OOC: It's okay! I've been shut in for the past week slaving over an essay (for my mythology subject, ironically), so I've had no opportunity to RP, either. :)
She was surprised when the woman spoke to her, and by how closely the offhand remark mirrored her own feelings. Inexplicably, it drew her mind back to a half-forgotten memory of a conversation in a bar, six, maybe seven years back. She didn't remember anything of the gig or the audience or the venue, but she and one of the other comics had hit it off and after the show they'd got to talking. "Nothing is unique," he'd opined, four or five beers later. She had protested, accused him of cynicism, but he had remained adamant. "It's true. You take any poor, sad fucker who's ever been dumped by a girl. How many of them d'you think moaned and wept on the inside and all kinds of melodramatic things and wrote shitty poetry about how nobody has ever felt a pain like theirs? It's bullshit. Because the world's bigger than that.
"At any moment, there are hundreds of millions of people in the world feeling love or hate or boredom or mild annoyance. Or utter joy. Or exquisite despair. Everything we feel, every sensation we experience has already been by countless other people. Some of them probably at this very second. It just stands to reason. Nothing's unique."
At the time, it had seemed an unspeakably depressing concept. Now, as she remembered it, she realised that it was anything but, and she saw what the young comic had been trying to say. Nobody was ever alone. It was the reason he was able to mock his own woes so easily in front of a crowd of strangers. Nobody was alone, and before folk started to take themselves and their troubles too seriously, they ought to take the time remember that.
"Me too," she agreed, smiling warmly. "It's like spring came and happened while I wasn't looking. It's beautiful today."