I misplace more than I find every time that I clean my room. I started yesterday evening, and ended up sleeping in the awful discomfort of upended objects and remnants of balls of wool blowing about on the floor. I tried again this evening after having wandered through town to pick up ink pads and Christmas stamps because Christmas has come too early this year and I'm trying my best to keep occupied. I placed a watch and a Claddagh necklace belonging to a dear friend of mine into a little, white pouch that's made from the same material as a veil and pulls together with white silk ribbon to keep them safe and to keep them together. And to be truthful, I did hesitate over using that pouch - something I had received a gift in from my mother, or my brother. I can't remember which, now. I placed them all together on top of a book and a DVD, right in the middle of my bed, and within minutes, I found myself pulling the place apart again to find this little pouch. My head is oh so lost. I uncovered it later, tangled up in a mass of wires which purposes have long been forgotten and with it, a volume of Billy Collins poetry I received for my birthday over a year ago. I listened to a Regina Spektor song as I read, and it seems obvious to say that the two should never come together or go together, but I could imagine Mr. Collins writing a poem on this exact same topic - because it's true, we all do laugh at God at times. I could imagine him sat in an old, soft chair in an even older room and reading from pages written on with a vintage typewriter, reading with his voice that I could never imagine being able to listen to in everyday conversation. But the man, he soothes me in ways that no other ever could. I get that feeling that swells in my gut when the world seems to all of a sudden snap up all together, like a jigsaw made from magnets, pulling itself together. Just so. And my mother knocks on my door to tell me that my fifteen year old cousin has been diagnosed with chronic depression, and I know she feels like adding "Just like you", only she doesn't because she knows I know what she's thinking, anyway. She looks at me with expectant eyes, but what advice am I to give? What stories am I to tell? I never believed it would ever get better, and I know that neither will she, the best I can give her is a volume of poetry whose spine has long since been cracked and a smile, but she is not me, we are milestones apart and so, she will be sad and I will be complacent and I will sit and I will read and she will thrash out and she will scream, and eventually we can hope that things will settle and that, like me, she can begin to see the beauty in living again.