Alone

You feel alone. Not in the sense that you are alone, but in the sense that you feel just a little bit lonely. You’re more connected to your loved ones than ever before, but these smartphone screens sometimes create an even bigger disconnect in place of physical distance.

It might feel a bit strange taking your phone out while having a discussion in person. Still, possessed, you read through the electric messages while sitting across your friend. Grasping for that strange non-connection.

Some nights you stay up later than you should. It’s not always that you fully enjoy it - more like you can’t shut down. Not quite clinical insomnia, but it’s enough to make you wonder if you’ll ever wake up feeling refreshed. Perhaps that’s also the fault of the screen you’re glued to, but still you persist. Might as well browse something to wind down.

You feel like everyone has these same feelings. It’s a joint struggle. You see it posted online. Talked about. Shared.

And still, at times, you feel so very alone.

This story was originally posted on Reddit, /r/WritingPrompts, with the instruction:

Write a passage of any length that is in 2nd person that almost everyone alive today could read it and think they were the “you” the passage is about