Excerpt: Windfall // Transience (On Holding On)

When I look back at my childhood, I don't see it through my eyes. I watch myself – a clumsy child, spinning in dizzy circles until she falls, ginger hair captured red by sunlight, freckled arms thrown to the heavens – through the eyes of an invisible observer, a stranger yet a life long friend. The third person watching the first. Sometimes it struck me as strange and unusual (why couldn't I see through my own eyes? Why couldn't I quite manage to relive a moment, to feel the overwhelming joy, the all encompassing sadness, the excitement, the confusion? It was always that same numb feeling, with but a hint of emotion, a sprinkling of life) but for the most part it was normal to me.