My Cardboard Balcony

Sore Lot by Belinda Roddie There's much to be learned from the sore lot. Those who ache in the wrong places, and those who can't walk without groans, and no amount of pill popping can pop a bone back into its proper angle, or a heart snuggled against the appropriate cushions in the chest. You think you're sympathetic toward them. But it is only when your head pounds and your back swells that you share in the dilation of their desperate pupils, the urge to see a cure for their maladies, the pavement rising to meet their arthritic knees - old before they are even considered young, dying when they still have enough breath to fuel fifty more years. In pain when the docs can find nothing. Say nothing. Feel nothing.

I thought that, when I pulled the plug of my computer and swore off the Internet for a month, I'd be crushed with a stark, impeccable sense of loneliness. Seemingly, I was losing contact with hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Long distance friends, old acquaintances, teachers miles away. I wouldn't be typing little blurbs to them or clicking that good old thumbs up icon on my sites. Three days in, however, I was outside more, talking to more local people, and becoming more active. I was the opposite of lonely. I was liberated.