Isaac: Low Beam

Am I insane? Be honest with me.

I ask myself that question a lot these days, but right now it's because I chose to travel hundreds of miles to spend two weeks I won't get back at the cheapest bed and breakfast in Old Orchard Beach, by myself. (And the "breakfast" part is being generous.) Granted, I wasn't supposed to be alone; the plan was to make the arduous trek up here with my best friend. My girl best friend, who told me to get a room with one bed. You do the math. Of course that doesn't give me a pass for getting a nonrefundable reservation for a room with someone prone to depressive episodes when she's especially stressed, even if New England and the beach were her idea to begin with.

And you know, I get it. Alice has a lot going on in her life, with swordfighting tournaments (yeah, really), parties with Viking LARPers (not my crowd), invoking whatever dark magic rituals make her so unflappably cool half the time (don't ask me) and dealing with major lifelong mental health issues. And, you know, school and work on top of all that. Her life changes so much, she gets caught up in it, and one day after one of those tournaments I run into her and she's just dead inside. Going to New England would be too much for her, and ultimately I can't blame her. Like I said, she's got a lot going on.

But I don't. The most interesting thing I've done since finals ended is get a new fern for my room. That's how I treat myself, you know. I like to think of myself as a gardener, but I hate working outdoors so I've got a bunch of plants competing for sunlight around the one window in my tiny single dorm room. Some people's majors turn into their hobbies, but that's hard to do when you're an accounting major. So the thought of giving up the one actual plan I'd made for this summer didn't sit right with me. Which is why in a fit of impulsive contrarianism I embarked on twelve hours of solo driving up from Charlottesville, VA, fueled only by spite, to the world's only bed and breakfast with its own blog.

I realize I've kind of been trashing the good name of the Trading Post Inn but, to give it some credit, I've spent a lot of time in here since I got into town. Sure, I've walked around town, paced around the beach for a while and checked out the pier, and I've done all that at least a couple times a day for over a week now. But there's really not much to this place, and I hate sticking around in one spot for too long when I'm by myself in public. Going around on my own, surrounded by all these couples, friends, families out having fun doing things together and genuinely living their lives... Especially the ones my age. It just makes me feel like I'm a fraud, like at any moment somebody's going to turn around and say, ha, look at that creep! What's he doing here? And then I get mad at myself, not only for weirding out entirely hypothetical people, but also for being that paranoid in the first place. I hate sounding to myself like some kind of incel, and it all makes for a vicious cycle of negative thoughts. And I signed up for two weeks of this!

All this means I've spent a lot of time lying around in bed, just a different bed from usual, one from which I can't easily keep an eye on my plants. Or hanging around the Inn, where I can take comfort in the fact that I'm far from the weirdest person here-- I saw a kid who couldn't be older than ten yelling at someone over the phone about a mortgage. I mean, damn, did her parents give her a script or something? It feels like half the BnB is always whispering something to each other whenever I happen to walk by. Which I'm fine with, I don't need to involve myself in random people's problems.

Anyway, that's why I'm bored enough to rant at a blog just barely younger than me which somebody wrote down the link to in the lobby. I wasn't going to overshare this much, but I saw a post on the sidebar with a title about someone wondering if she's supposed to be horny. And if that's the standard I'm working with, I'm not about to stick out very much. (No clue why so many of you keep posting months or even years after your stay, but even I'm not desperate enough to read any more of this thing!)

So, I'll be around the Trading Post Inn for a good while longer. On the off-chance someone who's actually here right now reads this far, and they're similarly bored, you know where to find me.

And maybe you can tell me whether I'm insane for coming here!