being alone
There was a girl I was talking to there for a while that had a really messed up phone. She could answer calls and hear the other person talking but she couldn’t reply. The thing is about her, she was sort of not a big talker anyway. A normal conversation with her usually amounted to her never making a reply. She even told me she just wanted to hear me, so that I should just call and talk. This kind of sounds great at first, free license to jabber on and on. Honestly though, it wasn’t so great. The normal signs that someone is listening weren’t there—the faint sound of someone taking a breath or the mmm of understanding. Without those things I felt slightly like a crazy person. Mumbling incoherently to no one. But the timer kept on going, assuring me that she hadn’t hung up. I talked to her like that for an hour one night. And afterward I felt sort of off kilter. I went deep into the recesses of myself and said unguarded things. I started wondering if she thought I really was crazy. I told her I was done talking and wished I could hear her voice just once. I told her I loved her and I hung up the phone and felt the same as when the call was still going on. There was still the vacant feeling of being alone.
