I have all day meetings, all days. I catch a train to Clapham Junction, catch a train to Kew Bridge, catch a train to a conference call and pin number. I spend the day in a hot room with men shouting and their business suit collars sticking up. The tables are graveyards for careers and sanity, our phones littering the space like tombstones-Here Lies Reginald, His Ring Tone Born To Be Wild, May He Rest In Peace.

Finally, it is time to leave. I have spent 10 hours of my day there, and I am tired. When I leave the building dusk is coming-Autumn has arrived and brought with it rain and chill, leaves curling from drought-stricken trees like the wrapping of a too-loved crayon. I sidestep puddles and lug my bag closer to me.

Everything about me is tired.

When I get on the train it is packed with people who radiate exuberance. I look around and think I am the oldest person on the train, and I'm not even thinking about age. When I catch sight of myself, a reflection in the darkened window, I am shocked-the deep rings under my eyes look like bruises. I am so completely and utterly sunken that I don't know how people bear it.

Everything about me is defeated.

I get off the train at Clapham, to discover I have to change trains twice more just to try to get home. I am so tired I can't stand it. When I get on the train both myself and two others give up their seat to accommodate a party of elderly travelers-it is our good deed of the day and we fold up like grasshoppers on the carpeted floor of Southwest Trains. Someone smells like L'Air Du Temps, and my jeans feel too tight against my bloated middle. My insect stance has me in the glare of a wall of glass and as I've forgotten my book and am too tired to move, I just look at myself.

Everything about me is broken.

Some days are better than others. I have whole moments when I don't think about it before I remember, and I am nearly crippled with emotions I don't know how to deal with. I cannot step outside of myself and my doctor has refused to prescribe me anything that will help shoehorn me out, so things are one thousand times harder. Someone once commented that they love it when bad things happen to me. I guess that person is happy now.

I've given up looking for answers because there aren't any. It's hard to remember that sometimes, when sucking the foam from the lid of my latte I have a flash, an idea. The flash passes and all that remains is the knotty feeling that warm milk gives me.

I just don't know.

My father was just here. While sitting in the plush chairs of a London theatre about to be entertained and amused by a West End show, he tells me that he always helps my sister out (financially, he says, but what he doesn't know is an affection-starved person views any attention as attention-finance is just the grease to the glare of adoration) because she needs it. She needs help. She can't do it on her own. You, he says, you don't need anyone. You get knocked down (but I get up again) by life and you take care of yourself. She cannot survive without help. You, you are so fiercely independent, you can do anything.

No! I want to scream. You have it all wrong! I pick myself up because I have to! If I had any idea you would've been there for me had I not solved my own crisis, I would'e called you. I am not a hero. I am not strong. I didn't have any other choice, it was fix myself and try again or die.

I don't want to be the strong one. I fucking hate it, I rage at myself and the world, I have moths in my cape and I can't find my other shoe, please don't think of me as put together. I can't keep anything safe, not my mind, not my heart, not even my embryos.

This day, today, is a down.

It happens, and then there is an up.

Maybe tomorrow is better.

I can only wait and see.

Everything about me is wait and see.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 06:03 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 745 words, total size 4 kb.