As you are aware, our apartments face one another. I
look out my window and I can see you carefully hanging your delicates on the
clothesline in your living room, waiting for them to dry from the wash while the
sun casts long, commanding shadows on your light blue wall. Alternatively, this
means you can see that at dinnertime, I am still in my mismatched pink pajamas
and messy bun, staring at the sunset like it’s fraudulent, its very existence
pointless, the significance of a day undermined entirely and unjustly by a
forever-changed life as we know it.
Normally I would never notice these intimate
and intricate details of you or your life, but since neither one of us have left
our apartments for the better part of two months, I am acutely aware of how you
operate within the confines of your home. I know that at dinner you will sit
cross-legged on the couch, biting your nails and impatiently staring at your
computer, and I wonder what you are waiting for. I know that when you unload the
dishwasher, you start with the utensils first, usually on the phone with someone
who makes you talk with your hands and laugh with your head thrown back. And I
know that when the sun goes down, the TV doesn’t come on and nobody comes over
before you turn out the lights and fall peacefully asleep.
Strange as all of
this is, I am comforted in knowing that you can see me too. When I catch you
looking at me it feels like you’re exercising terms of an agreement we both had
no choice but to come to. I like that we have found our groove in this regard,
two women around the same age, living in solitude but also in close proximity to
one another with the general knowledge and understanding that if we want to have
any natural light throughout the day, the private details of our respective
lives will be exposed like see-through glass in a fishbowl. Nobody comes over to
my place before bed either, but you already knew that. At this point, we might
as well be goldfish.
I saw you watching me pace around my apartment on Wednesday
morning as I peered into the abyss of a potential anxiety attack. I saw it coming
because I shattered my plate while trying to make pancakes that I didn’t end up
eating, my blood sugar low and hands shaky. I tried to remember why I might be
feeling this way, but nothing came to mind other than the thought that perhaps I
might not be real, that none of this was. When the anxiety finally passed and I
could take a full breath again, I cried. It felt so good to cry like that. I
thought about pulling the curtains closed, my head spinning and my body feeling
extra small and weak, but in the end, I was too upset to care that you could see
me. This is how my Wednesday is going, I wanted to say to someone, but nobody
was asking.
A few weeks ago you may have noticed I went out for a couple hours.
I was at my friend’s house for dinner. They’re in their fifties and the whole
time I felt so yucky, like a bank-robber about to steal the most valuable thing
they have – their health. They wanted to play dominoes but I didn’t want to
touch too much, and when I said that, they laughed and said that there are some
people you are just willing to take a chance for. A
little while later their daughter called and they didn’t mention that I was
over, the omission strategic and clearly pre-meditated between the two of them.
I left swiftly and quietly, and haven’t been able to answer their phone calls
since. Twice they’ve texted to ask if they did anything wrong. No, I keep
saying…I did.
Do you miss having someone hug you? I do. I miss someone telling
me to pass the salt or ask me how work was. I miss sitting at my favorite
restaurant bar, eating alone, but with others. Sometimes when I go for a walk
and people look at me, then I know for sure I am real. I must still exist
because they are looking at me.
On my worst days, I wonder if I choked on
something and died, here in Unit Six on 52nd Street, who would know? Without
anywhere to be, what flags would be raised? I hope that you would be the one to
figure out that something was wrong. I know you’d know by the second day. On days
when I see that your curtains are still closed at noon, I ask myself if you are
okay. Usually you like them open. I hope that you are surviving, and I am always
relieved when I glance over there a few hours later and the curtains have parted
like the sea, confirming that you are in there, alive and well enough to open
them up to the day and its gift of forgiving sunshine.
I see that you have big
framed pictures on your wall, but I can’t tell what they are of exactly. I know
you adjust them now and again, looking at them carefully and with intention. Do
you miss the people in those photos? I think about how much has changed in a
short amount of time. We should have told those squirmy kids in class, not much
longer. The grumpy business travelers, this will be your last one in a while.
Our grandparents in Church. Our friends in-person. Our parents, in our lives,
arms around each other with some memorable place in the background, posing
together for a photograph. This will be your last one in a while.
I read an
article recently that said that a silver lining in all of this may be the birth
of a new awareness regarding the importance and power of human connection. It
talked about the depths of sadness and emptiness that society will be forced to
navigate in this new world, one void of touch and the tangible, replaced by
visual and virtual. By design we will crave what we took for granted, forever
remembering this period of time, and never taking one another, the very essence
of each other, for granted again.
It made me think of you, Girl Across the Way.
In the rare instances where we lock eyes for a second, I want to tell you that I
am lonely too. That I’ll open my curtains every day this goes on if you do too.
That if you have an anxiety attack and break a plate or cry, I’ll still be here,
shuffling around in my pink pajamas, just across the way.
I want to tell you
that you exist because I am looking at you.
