Lonely

It's like being in a huge supermarket with many people around you smiling and laughing and talking, but not to you, no never to you.

It's like standing on a street corner talking to a stranger and wishing you weren't strangers any more.

It's like standing on a subway platform and watching the train speeding farther and farther away and suddenly realizing how empty and isolated it feels.

She opens her mouth and a Spanish accent comes out, like she grew up in Spanish Harlem, and yet both of us know we used to go on the same bus to school as kids. She keeps readjusting her hat, like she feels uncomfortable in her own skin, or maybe that's just me projecting my feelings, her pants staring me in the face, the guy standing next to me sans kippah, joking about how he used to be a mashgiach in a restaurant back when he was frum, me laughing at the irony, he thinks I'm laughing at him, but no it's just the situation, trying to find common ground and suddenly the fact that he doesn't wear a yalmuka makes no difference to me, and I don't know why.

It's like trying to form relationships and all they know me for are cookies, and that is something I did to myself, bring cookies once, twice, thrice, and suddenly you are the cookie lady and you can never get away from that, the jokes every day, the demands for more cookies, and you will never be anything more than that. I just want to be friends, except maybe that is a lie.

Sitting in a classroom talking about disorders, anxiety, depression, and trying hard not to diagnose yourself, except you feel yourself experiencing some of the symptoms, speeding heart, shortness of breath, lightheadedness, you just want to go home and eat cookies and watch TV and feel better, except you remember how you are staying away from cookies for awhile, and you have a 10 page paper to write, and suddenly it all seems too much, except no one cares and they all just want you to give it 100%, but you just can't right now.

My mother is driving to Florida tomorrow, I just want to jump in the car and go with her, the sun, oh I miss the sun. And freedom.