Alone, Wolves, Etc.

2025 update: 4th paragraph. Last sentence. Unfortunately, it was.

Originally posted elsewhere 29th Feb 2016.

Recently i have moved into an apartment to call my own. Well not quite to call my own as it’s a rental but semantics aside, its mine. I've received so much generosity from friends and family that this hasn't registered as real. Getting out into reality is super easy it seems. I sure it will take a few days for the gravity of this to settle in. There's a shared laundry that I have a key too, but it appears to have a coded lock so it's pointless. I haven't got the code, and I haven't encountered a neighbour to ask about it. I'll contact the rental agency for the details one day, but the move has been such a whirlwind that it has not been on my mind. In hindsight, I should have done a load of washing before moving but here we are. Lesson learned.

While approaching the building last night I noticed a van parked in an unusual spot, but I don't think too much of it. I walk down the path, turn right, walk to my door and try and open it. The entrance to the door is not well lit and I am encumbered by my work belongings. Singlehandedly I fumble for the distinctly scratched up key that I know is for my flyscreen door.

After a few attempted turns it appears to not be working. Obviously, I've grabbed the wrong key. Which means I've either learned the wrong key for the door, or I have a false memory that I trusted. The fallibility of human memory is well documented, so it's not a stretch of the imagination that I have made a mistake. That is until it hits me, I'm trying to open my neighbour’s door.

As I double back the way I came I wonder how I had gotten it so wrong. A simple mistake, sure, but I had walked to and from this door many times over the weekend moving things in. Then I see the van. Which just so happens to be parked in front of a footpath. The footpath I remember from moving. There are two paths, and I have chosen the wrong one. I hope this isn't a pattern of decision making I stick with.

I get inside, put everything in my hands down, and head back out to the car to grab some items I had received from my Nan. As I'm walking back up, I notice that the neighbour on the other side now has their door wide open. Are they watching me? Had they heard me fucking around with the wrong door, does it look like I'm loading someone else's stuff into my car at night? No, no they were not watching me it seems. I had left my own door open to bring things in with ease but insisted on walking past my apartment to the neighbours again. All the while casting judgment onto myself for watching me.

And in that moment, I got a nice reminder of how even when I get worried others are judging me, it could be because I'm being too self-critical. The people around me aren't criticizing me for being imperfect. In this instance they don't even know I exist. If they've seen me, they would have no idea of my identity so the thoughts and opinions of me they form aren't even tangible to my identity. I just must let those thoughts dissipate into the ether. They are heavy burden that I have no need or desire for.