It has to be numerical. Everything has to be numerical.
Numbers can encourage feelings when attached to a meaning. You've just won 3,000 dollars. Nice, right? Change that number to 4,000,000. I bet you would be even happier still.
Change up the meaning a little. You've just been handed your electricity bill. The only thoughts you can think are along the lines of "dear god, I probably should stop running the heater when I can snuggle up with a blanket." Then you open the bill. Two hundred and nine dollars and fifty seven cents. The national average is about $95.66.
But the numbers stay the same. $209.57 No matter what way you write them, they are the same.
I keep the numerical value of physical pain. Ten counts for the Thanksgiving incident, nine in total for the Boy who Found Me, and two for Doctor Yellow Shirt, whose name is neither important nor worth the time to remember.
My best friend is a girl I grew up with since we were about 5. I used to be able to stay away from her when times got rough, but after a while, she and I needed each other. I miss her terribly sometimes, or rather, I miss the way she used to be. I like her the way she is now. I just hate that she makes me count.
I count the numerical value of everything of hers. It is all kept on a record in the back of my mind. Her eyes are a perfect ten. She doesn't use them because she finds it cruel to intentionally draw people in simply because she used her eyes. She says its not fair that people can be drawn to her, and that she is aware as to why they come for her. She tells me sometimes that if people are to be drawn to her, she wants them to come on their own, not because she used some trick of showing them her soul behind the eyes.
I never understood. But I let her tell me stories of it, so she could believe what she wanted about her eyes.
I have never seen them, so I couldn't tell her whether or not she was right. I can't even look into my own eyes.
Somehow, everything in my head is her. I suppose it does me better than it does for her. If she were constantly thinking about herself, she wouldn't have half the friends around her that she does. I guess I simply absorbed her selfishness and turned it into a devotion to her. I can't explain why. In a way, I put all my eggs in one basket.
Except the eggs are actually pieces of me, what little personality I decide to hold, and the basket is her mind. I let her know I'm here, just for the taste of freedom from emotion.
Sadly, I will have to leave her one day. She is not a number to me, and like things that are more subjective, she will change in a way that will force me out. She can become a statistic, a number, just as she already has been to many other people in the world, but for me, she will never be a number. The only things that I will number are the things that she does that I can help with.
She is not a number to me. She is my other half.
