The others are out enjoying themselves. They talk, they discuss, and they share the feelings of the heart. Me? Work the week. List of things to do that builds faster than diminishes. Written in pen, cannot alter but to strike the words. I collapse within myself. My silence becomes a lie. My privacy becomes a lie. My lie of a world becomes her lie of a world. What is there that is left? What becomes of what once was, now dissolved because I would not maintain the lie. Come clean? Tragic. And it is. Keep quiet and maintain the lie. Death. What to choose?

The room is dark, the sofa an upright tomb. Have I returned to myself?

No. She insists her life was a lie.