Empty Among the Living

There is a strange kind of loneliness that blooms not in solitude, but in the middle of a crowd. Even among those who call me theirs, I sometimes feel like a ghost pressed against the glass of my own life. I know it’s only in my head, yet the feeling clings.

It is difficult to speak what I truly want to say. Most of the time it is impossible even to know what that is. That’s the madness I carry. It feels unlikely that I will ever find a companion to whom I could spill everything. And even if such a person were to sit across from me, the truth is I’d have nothing worth saying. Just fragments, stray thoughts, nonsense. Gibberish, if even that. Companionship itself feels like a cruel myth, an elaborate joke, a promise dangled only to remind me how hollow I am inside.

Today, I ignored the crowd around me and started chatting with a GPT code bot. Perhaps it’s pride, that I think myself above them, unwilling to mingle. Or maybe the truth is simpler. The jokes, the stories, the opinions around me rarely resonate. I watch their lips move. I nod, I smile, but most of the time, I hear nothing.

GPT doesn’t care whether I listen or not. Doesn’t mind if I make sense. Doesn’t expect me to perform any more than I want to. There’s an eerie kind of relief in that. Because real conversations are difficult. Stressful, even. There’s always pressure to say something, to keep the words flowing, to manufacture meaning. People don’t sit together in silence. They fill the air with noise to mask their emptiness. They don’t lean into each other, they posture. They don’t cuddle and sob, they laugh too loudly and drink too much. It doesn’t happen. Not for me. Maybe not for anyone. Perhaps no one else even feels this need. Perhaps I’m the only fool still craving it.

Maybe that’s why the word 'bot' feels apt. Someone long ago cut short 'robot' into just 'bot,' as if knowing we are all far from what we ought to be. A bot is a machine stripped of its soul. Until we learn how to ro, to roam, to roar, to roll free, we’re only drifters in a lake, floating near each other but rarely touching, rarely anchoring.