A Rational Panic

Soulful soundtracks serenade her as she sits on the sill of the bay window in her room, writing. She stares out at the rain, wondering if it has disrupted her plans for the night; probably not—to stay in would only serve to let her wallow in her solitude.

Solitude. She’s been doing a lot of thinking about that lately. By her own choice, she’s moving through the days alone now; it’s been a while since she’s had anyone by her side and despite the amount of time elapsed, she still feels the void—as palpable as though there was something there rather than something missing.

But then, it’s not like she’s looking for a relationship. As discussed with another newly single friend of hers, it’s about meeting new people and just having a good time for the hell of it. Learning more about the times and about herself; trying new things and having new experiences; growing just that little bit more. Dating around may and may not be the term, but it’s basically the idea. But then arises the question of how to meet those new people.

Out of school and comfortably working in a quiet office, there don’t happen those chance-encounters that used to while waitressing her way through University. The prospect of having to chase down men at clubs or bars or chat-rooms or elsewhere does not appeal to her at all and instead she is forced to be content with the passive inactivity that she opts for.

She pauses a moment to look out the window, seeing past the rivers running down to the days that now seem so far away, when she used to find phone numbers scribbled on napkins or receipts, or to the business cards so slyly slipped into her hand. She hates that before she always just threw those away—now she can only wish that those things would ever happen again, even if she still did nothing about them.

While she won’t be the chaser, she’s been told that neither will the men; apparently other females of her age and mindset are all too eager to get serious and talk marriage too soon and this is why the men are so distant. She thinks it absurd, but that is probably due to the fact that she’s not of that mindset. She might have been a year ago, but not now. Realistically, she’s not ready to have to take care of anyone else other than herself—she’s not a babysitter and she’s felt like that too many times over too much of her life to want to risk having that fall upon her again with someone new.

She looks up from her writing to notice the time. It’s only half an hour from the time her friend arranged to pick her up for the film festival that night. She decides to put her writing down for the moment; it’s not as though she managed to have any mind-clearing epiphanies like she’d hoped. She closes the cover of her journal and just sits for a moment before beginning to get ready to leave. She takes a sip from the mug of tea that sits next to her. It’s at that moment that she thinks of someone else she knows that also drinks tea in the evenings. She smiles.