When I am left to talk to myself, I often find my thoughts wandering to wherever William is. Often, I call on him and most of those times, he comes. He comes to smile, he comes to prove, he comes to give in fewer than a handful of guitar chords whatever it is that my mind often wanderlusts after: how can I write this in some way that will make sense to anyone but me? Sylvia Plath wrote two on two occasions I can remember distinctly about her own heartbeat, once in The Bell Jar and another time in Elm. In the semi-autobiographical novel, herself in fiction, Esther, contemplates her own heartbeat when she tries unsuccessfully to commit suicide and again when she attends the funeral of a friend. Now, I'm not going anywhere morbid with this. I'm just trying to point out how being reminded of 'the old bray' of her heart demonstrated how determined her body was to survive, and how precious her life actually was. William is my braying heart. I don't need to feel for my pulse to be reassured of that which I'm sure many people don't need to be even assured of once but I very much do, and all the time. 'I am. I am. I am,' the heart would beat out, telling her, you lived, you live, you'll live. William's body language translates to my vital signs and I am no good at reading people but there's nothing obscured about the clear message he sends with a smile, with a word, with his self. There's no unsettling ambiguity, no hidden meanings, nothing but what I need to know all the time: you lived, you live, you'll live. I don't even need to ask for what he continually gives. I don't know if I've described it well enough. Have you ever met someone so giving that you wonder what is leftover for them when the day is done? Have you ever known someone to know you so well that they know how badly you rely on others, and how ashamed you are of it because it's so desperate a need, but instead of pointing it out to you or shying from it, they give themselves to be relied on. And they let you try to prove yourself right- they let you take advantage and take for granted and forget what they do for you, because you almost want them to leave you with only the evidence that you're meant to be lonely and deserved it all anyway and shouldn't live, and shouldn't have lived, and all that- they let you crush them under the weight of your need but stubbornly refuse to give that hateful part of your self any satisfaction. They stay, until you realise that they aren't going, that you live, that they will live with it, and you have to live with it too. And that isn't a bad thing at all. Have you ever had someone who is just so wonderful that they will do anything for you but let you hate yourself? Let me introduce you to William. You don't deserve him, and neither do I. Nobody does. Perhaps I'll meet him in another life, when I can be the one who feels the impact when he takes a fall, instead of the other way around. In another life, I'll beat alongside his heart like a second heart.
