Empty 2.

I've written a bit more of that story I started mid-late last year. Here's the link to the earlier bit: http://modnarama.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/empty.html Sorry it's taken me so long to post up some more. Only actually gone back to it twice; so I've got two sections here, one from today and one from a bit before.

And you feel it. If people don't know me, when they try to come and share with me, as soon as they touch they recoil - as if I've got some sort of disease that they could catch. And the thing is, it's kind of a big thing in society if you avoid contact with people. Because it means you don't want to share with them, don't want to be with them, you want to keep everything to yourself. You get a couple like that, but they don't get very far. 

But everyone stays away from me. They don't even try to hide it any more. I have no family. No friends. I'm a hermit by force rather than choice. I don't want to live like this. This isn't . . . life. It's not really living. It's just a half-life, a shadow of one. A shadow of a life is barely a life at all. A footprint on a beach, an echo in a seashell.
  

Perhaps you don't quite get it. Try this image. Have you ever played with water droplets before? They're quite incredible, actually. The surface tension holding each droplet together gives it some interesting properties. For example, if they get to just within touching distance.... shloop! They clump together. Clump is a bad word, because it's a liquid, but you know. Water droplets love each other, that's the point. But you put an oil droplet in.... the water droplets don't want to know. They leave that little oil droplet all by itself. 

OK, so maybe you didn't play with water and oil when you were a kid, but you get the point. Water and oil don't mix, and I'm the little oil droplet. Or maybe think of it this way: it's like being mute. And deaf. Nothing comes in, nothing comes out. But you get to see everyone else communicating perfectly fine, and being happy, and loving each other, and... yeah, you get it. 

It's not that I can't communicate. Obviously I can. But it's a thing. Think of it like shouting all the time, instead of just talking. Now it's talking instead of touching. You still talk, but only when you need to communicate far away or to lots of people at once. It's considered somewhat rude to use if the situation doesn't actually need it. Some people, if they really concentrate, can actually almost completely eliminate the need to talk at all - they can project their thoughts, when they really focus. It's a pretty rare talent, but those who have it really don't talk at all. Of course, it is then difficult to tell then if they're actually able to speak or are just mute. I've considered stepping on a couple of toes to ascertain just that, now and then. 

It wouldn't be so bad if people tried to make it easier for me. Actually talked to me now and then. But they don't. By and large, I live in a silent world. And since nobody talks to me, I tend not to talk very much either. Just a word or two now and then, to make sure I haven't gone mute as well.