I thought I would be freaked out to be by myself, but it's actually not so bad. I don't jump at little bumps or creaks in the floorboards and I don't fear that there will be an axe murderer standing on the other side of the shower curtain when I pull it back all nekkid and vulnerable. And luckily, two years of sleep deprivation has allowed me to fall into an immediate REM sleep, as opposed to laying (lying? That's the only part of the English language that still eludes me...) awake, worrying that the clown from Are You Afraid of the Dark? is going to come mess. my. day. up. No, instead I plummet into a deep sleep that doesn't end until the next morning when I awake to find that I have not only slept through all four of my alarms, but have in fact managed to turn them all off in my golden slumber, leaving me only twenty minutes until my train comes a choo-choo'ing into the station.
This is not to say there aren't times when I wish I had someone to rock me gently while I softly weep into their shoulder with anxiety. For example, last night I was sitting on my couch, enjoying my dinner of grilled cheese and wine. Suddenly, I hear 'Pow Pow Pow Pow Pow!', then a brief pause, then another round of pows.
"GUNSHOTS!!!" I yelled to no one, while Kirby briefly lifted his head up from his nap and gave me a look of 'What the fuck do you want me to do about it?', before licking himself and falling back into his puppy dream of, well, licking himself probably. Just then I heard yet another string of shots that were surely heading right for my living room window, followed by lots of angry, murderous shouting.
My panicked inner yells of gunshots (exclamation point) were soon replaced with, 'Shit, I wanted to go to Wawa. But I can't. Because I'll die.'
While I sat and pondered whether a candy bar and pack of Camel Lights were worth my precious, pessimistic life, my phone rang. Surely it was the police checking to make sure I was okay and not sprawled out in a puddle of my own blood while my darling, soulless dog stepped over my cold, lifeless body to chow down on some kibble. Alas (that's right, I said alas), it was my courageous older brother. He must have tapped into our as-of-yet unused sibling ESP and realized that his baby sister was not only in distress, but in grave suburban danger as well.
"Mike!" I yelled, hoping he would hear the panic in my voice and realize the SHEER TERROR of the situation. "How can you tell if you're hearing gunshots or fireworks???"
Luckily, my brother is both a physics and gun enthusiast (in a perfectly safe way, so calm down all you anti-NRA hippies). He proceeded to ask me specific questions about the sounds I had heard, like did I hear five or six shots and were they evenly spaced apart? After receiving a lesson a how they must have been fireworks because in order for a gunman to reload that fast he would need something or other and yadda yadda yadda, my mind felt roughly 30% more at ease and I thanked my white knight of a brother.
"So if I go to Wawa I won't get shot?" I asked.
"No," my brother laughed. Then, he suddenly got quite serious. "But Alexis, if that ever does happen, if you get held at gunpoint or something, try not to piss off the guy mugging you, ok? Like, don't scream and curse and be all annoying. You know how you get. Like when you failed your driver's test the first time. Just give him your money. Or else he will probably shoot you."
"WHAT ARE YOU IMPLYING?!?!?!?!?!?!?" I roared, throwing my wine glass against the wall and standing up as my enormous green muscles burst through the seams of my clothes.
...Ok, in reality I just laughed and told him to have a good night. But the other version is totally better, right?
Here's the bottom line: I live above two guys (Yay!) who already don't seem to like me very much (What?! Boooo). I don't have a TV so Hulu has become my computerized lover. I sleep on an air mattress on the floor because I can't afford a real bed yet, and my diet consists of beer and cupcakes. All in all, I think I'm doing pretty fucking well.
