"I'm in love with a strict machine"
It's a day that I spend alone. One where I need to be alone. Every day for the past two months has been spent getting lost with everyone else, being lost inside of everyone else. I remember that I used to have an identity and a personality. These days I have no energy and even lying in bed is too painful.
I gaze out of my window at the same buildings and the same trees that have been here ever since I arrived and were here before I arrived. Yet everytime I look outside there's a different scene. The sky is different and there are different people; a girl who runs into the library for shelter from the rain. A guy who wraps a scarf around a girl and gives her a kiss on the cheek.
Or I see people that I do know, that I already have a small history with and wish that they could hear me screaming despite me being so far away from them.
A person that I don't recognize sees me staring out my window and waves up at me. I'm not sure if they know who I am or if they're even waving to me so I don't do anything back, other than continue to stare. They keep on waving even as they get in their car and begin to drive so I decide to humor them and wave back. They seem satisfied and stop waving up at me. I then wonder who they were.
**
Life isn't complicated or hard, but at the same time it is. Everything seems so much simpler at night when you're not yourself and you can pretend to be somebody else. You dress in your fanciest clothes, do up your make-up to perfection, sprtiz on your best smelling perfume, double check your pocketbook to make sure that you have everything that you'll need for the evening and the moment you step one foot onto the pavement, it has all began. You're walking arm-in-arm with your best girlfriends and in the air you can smell all of the night's possibilities. Who are you going to meet? What are you going to talk about? What are you going to do? Obviously there will be dancing. There's always dancing. And drinking. People buy you drinks because you're cute, funny and American.
"One more shot for the American!" they'll shout and you'll drink whatever it is that they give you because it's free and rude to turn down drinks from strangers with beautiful accents.
This is all that you wanted. You wanted the carefree life far, far away from everything that you know and recognize. You were desperate back home for some shaking up, for some craziness, for some fun. All you think about when you think about life back home are the restrictions and all of the rules. There were so many rules to follow and so many people it felt like they were tying you down. Bless them, you know they had the best intentions, but you just wanted to get away. And now that you are gone, you're scared that you may never want to go back.
Despite having the glorious night life addiction, you've also picked up a slight drug habbit. It's one thing to be an alcoholic, but getting stoned every other night and being hyped up on cocaine on the opposite nights isn't so glamorous. It's nasty and more importantly, expensive. The coke gives you energy when you're practically dead and your body is already ice cold and the weed chills you out and calms your nerves from the night before. You get lost in the fog and the haze of the smoke, and legends are brought back from the dead and make sweet, sweet love to you through their music. There are no problems and there never were any problems. You don't have any thoughts and as everyone is rushing all around you, you sit in the corner, propped up against a wall with your fag in one hand and watch life in slow motion.
**
Daylight is streaming through my window and I can hear the rain tap on the glass. I wake up, go to the bathroom and wish that I had washed my face and brushed my teeth the night before. I feel and look like roadkill. After I slowly take a shower and try to put myself together, I leave my room and walk into the kitchen to make my morning toast and tea. I see my flatmates and they smile strangely at me but say nothing. Their smile says it all. It says, "I saw you last night. I know what you did. I know what you said." I strain my face and form something that I think resembles a smile. Sometimes I'll sit in the kitchen and pretend to be social, but other times I just come back in my room where it's quiet. I may want to be alone, but I leave the door latched in case anybody wants to come in and talk. Gossip is more like it.
I lay with my head at the foot of the bed and watch as the clouds are pulled from one side of my window to the other. I watch the colors change in the sky. It goes from grey, to blue, to pink, to purple and finally to deep, dark blue. Sunset is my favorite time and the only time when I care to get up and look at the sky completely. I can see the pink clouds being reflected in the puddles in the grass from all of the rain. I watch as the planes disappear and think about when I was on a plane to come over here. It was quite the day, and already seems like years ago. I was walking in the unknown and wasn't prepared for any of this. All of the research I did, all of the paperwork I filled out, all of endless nights I stayed up thinking about that day did nothing to prepare me for all of this.
Eventually the light fades and the night has returned. I've done nothing other than lay on my bed in the same position all day, alone. I don't plan on going out, I never plan on it. Until my cell phone rings and the voice on the other end is telling me about the new theme for the evening at the bop or at the bar. I refuse, half-heartedly and part of me really doesn't want to go out. Part of me just wants to stay in, recover from the other nights out and be lazy. But the other part doesn't want to be left out. I don't want to be the one who's listening to the story, rather I want to be the one telling it. I want to be the one who laughs, who dances, who cries, who runs, who screams, who drinks, who argues, who plays, who does it all. I want it to be me.
So I force myself out of bed, take some more pro plus and that's when I fall back into the shadows and you come out into the light.