Fanfiction: Faith, Hope and Lovers

Faith
098 Wildewoode Lane
Runnymeade, CA 098765-4321

Dear Faith:

This is just a little note of thanks. It comes from the street where you used to live.

I won’t tell you who I am, because I don’t think you’d recognize, or even remember, me. But you were a friend — at a moment of true calling.

Let me ask you a question on a subject that’s been bugging me lately. Not that I want or even need an answer from you directly. Your inner kindness (nobody sees it but me, I bet) connects to my wavelength. So, just think about my question, and I’ll be helped once again.

Here it is: What do you do when Fortune begins to smile? Why is it too hard to take, when all you’ve ever known felt like the opposite? Or is it something you just accept?

OK, that’s three questions …but you know what I mean: If all you’ve expected in your life was a scowl, what do you do when you suddenly start seeing smiles? And, if you’re still struggling, but it feels less like a fight, how do you smile back?

Anybody else reading this would laugh their butts off… . That’s OK. To them, life is a lottery ticket — an entry point to a game they think they know how to play but never really understand. I know you know what I mean, because you’ve been at zero, and while you were there, you survived. And you’ve come back from there.

That’s how you helped me, by the way — as if you didn’t already know.

You know zero is a window — but most people (I think) just see it as bad luck. They think somebody has to draw all the wrong numbers all the time, or no one would ever win. In their minds such people are born losers, and those people fated to be at zero. But, is that so bad?

I’m not saying zero is a good place — you and I both know it isn’t. But it’s a window to the world most people don’t see. It’s the same world, really, but it just looks so different from there. Different, like when you think you should give up, stop breathing, let them stomp your ass to death, whatever. But you don’t. And it’s not courage that makes you refuse, it’s not survival, it’s that you see the window for what it is. That it’s there at all means hope.

So now I hear you’re on the other side of that window, love. What do you do? Where do you go?

Don’t tell me you don’t give a damn. You do. And you’ll tell me in your own good time, I know. And it’ll be the truth, too.

Sincerely,

The Odd Fellow You Called “Bub”

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