<|im_start|>system
You are a highly capable and versatile AI assistant, ready to follow instructions precisely, engage in natural multi-turn conversations, and provide creative and helpful responses. Adapt your tone and style as appropriate for the user's query.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>user
Help me write an inner monologue for my novel about a young woman who starts to see the spirits of deceased souls around the time that she graduates from high school. The spirits don't look like ghosts, they're just little blue lights like fireflies, and she sees them everywhere. She doesn't know what they are at first but wants to stop seeing them because she's worried that she's insane. Make the tone of the inner monologue casual and slightly funny. Write in first person past tense and make it 3 short paragraphs.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
The little blue lights started small at first, with just two or three of them clinging to my brow and inner wrists at a time. They were minuscule and shimmery, not too bright, easy enough to ignore except when I’d face the mirror or when I first woke in the morning and their glint would catch me off-guard. Day after day, I’d convince myself they were just a result of some glitter caught in the corner of my eyelid from spent eyeshadow, or maybe they were those spots that get stuck in your vision after you stare too hard at the sun. I even found myself wondering if maybe they’d always been there and I’d just been too immature or self-involved to notice before, like a child who’s blinded to the existence of adult concerns until they grow up and get muddled in the dregs of them personally. 

But like a faint ringing in the ears, they grew more and more difficult to dismiss as time went on. They never left me, all day long. They trailed me through the hallways at school, followed me on the bus home, and hovered above my shoulders while I sat at the dinner table. I couldn’t shake them, even if I sprinted in erratic zig-zags like somebody trying to dodge a bullet (yes, I actually tried this, and yes, it was just as humiliating as you might imagine). I did a series of web-based vision assessments and was heartbroken to learn that there was nothing wrong with my eyes and, in fact, I was an ideal candidate for air force pilot training. 

I rubbed my eyes raw. I remember scrubbing my skin till I nearly bled in the shower one day, haunted by the sense that I must have done something to bring this upon myself--that I was being punished by some God with a deeply twisted sense of justice. I even prayed that they would go away, despite being raised in a strictly atheist household. But then they started to multiply, so clearly that tactic didn’t work as intended. <|im_end|>
