stranger

It’s almost as if I reach a level of unhappiness and just stay there. In my dreams, I’m always stuck on the elevator in my old dorm. I’m between the 24th floor and the 28th floor, the 28th floor is thin and jagged, the skyscraper cutting through the blisteringly cold ether of Chicago clouds and the hallway is at a slant. But there’s only two ways out: the elevator or the staircase. And I’m always stuck in the elevator.

As if I’m idling in exposition and as if the exposition is patterned with the carpet of dread and the steel doors of impatience.

I wake up and do the same thing. I know every Saturday I’ll be the only one to deep clean my apartment, despite living with two other women. One bed rots, the other works until her clothes are damp and the eczema swells up on her tiny hands. Sundays are a nebulous day in between, I let myself sleep in a bit (just a bit, not like last year when my depression weighed on me and I slept until 4pm only to wake up and drink red wine all night); I revive myself with two cups of strong, Italian coffee. I do my chores, I read. Sometimes I go out and buy things. Then, the week.

Going to bed every night just shy of 10:00PM, waking up before the morning meeting. Sipping coffee. Searching for jobs and applying to them only to be washed and rinsed through the endless cycle of rejection. Homesickness. A required AA meeting. Coming home to a frozen Indian dinner heated in the microwave or else, enchiladas. A trip to Walmart or the Dollar Tree. A trip to the vape store.

I feel like I’m glazed in amber. My depression isn’t so bad, I take Lexapro, I take Gabapentin, but it’s still there. Like background noise. Like snow on a TV screen with no signal.

Inevitably, the week continues. People come and people leave the halfway house, I remain. I vacuum. I clean the bathroom and kitchen. I go to AA meetings. I dread when my vape in my flavor of the week runs low and my bank account dwindles. I know when I receive an email from a job I applied for what it will say: “unfortunately, we’ve chosen to move ahead with other candidates”.

I watch the frozen enchilada or the butter chicken become hot in the microwave. I walk down the Old Dixie Highway. I wait for a package from Amazon or for money to hit my bank account.

I had a dream last night I was in an airplane, at a safe distance above my city. But it wasn’t my city at all, but islands. They had put wrought iron fences around the embankment of the small towns to prevent heightened water levels.

Last night, while I was drifting to sleep, I thought how odd it was, in the bed I was in. How many different beds I’ve slept in over the last four and a half years. How nothing feels like home anymore. How I feel like a stranger in my own life.