I just talked to a boy. His eyes seemed dim, as if saying hello was a heavy duty for him. I worry. Or more so, I felt alarmed. As if his soul was sinking and he didn't know how to lift it up. I should know that feeling. It is so difficult to be young and helpless. Later, his aunt told me that his mother who has long been suffering from mental illness is having a surgery. I didn't ask what surgery. "Will you be here for the summer?" She casually asked me. "If you are, I will drag him here with pleasure." " I'll make sure I'll share my schedule with you." I told her, and she smiled. 

 What are we to make of this world? Should we stare at the digital screens and wonder about what we've never experienced? But what are words for? 

I place words in front of him, like cherries that I've just picked, hoping they'll give him joy.  He takes a bite, whispers something in the air. "What? I cannot hear you." I whisper to him. "See, your words are affecting me. Now I am whispering too." I said, smiling. 

We continued. And by the time I noticed he was saying things in a perfectly sound voice. Sharing the breath of life. 

 So much of us forget the torture of being young and helpless. Last night, I watched a comedian interviewing a young man who invented a wearable AI so that boys can walk along with an AI girlfriend, And the middle aged comedian was making a mockery out of this young entrepreneur. "But what is the alternative?" I ask myself. "Staying depressed and lonely?" The solitude of youth is immeasurable. I was dragging my feet against gravity every day not knowing where I would land. Not specifically because of unpopularity, but because I didn't know how to live. I would have done anything to save my soul. Take cabs, drink Absolute Vodka, listen to cheap hiphop and dance in a cliche unaesthetic club, go to museums and scribble the names of the artists on my notebook, talk with people on the street, but still I couldn't quite know how to work against it. Against gravity. I am quite sure I would have had no problem testing an AI boyfriend if that had been available. 

 I remember going to a beautiful public library, desperate to kill time, and finding one self-help book. "The fear of being loved."  I sobbed reading it and in that moment I got a glimpse of what I was so afraid of.  But how is it it that I am afraid of something that I haven't even experienced? And why am I afraid of being loved more than not being loved??? I didn't know. 

 20 years later, here and now, I am no longer afraid. Through enormous amount of errors and pain and binging cherries, I came to be.