A unique fatigue sets in after a long, wet day, dragging the hems of your soggy jeans across a bus floor and nearly getting bowled over by high schoolers on their way home. It’s loud and uncomfortably warm, and the person in front of you (re: on top of you) smells like that drugstore shampoo you used to buy from a time you’d rather forget.
Common symptoms of hyperindividuality call for simple, over-the-counter remedies: turn up the music, look out the window, and check out of life until you get where you’re going.
There’s the unsettling thrill of being so physically close to people you are emotionally strangers to — we stand face-to-face-to-face, toes stepping on others — but when I look at you I must look away, and you must do the same.
Every time I tap my Compass I commit to the fantasy that nobody else in the world exists, and it makes my stomach churn. It’s a deep-seated anger that masquerades as annoyance over coffee with friends who already understand and are tired of hearing it.
Yes, they say. I feel lonely, too.
And then we take SkyTrains to the opposite ends of the city, in cars packed with other humans, too anxious to let a glance be more than fleeting.
Individual liberties, my ass. The windows fog from our shared breath and we still have the audacity to view mere association as less than beautiful.
Do we not owe each other acknowledgement?
Hello!
Hello?
