Writing Prompt Wednesday #115

#10: Write a story from within a bubble. https://blog.prepscholar.com/creative-writing-prompts

    Venessa was in a bubble, every single day. It might not seem like it to the crowds of people who surrounded her, who passed her. They floated on by without giving her a second glance, without wondering what was wrong. To them, she was ordinary. Normal. But to her, she was trapped within.
    She wasn’t quite sure when it’d happened. Yes, she was used to being separate from the people around her. She’d always been a quiet, keep-to-yourself type of person. Some people called her shy. Some called her anti-social. To her, she just was.
    But when had she become this far removed from society? When had she first looked around the office and realized that she didn’t know any of the names of the people around her? Faces, sure. But not names, not stories. Never stories. When had she first sat alone in her apartment and realized that she had not a single person in the city she could spend a Friday night out on the town with? When had she realized it had been two years since her last real date? When had she realized how utterly alone she was?
    She didn’t know.
    The hardest part was that she didn’t really mind. Somewhere inside of herself, she knew that this was no way to live her life. Humans were social creatures. They demanded attention, connection. Living alone, grappling to talk with anyone of her own species about any personal matters shouldn’t have brought a bad taste to her mouth. She knew it was unhealthy. She knew she was miserable.
    And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to care.
    What was the pain of being alone compared to the pain of being burned? It wasn’t even a comparison. Once you let people into your bubble, into your life, what was there to do? They left. They left and popped the bubble around you and there was nothing for you to do but to cry and pick up the pieces that they’d left strewn in their wake. 
    That life wasn’t for her. No, much better to stay in her bubble. Much safer to deal with the dull monotony of being alone than to deal with the crushing blow of being abandoned. Because what was there to do but for people you let in to leave? It wasn’t their fault. It was the way of life. Venessa had never known anything different. Better to never let anyone close to her heart in the first place. It was easier this way. Safer. 
    Or so she told herself.