How many people would believe you when you used to say you were a loner who didn’t understand loneliness? You could be in a room full of people and wanted to scream, wanted to leave with the person who brought you to that awful place, or at least take a quiet stroll outside for a few moments. You could call these minutes “cigarette moments,” even though you didn’t smoke. But you needed a deep drag of the heavy fog outside. Crossing over again through the threshold, you liked keeping to yourself and keeping your thoughts alive. You weren’t quiet because you were shy or full of secrets or wanted to keep up a mystique at those parties, but because you just didn’t have anything to say. You mostly dealt with misconceptions and misunderstandings.

But you stay in now. You don’t bother with these other places anymore because it feels like the room is always empty anyway. You don’t get cramped, you don’t need air anymore. You don’t feel like screaming. You keep to yourself, but it doesn’t matter which room you are in now because you’ve lost your center. Remembering those cigarette moments, you were able to say who you were and you could point it out: “It’s me versus them.” Maybe you would laugh about that a little. Maybe, at times, it turned more into you versus you. But neither seems appropriate anymore when you are forgetting how exactly to use the word “you.”

There is nothing romantic about this. This is just about pulling in until the edges are gone.