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"To the world you may be someone, but to someone you are the world."

Isn't that a nice, fluffy-happy-bunny quote? The kind found on a ten-year-old girl's wall hanging, hand-embroidered by her beloved grandmother in pink and purple thread.

Would be even nicer if it could be proven true.

This whole thought came from tonight, when my mom called, "Strawberry shortcake!" to announce the dessert she'd made, hoping that one or all of us would bound up happily and elbow our way to the front of the line for a piece.

Dad stayed in his chair watching TV, and Brother blew up another battle cruiser on his Playstation.

I guess Mom's main problem is that she tries too hard. Sometimes it gets on our nerves- our cynical, sharp-tongued, witty nerves- and we make fun of her for it. It's part of what makes her lovable, but also part of what makes her annoying when someone's not in the mood to be perky.

Sometimes she and I fit together in our perkiness. Yes, sometimes I am irritatingly chipper. I've said that before. Sometimes she and I, to quote Forrest Gump, are "like peas and carrots." (Of course, you have to have the innately satisfied Alabama accent to get the true weight of this cheesy line.) Other times, I jump on the boat with my fellow meanie-head father and brother and snipe at her for being happy and trying to make us happy with the simple things in life.

She announces things she's doing to us. She answers questions for us to Dad, just to put her own spin on the situation. She asks what the joke is when someone laughs over a funny book/e-mail/webpage/TV show/personal letter that's none of her business. She tries to put consequence in her cooking (not the dishes themselves, just her act of preparing them), so that we don't take it for granted. We do anyway.

I guess, in her own way, she's trying to be important. By cheerfully singing out that the strawberry shortcake she's worked on for the past half hour is ready, she's trying to get us to show that it matters to us. She may not want fame or riches, but she wants to be important.

Everybody, I think, wants to be more important than they are, or at least most people. There may be some movie stars, or politicians, or whatever, that are more than satisfied with their level of importance- perhaps even jaded or disgusted with how much import they carry. But far more people are clawing for importance, dreaming, wishing, working, bleeding for it. Like me.

My importance has to be tagged on changing the world somehow, like writing a book that touched someone's life, or singing songs that stick in people's heads- making my mark. If I were left with the importance my mom has, I'd probably lose my mind. I'm far too restless and ambitious and impatient to settle for the role of a housewife who finds joy in baking a special dessert and substitute teaches from time to time. If I found myself there, it'd prove that I'm really not as good a person as my mother is- and I admit she's a better person than me- and I wouldn't be able to take that much of what I deem insignificance.

Everyone wants to be important to some level, though. Maybe just being recognized by her husband and children is enough for her. So yay for her. Me, I'd hold out for something more earth-shattering than the simple words "Beloved mother and wife" on my gravestone. I bet that lowers your opinion of me.

Bottom line (wow, this is really random), there has to be at least that one person to whom you matter. A soulmate, a best friend, someone who values you. Everybody searches for that one person their entire lives, and once they find them, they're lucky if they realize this is the one and treasure it. There are some lucky people in this world, yes. But they are, indeed, lucky.

I didn't know I had one. People rarely know how many they actually have (and I guess I'm not counting parents because, like most worthless youngsters, I take them for granted- they have to care, they're my parents). This year, during my last few days of highschool, signing yearbooks and having people write the things they've always wanted to say but never did (why do people wait until the last minute to do that, anyways? This year I've made a conscious effort to not leave things like that to a last minute when they may have tempered and lost force) and I realized how many people I matter to.

Which is a good, and surprising thing. A book full of "stay sweet, keep in touch and have a great summer"s would probably break me.

But one girl that I hadn't even noticed beyond surface friendship wrote something that took me by surprise. She said she felt like we were best friends, and marveled that we'd become so close so fast.

I was a little baffled because yes, we'd worked on a duet for theater together, and yes, we sometimes talked in class, but I talked to a different girl more than her, and usally when she spoke to me it was to blandly state another thing that had gone wrong in her life. She didn't whine, but she did manage to depress me with her calm statements of how this or that wasn't going well and there was nothing she could do to fix it- every suggestion I gave was rebuffed as undoable for some reason, which is frustrating for a know-it-all bossy person like me. And sometimes I listened with half an ear when she talked. Which makes me feel incredibly guilty now. She confessed to me that the "wonder diet" she was on that was worrying her doctor was in fact anorexia (don't think all anorexics are skinny- she was close to a size 20 or 22 at the beginning of the year and at this point she's still a 14) and I suddenly saw her for an unheard voice, like I used to be.

I used to be that- quiet, reserved, with a non-existent self-esteem, dying for someone to pay attention and listen and care about me, but too proud to ask for it. And I was there for her, as much as I knew how to be. And then in my yearbook she said I was her best friend. I'd never given much thought to her until just recently, and apparently I'd meant a lot to her.

She told me her friends were teasing her about having a new crush, and she was enjoying not telling them who it was. She showed me his picture in the yearbook, and I didn't know him, but she showed it to me.

And then she told me that the reason her friends were so excited about her having a crush was because they'd never known her to have one before. And it wasn't because she was secretive. It was because she was raped when she was a little girl, and just couldn't form an attachment for a guy without remembering him.

And she told me this, and when I instinctively put my hand on her arm and murmured, "Oh, sweetie..." she started crying. Not in a noisy way, just tears rolling. I couldn't believe I'd managed to spend an entire year with this girl without seeing her true self- hiding. It was a rare moment, one that will stay with me all my life. And when I hugged her and whispered, "He can't hurt you anymore," she cried harder.

The things we don't realize until it's too late... If I'd known I mattered to her, I might have helped her in some way. Because I've been there, hating myself. I've been invisible, reviled, lonely, crying and crying harder because no one cared that I was crying. I could've been there for her more. As it was, I had that one day.

That one day where, to someone, I was the world.

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