this is for you, Akaky Akakyevitch.

practicing for the psat, i came across this question:

"...His name was Akaky Akakyevitch. No one has been able to remember when and how long ago he entered the department. However many directors and high officials of all sorts came and went, he was always seen in the same place, at the very same duty, so that they used to declare that he must have been born a perpetual titular councillor in uniform all complete and with a bald patch on his head. The porters, far from getting up from their seats when he came in, took no more notice of him than if a simple fly had flown across the vestibule. His superiors treated him with a sort of domineering chilliness. The head clerk's assistant used to throw papers under his nose without even saying 'Copy this' or 'Here is an interesting, nice little case,' as is usually done in well-behaved offices. And he would take it, gazing only at the papers without looking to see who had put them there and whether he had the right to do so; he would take the papers and at once set to work to copy them. The young clerks made jokes about him to the best of their clerkly wit, and told before his face all sorts of stories of their own invention about him. They would enquire when the wedding was to take place, or would scatter bits of paper on his head, calling them snow. In the midst of all this teasing, Akaky Akakyevitch never answered a word, but behaved as though there were no one there. Only when they jolted his arm and prevented him from going on with his work would he cry out, 'Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?' There was something strange in the words and in the voice in which they were uttered, so that one young clerk, new to the office, was cut to the heart, and in those words thought that he heard others: 'I am your brother.'

The response to Akaky's words by the clerk who is 'new to the office' is best described as

(A) confused
(B) mocking
(C) disbelieving
(D) timid
(E) compassionate"

i'm writing this, astounded at the serendipity, as an add-on to a post i began scribbling down in a notebook today...

i write this knowing that you will not read it. still, i won't divulge in full detail, just in case: this is for you.

today i saw a side of you i had never seen before. panicking, wounded by the laughter of a hauty classmate, you lost the cool i've always been jealous of. before reading some insight to your past through comments on a blog we both read, i might not have fully comprehended. but i have seen this sliver of a self-loathing past self, and i watched as you did what you could to defend the intelligence that holds you high above the rest. or at least, it does in my eyes. perhaps it doesn't in yours...a tragedy in the form of self esteem.

the student who called you out was poking fun, but deep down it was meanspirited. i would not have seen it, had you reacted in any less of an explosive manner. frankly, i think that E is a dick, but i am wondering the grudges you two hold. a slip of the tongue was enough to send you throwing pens and pencils. those around me laughed, as those around you sneered. i reached out to you, my companion. you couldn't see. "oh my god"s were mouthed all around; i nearly shed a tear.

because i saw you, self-exiled on that island, from a rowboat on the sea. i have been there, although that was the darkest period of my life--slapping myself as i stared at my swollen, tear-streaked reflection in the 6th grade girls' bathroom.

the answer was e, compassionate, by the way.

compassion isn't quite correct, in my opinion. it's understanding. it's having an appreciation for humanism, for the golden rule. it's having even a thread of decency. it is love towards a fellow man.

so, to you i am writing in a way that i can't voice: i love you for who you are, even if we are not close enough for that. because i was sending you all the love i could, i was watching. they are savages if they choose to laugh at mistake, at emotion.

i understand.