One woman said, “the Truth is, No One really knows…. you’ve got to know Who you are and What you are, that’s the only way you’ll survive.”
This morning, as I was watching some generic boarding school moving about ‘something something haunting happens something reality’ I started thinking about Matilda. Matilda is a woman I met out in Los Angeles. It must have been a little more than a year ago, July, when I was subletting a room in Sherman Oaks and utterly broke. I first heard Matilda speak at an Anonymous meeting- so speaking about her now is in many ways breaking the rule. I don’t think she’d mind, though. Matilda was a thin, fair-skinned, extremely beautiful woman. Somewhere in her early to middle adulthood, she had that something-peculiar-something-entirely-fascinating about her and I’m sure anyone who encountered her in a shopping mart felt the same way. Matilda was very sad with many moments of break-throughs and realizing the true beauty in life. She loaned me $20 dollars for gas at my third meeting, “to help me make it to the next meeting.” I never went to another meeting. I never saw Matilda again.
Still, I think about Matilda from time to time. I think about trying to find her address and mailing her a $20 dollar check and a note about how she touched my life, but I don’t think she’d cash it or ever wish to have that money again. She’s just one of those people who truly touched my life, who saw something in me without me having to say anything or fight. Matilda believed in me as a few have in the past and for all of them I want to pay them back by becoming someone really great. I want to shine, to light up my night sky and be so bright that Matilda and all who believe in me will see it and know they helped.
a poorly written essay on operant conditioning 