The lack of friends, real friends, is something I miss the most. People. People always have the same effect. There are too many people, and not enough friends. There are too many acquaintances. Too much small talk. Too loud disco music to be involved in conversation. Too short a time to realise what’s happening. When you lift your head the person is gone, and you haven’t even started to talk about your manic need for a pet, or about the snail you stepped on (accidentally).
And yes, it gets lonely. I am lonely. At the same time I have phone numbers to call when I feel like getting a beer on a hot afternoon. Or I have people who come over to go swimming with during the weekends. Or I have people like me, transplanted, to hang out with during class breaks.
But yeah, I’m still lonely, from time to time, and there are traps for people who feel the way I do, because a lot of time to think leaves you with thoughts you shouldn’t really think about.
“Maybe she was right – I was selfish”
or
“Why can’t I paint anymore”
or
“Yeah, he really seemed happier before”
or
And the list goes on.
And so, if you’re lonely like I am, and if you don’t have classes to attend this day, and if you’ve got nothing really special to do downtown, you start to think of things. You start to crave for those helpful little things, those which helped you paint and write and be who you used to be.
But you know in the end that “who you really used to be” is just a concept, because you’re never really one person, are you, you’re this mixed-vegetable dish. You get lonely, then you deal with it. Then you’re happy and you have everything going for you.
But that’s the problem — you can’t just ignore the slump. I mean, if you fall into holes, the view changes, doesn’t it?
So I abandon the ‘you’ and skip straight on to the ‘I’. I sit on the laundry hamper to cry, for no particular reason. Not that I’m oppressed, not that I’m being tortured. But I used to cry a lot, and I haven’t been doing enough of that since I’ve been here. And I cry for a lot of things I can’t put into words. I cry because of this dull, empty thing in my chest, the one that sometimes visits me like enemies crashing a birthday party. Feeling it in my body one random morning, I know I’m going to be lonely for a period of time; I just know that this day I’m going to dive into the pool and emerge someone totally different. And I don’t look forward to it, but there it is.
And I don’t break into heart-rendering, noontime soap-opera sobs. I just kind of let them fall, as smoothly as a line of alcohol down my throat, or a wisp of marijuana smoke from my nostrils. Crying should be as smooth as that. I never believed in heart-wrenching sobs anyway. Especially since I don’t have an idea of what it is that makes me so sad.
