The Sea is Full of Corks

I'm a cork and so are you. And so is everyone I live with. And there's a lot of us.

The ocean is a big place, but this corner of it is small. And I live in a small corner of a small corner that is overcrowded with drifting souls.

I live in a halfway house for people wanting to move to the city. It's people in transition. I fit in in that regard but fit out in plenty of other ways.

There is always the struggle between introverts and extroverts. Generally, even when living with people, I can escape into myself when I need to. This place makes it hard.

Firstly, I work from my room far too often. And working from home, there's often people around the house crowding the kitchen when all I want to do is get a drink of water or make an egg—without all that chit chat.

And there are some individuals who take up more than their fair share of the space. They are not only physically larger but also such big personalities that there is little psychic room left over for the rest of us.

Especially little for us introverts who don't like having to fight for space.

That was the brewing situation over the last month, finally culminating this last weekend.

The guy in question was large and in charge and carried around with him such weight—psychic weight—that his already overbearing personality became suffocating with any addition of alcohol. And when he drank, he drank.

And on the final weekend, he created an entire weekend of farewell to himself. And on the first night of the weekend of debauchery—he really is a Dionysian character—he got drunk, we all did, and he got surly. This is a guy who seems to love people, but it may just be that he loves being around people because he needs an audience in order to feel happy.

I am not that way and so find it irritating.

My mind was getting more and more polluted with the psyches of others. And I literally, at times, had a hard time hearing myself think.

Finally, respite. He left—much to the joy of 1/2 of the people living here—and we are left to our own thoughts. Now it's time to organize them and try to go back to the focus I was once so close to prioritizing.