Sleeping alone on the floor has a conceptual appeal, a certain comfort in its discomfort. A sweater for a pillow, a $10 camping mat as an upgrade from the hardwood below. I can't tell you how many spare mattresses I've turned down.
Last week I turned down an offer of an umbrella as I stomped out of the house at 8 in the morning, late for class in pouring rain on zero sleep, with the justification "Today seems like a day to be soggy and cold. At least then I'll have a visible excuse to be grouchy."
Tonight I turned down three different rides, electing instead to walk up the steepest longest section of a city built on a hill. And I liked it.
Initially I listen to pretty, relaxing music to lull me to sleep. Agitated and owlish, I turn it off and replace it with the most depressing songs I can find. Once I'm suitably melancholy, I play music that reminds me of heartbreak...rejection...isolation.
By this point lonely and miserable, I begin trolling Skype and Facebook Chat for some sort of human connection, someone to listen and care, wanting a hug that I can't have over the Internet. Engage in some thoroughly unsatisfactory, superficial conversations. Try to bring up that I'm having a hard time. Receive unsatisfying and utterly predictable responses from people who I know can't give me what I want.
Not sure what I want.
But I know I haven't found it yet.
I also know it's 3:30 in the morning, I have to get up for class in a few hours, I'm going to be a wreck all day. Again. I have stayed up too late, gone out of my way to upset myself, and now, with no resolution whatsoever, and certainly no hug, I lie alone in my torn sleeping bag on the floor. In this ridiculously uncomfortable and isolated situation that I have gone out of my way to put myself in.
And I feel better than I did before.
I would give anything for adventure if you would give everything for love.
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