Once upon a time a royal person was born. His name was Hugh. Although I'll refer to Hugh as "he," no one actually knew whether Hugh was male or female and it didn't really matter. Hugh was unlike anyone who ever lived before or who would ever live again. Hugh was precious, unrepeatable, incomparable; a trillion-dollar diamond in the rough.
For the first 15 months of life, Hugh only knew himself from the reflections he saw in the eyes of his caretakers. Hugh was terribly unfotunate. His caretakers, although not blind, had glasses over their eyes. Each set of glasses already had an image on it, so that each caretaker only saw Hugh according to the image on his glasses. Thus, even though Hugh's caretaker were physically present, not one of them ever actually saw him. By the time Hugh was grown, he was a mosaic of other people's images of him, none of which was the real Hugh. No one had ever really seen Hugh, so no one ever mirrored to him what he really looked like. Consequently, Hugh though he was this mosaic of other people's images. He really did not know who he was.
Sometimes in the dark of the night when he was all alone, Hugh knew something of profound importance was missing. He experienced this as a gnawing sense of emptiness-a deep void.
Hugh tried to fill the emptiness and void with many things: power, worldly fame, money, possessions, chemical highs, food, sex, excitement, entertainment, relationships, children, work, even exercise. But no matter what he did, the gnawing emptiness never went away. In the quiet of the night when all the distractions were gone, he heard a still quiet voice that said: "Don't forget; please don't forget me!" But alas! Hugh did forget and went to his death never knowing who he was...........
Dear Jacqui
