I feel...inhuman.

I fear I am going crazy, but don't they always say that crazy people always think they're getting saner?

I feel like something human has been burned out of me. I have lost interest in relationships.

What are the point of them?

I am not trying to wallow in self-pity. I am simply asking.

I have lost interest.

Looking at faces around me, I no longer see potential. I see shapes. I see flesh stretched over bones. I see ants running around on unimportant errands.

I will get over it. I will regain my touch with humanity again.

Frankly, it scares me that I've lost it, what ever it was. I feel alone and I feel empty.

My lips stretch across my teeth in a facsimile of a smile. But am I really smiling?

What is a smile?

Mike came to work with us today, cleaning out the storage room. I haven't seen him in a long time. He's grown large sideburns and his hair has gotten long and curly. He looks like a leprechaun. I told him as much, and he proceeded to dance, kicking his heels in the air.

He put his arms around me and laughed. His chest was warm, and he held on longer than he probably should have, having a girlfriend and all.

I liked it, though. He came as close to touching me as anyone has in months. I am comfortable with Mike.

I feel like Repunzel, sort of.

But I feel like I built the tower myself, out of bricks of my own anger and fear, and I'm sitting inside at the bottom.

But I can see the sky, so I know it will be alright eventually.

The walls will come down sometime. It will just take time.

I wish it didn't take time, though.

...

As I walk through downtown, going to or from work, I watch people go by.

So many people in suits and ties, conservative blouses and overcoats, flirty skirts and spiked office heels.

I feel apart in my paint stained canvas pants, muscle shirts and wild toques. I feel like I have nothing in common with these people who talk about interest rates, stocks, and children.

I walk through the underground parking, rolling the cart of garbage to the dumpster, sometimes wearing my work clothes, sometimes in heels and long pin-striped skirts, and I look at all these cars around me.

Expensive, all of them. Not a speck of rust. Gleaming in the fluorescent lighting. All angles and sleek lines.

I don't recognize any of them. I have to squint at the stylized script on their back ends to figure out their make.

But then, when parking is thirty dollars a day, I don't expect poor or even middle class people to be parking down there.

Sometimes I'll come across a vehicle that somebody has put post-it notes all over with nasty things written on them. It happens.

I feel sorry for both the owner of the vehicle, and the person who put them there.

The owner, because it never feels nice to have someone do something mean to you.

And the person who did it, because their hate is consuming them so much inside, it's manifesting in their personality.

I hope that never happens to me. I hope I never get poisoned by hate.

...

I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.

I think I'm saying I feel empty. I feel full of ash, when I should be full of life.

I don't know what I'm saying.

.

Rosie.

Before&After