to make her brother stop. She was told to mind her own business.

Again, some years passed by and at the age of sixteen, she took a walk in which she never did return. Alone, she managed to handle the first years of being homeless. As she sat in the hallways of business offices to get away from the bitter cold winter, people passed by her as if she was invisible. She was eventually able to secure a small, unheated apartment and a job at a downtown coffee shop.

Over the years her only company being abusive or mentally unstable men. They would come and go out of her life as if she was nothing, as if she did not exist to them. She wondered if they ever would realize the pain they inflicted to her heart.

Her sister had taken off on her own path, a sad and desperate path of destruction. As her sister grew older, the two connected again. She found renewed pleasure in the company of a kindred soul, however just as she began to feel the sunshine...it was taken away from her. Her sister's soul was so damaged that it was ripping apart the body and mind that encased it. At the age of thirty, her sister died. She was alone again.

She saved a dog once, a neglected and abused little creature, this dog was her best friend for about one year. Her neighbor's dog killed it in one vicious swipe. She was alone again.

And so it remains, she has accepted the fact that she does not fit into society. She has no friends, no companions...She had tried many times to reach out to others. For some reason, they do not stay around very long. She thinks that perhaps they see the fear in her eyes, the fear of life. Or perhaps they can sense the burdens she carries and people are afraid they may somehow be tainted by those burdens if they allow her into their lives. She knows that people avoid her, they almost run sometimes, even from a hopeful, "Hello".

She stopped trying to meet people, there seemed to be no purpose to that idea anymore. It just added confirmation of her feelings of abandonment. Her loneliness is a constant and never-ending feeling, so thick that it is almost tangible.

Now she spends her time working alone, up to twelve hours a day. She runs errands alone. She eats alone. She sits upon her bed alone. She sleeps alone. She day dreams of her life somehow changing and she still allows wonderfully creative thoughts to spin through-out her mind. She day dreams of finding a soul mate, but knows that no one is seeking a damaged soul.

She knows that a soul mate would never be able to find her anyway as she is, in essense, still hiding in the little closet of her bedroom. No one knows of her giggle, her ideas or cares that she exists. She continues her endless walk and just as she sat upon that stairway, she constantly thinks, "Why?".