She caresses the frame, feeling the smoothness of the shell it is made of. The woman gazes at the picture not really seeing the people in it. She sees her reflection looking back at her, a shadow of what she has become, and what she always was...nothingness. To be completely alone is when you come to truly know yourself. "Hogwash," she mutters, throwing the family photo on the ground. "It's utterly useless. All very profound bullshit, but utterly useless." She stands above the frame looking down at the three people smiling politely back at her. That deep yearning of wanting to know what happened, where had she made that wrong turn for everything to be such a shambles. "Pull yourself up by your boot straps, you'll be fine. Really? Who comes up with this garbage?" The woman has taken to talking to herself in the dark apartment where she stands solitary, one light behind her creating a slight halo around her shadowy image, "Look, I'm an angel," she thinks delightfully. "More like a fruitcake," she mutters to herself in disgust. "Too bad that anxiety attack didn't kill you and put you out of your misery." She realizes the two other people in the picture are her children. She pauses. Their images appear almost as they do in life...no longer part of her picture. She is hugging shadows of what once was. Suddenly the creak of the air vents startles her. The furnace has turned on and made her come back to the here and now...where she really no longer wants to be. She picks up the frame and places it in a box. It is time to move on.
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