Gillian headed straight towards the city. She needed stimulation, or distraction. She needed to cross strangers on the streets and remind herself that other stories besides her own existed, simultaneously, and that her own mere excuse of a life was nothing more than a single experience of one person. She needed people - holding shopping bags, speaking on mobile phones, waiting at the crossroads for the walking green; and as she observed them all, she kept herself unapproachable as though she didn’t exist, was merely a set of eyes that no one else noticed, all the while playing a sentimental melody in her headphones, pressing it against her ears as she walked from block to block.

Somehow, without predetermination yet with unrealized conviction, Gillain walked to a bookstore, needing a literary antidote to soothe her nerves and remind her that there was more to life than seven year relationships - seven dam year relationships! Hers had ended that morning. She needed a fix like an addict needs a fix to feel good again, but Gillian was addicted to commitment, or whatever it was that made her feel full inside. She had thought it was love.

Gillian climbed the steps to the second floor and went straight to the ‘W’ mark on the shelf at the end of the aisle, knew exactly what title she wanted. She looked for Woolf, felt she would understand her best; she'd embrace her mind and offer inspiration. She grabbed it off the shelf and without reading the back cover, without checking the price, tucked it under her arm, grabbed two other titles since she thought splurging might make her feel better. Why not? It was her money.

And yes, she was right. She sat at a cafe around the corner from that bookshop with cigarette smoke above her and an empty coffee cup at her table, pleased and satisfied with her decision. The first ten pages of Woolf had made her feel whole again, if even for half an hour, in that sort of way that soothes the nerves because a companion sits across from you and understands that something abominable has just happened; and tells you that in all tragedies, life still has its beauty. Gillian felt appeased by the sapient pairing of words and language; so artful and exquisite that she was driven with energy to run up a hundred floors by way of a spiral staircase and lock herself in an attic loft with nothing else but a candle, a desk, and one chair - maybe a small window; she felt complete reading Woolf, sensing that she too somehow transcended from the past and arrived next to her in that attic. And she didn’t feel alone, or drunk, or delusional; she felt settled on the ground with her back pressing against the stone floor, her eyes gazing at the bar of light on the ceiling - entirely at peace that she existed in a world full of granite and rainbow. Knowing there is love in everything.

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