I Feel...

I feel disconnected right now.

I've always thought I had the ability to blend in with most crowds, or at least, dance around the edges of them. Right now, though, I feel like I'm always on the outside.

Thing is, I reckon that my current lot of coworkers think I fit right in. That I am part of the crowd.

I don't. I feel like I'm always entering a room halfway through a conversation, and I don't understand what they're saying. I hear them talking in the next aisle, laughing, and wonder why they never talk like that when I'm around.

I'm lonely. Though, as always, I'm only lonely when I'm around people. The problem is I'm almost always around people.

I miss having a conversation. Sitting down, over a cup of tea or whatever, and just talking.

Don't get me wrong, I talk ALL the time. But I talk at people, not with them. I give tours for several hours a day, every day. If someone interjects with a funny comment, I may respond, but then I have to remember the rest of the carriage, and continue the tour. I can't keep going, and maybe, actually, TALK to someone.

Here, amongst the coworkers, it's always talking about the horses. It gets boring after a while, but I feel like everyone else is far more passionate about the horses and the work than I am.

I feel so much like I did as a teenager: never fitting in, always on the outside, looking in. Watching others laughing, having a good time, connecting with each other.

Have I forgotten how to connect?

Did I ever really know?

I remember fitting in with a group after a couple months, and then being one of the crowd. I keep waiting, but it never really happens. Maybe it's because I don't know how to connect with this nationality? Americans are a little bit different from my usual crowd, after all.

When I first got here, everyone kept talking about how you made friends here that would last a lifetime. Even then, I knew I wouldn't. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that some would be people I'd be friendly with, but that I wouldn't really connect with anyone.

Did I accidentally damn myself?

How strange, to think that I may have created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And yet, I came here because I felt like there was a purpose to it, that I was being called. That perhaps, in this part of the world, there would be something for me to learn, as there has been in every other part.

I don't know.

I'm tired.

For 2.5 months I wanted to shower, eat, and get more than 6 hours of sleep, but I only had time to do 2. Perhaps it's all of that catching up to me. I am older than most of my coworkers, after all. And the ones who are older than me are very extroverted, and enjoy a party.

But I felt a calling to come here, and there has been healing, but the effects are subtle. Perhaps that's why I'm so tired, and feeling disconnected.

When I'm done here, I want to sleep for 2 weeks, waking up only long enough to eat and write. Maybe then I'll be able to remember how to talk to a person, rather than at them.

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