JOURNAL...SOMETIMES I WANT TO BE

What I want from the big city is to be a stranger. I want to walk outside every morning and be anonymous. I don’t want people to know me. Anywhere. It’s not because I don’t like them. It’s because I do like them. I’m too sensitive, too empathetic to be smiled at by people passing by in their cars. I get emotionally attached to people that give a polite nod or say hello when I’m waiting to cross the street with them; I concoct their life stories in my mind and internalize them

It’s this separation from others’ souls that makes the everyday bearable by leaving me unburdened, free of the emotional baggage, real or imaginary (most often both), of others that I choose to carry. This is why I long for the big city. I want to look at strangers all day long, and I want them to remain strangers until I choose otherwise. I don’t want to know who they are. Not because I don’t care about them, but because I do. Because when they tell me their name and where they’re from, I’ll want to know more, know everything. But that won’t happen; all that will remain of them in my head is an abbreviated biography and a blurry thumbnail photo, half-reality, half-constructed by my mind’s eye. And this is disappointing.