Self Asylum in the Desert

.

Mojave Mimosa

I am home bound now, all the time.  Yet my life is full.  

I wake up enthused to continue what I started day before.  Through the internet I have friends all over the globe. Forms of entertainment are almost endless.  I can think of a song and within seconds play several versions of it on YouTube with visuals from anonymous persons all around the planet.  

For one-on-one contact, I have only to spend an hour or so with my neighbors to realize that face-to-face contact is really not the best way for humans to communicate, and I am back online. 

Once a week I hobble three blocks to the Farmers Market.  That one excursion wipes me out for the rest of the week, but it gets me out among other humans, which they say is important.  There is usually live music, so I stop a spell and tap my foot, but rarely speak to anyone. 

My job comes in online, the pay goes quickly to my bank, and to top it off, it turns out I live in old-lady heaven. Across the street from my senior complex are both the post office, where I have to go to overnight my check each month, as well as the public library. So from my room I go online to the library site and order obscure books and videos; then when the library site says they've arrived, I venture across the street and get them. I pull off this excursion, also, without interacting with another human being, by finding the item on the "hold" shelf, then running it through a self checkout machine, never having to smile at a librarian with my rotten teeth and see her grimace at the sight.

I pretend to be in a victim-witness protection program, and in a way I am, of my own making, so I have to remain an enigma in my own mind.  If I open up to someone, some of the stuff from the last seven years will spill out, and cause a schism so large, I will have to move to a new town again. So I talk to almost no one. 

As long as I don't lose my cane, I can make the trips to the library and market each week.  If I lose my cane, as long as I don't lose my job, I can order another cane from Amazon, or even a Walker, and it, like my groceries and supplies, will show up delivered to my door by a very polite uniformed young man, who will refuse my tip. 

Life could be worse.

-Kay Ebeling

*currently reading Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach and it is informing my words.