Fuuuuuuuuuuck
I'm in Park Slope, Brooklyn; alone.
My hair smells like all-spice and my legs smell like warm vanilla cake and I am one hundred percent uncomfortable in my little twin bed. All I have is the whir-whir of the fan and the recycling trucks clicking bottles and slamming doors up and down the neighborhood. However, I'm glad I'm here, I really am.
A surprise visit to Ithaca left me feeling even worse than before. Granted, I was drunk and clumsy the entire time. I forgot most of the things I had come back to collect, did everything last minute, and jumped on a bus this afternoon with no more than a handful of chips and two cups of coffee in me. I sat in pain on that bus for five long hours contemplating my emotions--my lack of emotions. I feel nearly nothing for people. True, I do have a couple of dear friends and I love big social situations, but when I find myself in a rare state of sobriety, I become completely intolerant of those around me. I am insufferably apathetic. I can hold a conversation well enough.. for a while.. but I don't really feel as if I'm doing the talking. It's programmed, I think. I may respond to things alright, but I honestly have no idea what is going on half the time. Someone, anyone, can stand right in front of me and grope my breast for a good fifteen seconds before I even notice their hand. I get caught off-guard being asked questions that seem out of the blue, but are really continuations of twenty-minute-long stories that I somehow forgot to listen to. A beautiful man might kiss me and touch me and my body simply stiffens and goes numb; not in repulsion or shock, but in pure apathy. What happened to me?
Tomorrow, I will eat a feast, but tonight.. I am just alone and hollow in a big dark house in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Alethea Rudd.