I don't know what is wrong, and although once I thought I did, I appear to myself to have been wrong, and now I realize that what I thought was the scope of my frozen pond is likely instead to be merely the surface of a frozen lake. I don't know what I've done to deserve to be like this, and I don't know why I feel you can help me, and I don't know if you really can help me, and I don't know anything I once thought I did. And so here I am, to implore you help me.

I am no longer tired. I am no longer particularly sure whether I enjoy skating on the ice of my pond. I know, however, that given the alternative of being in a warm cabin with others, warm and comfortable, I will choose to remain out here, because they are them, and there's nothing real about them. I suspect, in fact, that they exist merely because each of them suspects that the impression he is giving is what his companions expect to see, and so he puts on a mask and gets along.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they in there are all really very happy, and honestly pleased with their situation, and the thought of something else is a foreign one to them. Every once in a while someone will join them, go inside to melt the frost from their hair, and rub their hands in front of the fire. And every once in a while, I'll look at that person with a mix of jealousy because they appear to be happy whether or not they really are, and of hatred because they were once real, and now they're not.

And while I skate along my pond half envying and half despising those inside and warm, I can't help but stare at them. I watch partly because if they're happy, they're what I want to be but can't, and partly because if they're not really happy, once I may catch a glimpse behind one of their masks and take a degree of comfort knowing that perhaps there is no such thing as the kind of pleasure they feign.

I implore you, dear, help me.

I know too well the noises of my pond, both by day and night. I guard its banks jealously, lest anyone try to intrude. I am being frozen to death by the chill air, and I've begun to think that when I'm finally frozen I won't have to think about warmth because it will no longer be a legitimate concept. Things that ceased to make sense to me, like the dark in the night, are beginning to tug primally at my heart again, and I want to give in.

But I don't want to be alone. I want you with me, lovely lady.

Come with me. Take my hand. You may join me upon my pond. I can offer you nothing in return, indeed I assure you that my invitation is one purely of selfishness, because I don't (in this state) think that I could find any way to pay you back for your escapade into my cold. I just don't want to be alone. I want you to come with me, your hand in mine, telling me that you're there, that you trust me, that I can trust you. Above all, I want to know in my heart that I can trust you, not to desert me, not to betray me, not to change on me, not to pull away from me. I want you to be there because if my pond starts to thaw I need somebody there to either freeze it again or to anchor me from being drifted away.

Dearest Lady, I implore you.
The Prodigal Child