What I Miss Most

It's funny how many things we take for granted each day. subconsciously, of course, but taken for granted all the same. There are many people in my life who annoy me; their mere presence is a hazard to my sanity. But, they're still in my life, and I still miss those daily trials for my wits.
  I've always lived in densely populated areas in Vancouver, and I've never known anything different than to look out my window to see busses and cars and people going by on their individual journeys. With these rules to fight the pandemic in place, it's eerie to abandoned streets drained of life. Sure, I miss grocery stores and beaches as much as the next person, but things feel a bit deeper than that. 
 The reason I love the bustle of cities so dearly is that each person in a city is so vastly individual from the next in such a beautiful and complex way. We're all trying to make our way through the world unscathed in our own ways, our own journeys, our own means and terms. Each of us is handed a different set of circumstances to endure in a unique way. I love the fact that I be to be a part of someone's story, even for a brief second. The old lady sitting across from me on the bus is on her own path that I can't follow. The man and his daughter walking past me on their way to school are on their own journeys. I'm a part of that for just a second at a time. We all collide for mere moments every day, each different and vastly beautiful and heart breaking and lonesome day of our lives. Imagine what could be changed with a quick hello or a wave and a smile? The world is lonesome and cold and terrifying, truly, but there is something so morbidly stunning about all of it. 
 Oscar Wilde once said that "it takes courage to see the world in all its tainted glory and still to love it". I suppose I just miss feeling like a real person, because I can't witness other people living.