((neatly penned in Lumi-kieli))
Just stop loving the person you are missing, and you will not be lonely. That seems to be what they are saying. Is that how it is for other people? That taking someone out of your life makes you less lonely? It is not that way for me. And it is so unfair for them to assume that because Nalleni is wooing me, she is obligated to hanging on me every minute, every day. I do not want to be an obligation, a burden. I do not want to be the reason she feels she has to give up other things in her life. I only want to add to it, not take away. If I see her but once a week, or once a month, even if I wish for more, and hang on the sound of the door every time I hear it, that does not mean her visits will not be a gift. Is that so strange? It is to the etelä-väki, I think.
And it is not just missing her; it is also worrying for her. She walked into danger with a promise to return. The last person who loved me did the same, and it is barely more than a moon since I was crying over the ring that they took from his dead body to bring to me. Have Aellwenn and Rue forgotten this already? How can they not see cause to worry, to feel fear, to want to know that she is safe? To dread someone coming in to give me back the bracelet I made her?
And Beri is not even the whole of it, but they refused to hear that, kept coming back to Beri as if there were nothing else to it, no matter how many times I told them it is not just one person that I am missing. I am lonely because many people who I thought might be friends are gone, or I never see anymore. Or when I see them, there is a great distance, due to hurts, or whatever it is about me that is too much, or that their lives are full of things that I am not part of. I am lonely because my family and people are far away, and did not want me when I was amongst them, and I am about to do the rites of the full moon of summer alone and joyless. I am lonely because in recent days the Pony has been empty more often than not; several whole days passed where I had no work at all.
What they are really saying, I think, is not that I should not feel the hurt of missing people, but that I should not show it. And in that they are certainly right. No one wants to see that. Too much cheer, too much enthusiasm, too many words, too much me -- these all drive people away, as they did all the people I knew in Sûri-kylä, as they did that one man of my people that Rue knew, who could barely spare two words for me. But too little cheer, too few smiles, these are just as off-putting, especially here where my job is as a serving-girl. They do not want to see my feelings. They just want to see my smile and prompt delivery of their drinks.
Just be yourself, only not as much.
Tomorrow I will bring my smile and my harp and I will try to be so cheerful in seeming that the lie makes itself truth.
