One Is The Loneliest Number

I'm not sure just who it was that sang that song, but it is really fitting for me right now. I arise at 5:00 AM and make the 20 minute trip to Memorial, work furiously for about 13 hours, mount my trusty steed, and gallop the 10 miles back to my very empty apartment. I sheepishly insert the key into the deadbolt, unlatch the door and enter into the most dreadful silence there ever was. No furniture, no noise. It feels like there is not another human being on the face of the entire planet, let alone a one mile radius. Don't get me wrong, Clifford is fabulous, but he doesn't come leaping and bounding to lick your face when he sees you like Foxy and B.B. do whenever I return home to PA. He greets me with more of a gurgle and bubble type effect, floundering about Bikini Bottom.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am not complaining. I am thoroughly blessed to have a place to stay. Heaven knows I might be living in a refrigerator box had I not survived the nursing program at Southern. I often offered up numerous complaints concerning the living conditions and stipulations for housing in Thatcher Hall. Yet I feel as though I might sacrifice an arm, a leg, or even a kidney to click my key in the lock and stride into room 329 with all its smells and sights and sounds. Despite the room's emptiness toward the end, I was never alone. I always had a neighbor or someone down the hall. Even better than that, at least I knew they did not have a criminal record, unlike the woman that knocked on my door the other morning. I would do best to describe her as a cross between a go-go dancer and a bartender. I'm desparately trying not to be stereotypical but her hair was about 6 feet high and she was wearing white lipstick. It was almost as though she got stuck in the 80's, great decade though it was. Case and point, she needed someone to help her jumpstart her car. I did not know her from Adam and although I was in my PJ's and my hair was in every which direction, she did not seem to mind. Frustrated that she had woken me up I nevertheless consented and drove Wanda up the driveway where she jumpstarted her car, thanked me, and drove off into the sunrise. Makes me wonder what other neighbors I have lurking that notice the new girl in town.

As I continue to find my place in this crazy working world, I wonder if it is going to be like this forever. Am I always going to come home to no one? Is there always going to be that dead silence? Is there always only going to be the walls to share my sorrows, frustrations, and joys? Blasted future! If only I could just have a peek.