On Saturday night, a car hit my house, inches from the bedroom window by which I lay frozen with terror. Then it sped off into the night like some kind of maniac-monster from a childhood nightmare. It was very scary.
The next morning I found out that I know the driver. She lives in the next apartment: her kitchen window looks into mine. I became the angriest I've ever been in my life. This has not abated.
I've lived alone for four months in a new town since dissolving a partnership of ten years. There was no one I could think to call at 2.30 in the morning. So when I sat down, heart racing, eyes staring, hands shaking, having inspected the damage as best possible in the inky, terrifying dark, I tweeted about it. Not to "broadcast" my "life" but because this is the fastest way I know to reach a large proportion of the people I consider my closest friends.
And I needed some friends.
Since that time, I have spoken with police, encountered the partner of the car's driver, visited the pub to find out what they knew, and called the real estate agent to discuss repairs and issue eviction notices. I also discovered that I was too scared to stay in my house and drove an hour further west, to an old, double-storey hotel I know where the rooms are on the second floor.
But none of the friends I'd tried to reach through Twitter have called or emailed to check I'm okay, and that I still have a house to live in.
No one. Zero people. 0.
At least some know it happened, because they acknowledged my tweets. I know people are busy, but to be honest, I'm not sure what to make of this.
Perhaps I'm overreacting about the terror and the potential death and the myriad things I'd like to do to my neighbour. Maybe I've been living in the country too long, and have become accustomed to a degree of unselfconscious human concern that no longer exists in the city. Has working from home made me feel the lack of human contact more than other people? Do I expect too much of Twitter as a human communications medium? Are my friends are embarrassed that I would use the service for such a personal purpose or, conversely, do they assume that if I'm capable of putting fingers to keyboard everything must be fine? Am I just being inconsiderate of their lives and too wrapped up in my own problems? Is it conceivable that they don't realise I actually need them?
I don't really know. All I do know is that I could have been dead, and I would love to hear the warm voices of my friends again.
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