I really do suck at keeping up with things sometimes. The story I could've told in 15 minutes, even drunk and unprovoked, is taking much longer than I thought it would. I have trouble thinking in straight lines so I often don't. Forgive the sabbatical. Read this for now:

When you have a lot of time to yourself you can introspect a lot. Awake in the dark, silent dawn, waiting for the insomnia to fade long enough to get an hour of sleep before work. That eerie quiet before the neighbor’s dog starts yipping at every falling fucking leaf. When you just can’t shut your brain off.

Or when you’re stuck waiting for two hours for your store to open up. For the last two months getting to work those two hours early because it’s the only time your ride can drop you off. Public transportation out of the question because if gives you sickening and unbearable panic attacks.

So, you sit by yourself on that bench in the corner hoping no one will bother your for those two hopelessly long hours. You bring a book, an old favorite or the newest Dean Koontz. You can’t get through the first chapter because every five minutes another bum is asking for money or cigarettes.

You bring an mp3 player to drown out the noise of the vagrants and passersby. To make a statement, “Hey fuckers! I have headphones on! You don’t exist!” You’ve built a nice, invisible, public, personal space.

It gets lonely in public, but honestly, there isn’t anyone around worth talking to anyway.

So you introspect.

Your mind wanders from current problems like that goddamn blemish on your credit report from that time when you were twelve when someone stole your social security card to open up a gas company account.
You mind wanders to sex. Old partners, new partners, kinky fantasies with latex, dildos and plenty of lube.

Your mind wanders to internal struggles. Do you really want to be a retail slave for the rest of your life?

Once in awhile an interesting passerby may catch your eye. The perfect kind of character you could use in your not quite thought out plot to bomb the shopping center you’ve grown to hate over the last two years.

Yeah, that kind of alone.

You learn more and more about yourself and why you act and think the way you do. That tough guy act? Picked it up after years of being made fun of for being fat. Commitment issues? All because your mom and dad abandoned you at two months old when drugs became more attractive than a baby. Fear of intimacy? Your godfather fondled you when he thought you were sleeping.

It’s all there. Every minor personality quirk and flaw you can dissect and rationalize until you’re justifying your own sociopathic thoughts.
In introspection you can justify just about anything.

Notes:

I wrote this some time ago, found it cleaning up an old profile somewhere on the internet where I used to be an omnipresence.   I can't bear to delete it for some reason so I am recycling it. Comments, of course, are appreciated.