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The apartments feel so empty without them here.
All the other people still here--who are they, anyway? What are they doing here? What am I doing here?
I walk around like a zombie, feeling absolutely nothing but diluted, contrived emotions and a vague unease. And apathy--endless apathy. It takes so much energy to do just normal daily things...eating. waking up. saying hello. smiling. writing my mother. What is the point of any of it? Why not just stay in bed all day?
Sometimes I go to their empty apartment, looking for them. Where are they? Will they ever come home?
At such times the emptiness crushes me. I can't find them or even contact them. They vanished without a trace. What did I do wrong? Is there anything I can do to make them come back?
I think insanity is taking over. Often I'll crumple onto the floor, screaming silently and clenching my fists as tight as they'll possibly go. It's just as useless against the acute emotional pain as it is against physical pain. I just keep hurting wordlessly, and there's no release. My mind is whirling, trying to find an escape, but there' is none. I'm alone. Who would understand?
At these times, I think I catch a glimpse of Scarlet gliding down the hallway, or staring at me from the windowsill. But it's always the same image--a brooding, dark angel, face full of anguish masked by detached bitterness. It couldn't be Sadie.
But no...is it even Scarlet? Yes or no?
Either way, she never lingers. After I'm too exhausted to think anymore, I fall asleep on the bare floor. In the morning I'll awake, and the memory of the night will be so foreign and strange. I hurry out of the apartment, too frightened and confused to believe that it was really me shaking with suppressed agony the night before. What an embarrassing overreaction. Does anyone really have it that bad?
Then I'll stay away, feeling dead as before, living my life as shallowly as possible. After a while I'll start getting snappy--being annoyed with the tenants and flying into rages over their incessant demands.
But they don't understand. They mistrust me now. And I can't explain to them the panic welling in my soul and the very real pains in my stomach from the unaccustomed anger.
After a while I can't take it anymore. I go back to the apartment, despairing of everything, desperately attempting to feel something real.
And as the cycle repeats, I get more and more angry, and spend longer stints in the apartment, hiding from everyone and the responsibilities of life. Is this how Scarlet felt? She couldn't be like Sadie and fit everyone's expectations. She had to hide away and deal with her morose pessimism on her own. She couldn't change who she was without this feeling of frustration. Sadie fit easily into the world, with her petty worries and boundless optimism. I wish I could be like that again.
I try to break this cycle of deadness and agony, trying to get close to one tenant or say a kind word to another...trying to get my optimism back. But then it all comes undone. I'm not getting anywhere. I'm spiraling ever more out of control.
This must be what it's like...to lose yourself.
 LadyAlisyn · Wed Aug 11, 2010 @ 08:32am · 0 Comments |
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