My room's different--bigger, higher up, with bigger windows. I've been cleaning the room at last--I got shingles a few months ago, and was too sick to clean. Struggle with oversize blinds--they fell off their brackets, cover my bed. Can't get them back on without a lot of ladder work, so I just pin up sheets for now.

The sun's rising. What? Have I been cleaning all NIGHT? Doesn't feel like it. I'm confused. Don't recall drinking or taking drugs but I'm shaky and strange. Time just seems wrong; thought it was well before midnight; I'm not sleepy yet. Wanted to draw the blinds not to sleep but to masturbate; I feel insanely horny.

A girl in a bowler hat walks by outside, looks in the open windows. I really have to get better blinds! No privacy.

Wait. How can she walk by? We're fifty feet up!

She can't be outside. She's INSIDE. In my room. And I'm so clouded I can't tell? I look closely. She's still here. An ignore-me spell? Cute girl in her mid-twenties--slight, leggy, pale skin against dark bowl-cut hair. A stranger. I ask "Who are you?" She clearly sees me, but won't answer. I say sharply "What are you doing in my room?" Ambles toward the door as if owns the place, no obligation to acknowledge me. Yet doesn't seem arrogant, just... what?

I yell, VERY sharply, "WHO--ARE--YOU?!" and she startles! As if she only now realizes I can see her at all. Forced to treat me as a PERSON for the first time, she says "No one, really."

And fades into air.

I feel shocked. My first coherent thought? "So... I NEVER can be sure of my privacy."

Shocked, but also flattered--I'm important enough to observe! Validating. Or not--what if EVERYONE'S got observers?

Guardian angels?

Voyeurs?

Both at once?

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Validation: a year ago I self-diagnosed a rare mutation, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, explaining weird symptoms doctors misdiagnosed or flat-out disbelieved for decades. Three days ago I finally got a doctor to run through the EDS diagnostic checklist and she confirmed my guess. The diagnosis validated my judgment--not just about EDS, but to trust myself over "experts" in general.
  [Note a few months later: Now FOUR doctors have run through that test and reluctantly confirmed EDS. Looks like my sisters both have it too--again, undiagnosed for decades despite serious, near-identical symptoms, suggesting something hereditary--and EDS has been known over a century! They should have caught this.]
• Bedsheets on the windows: my bedsheets? Could this strange, otherworldly studio/bedroom be my dreamspace?
• She assumes she's an invisible watcher: could be some part of me, but I've had hundreds of provably telepathic/shared dreams in my life, so I can't exclude (as many dreamers conveniently can) the possibility she's an outsider wandering through my dreams. That's not odd; it's familiar in my world. What's odd is...
• Her attitude! She seems sure I don't see her even when I address her directly. So used to being a watcher, getting seen is inconceivable! Is she even aware she's been watching someone real? She may think I'm a recurring dream figure--a facet of her psyche. Or, if real, someone with no rights. That blithe "No one really" was telling; I think it's how she sees me. A mere movie she watches, invisibly.
• ACTION: If I spot her again, confront her again. And again. Until I get acknowledged.

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