Flying South Reading

Little thing I read at Flying South last night. It's an amazing mental health themed evening run by some very cool people. I would encourage everyone to go at least once. It's on the last Friday of every month. There is poetry, prose, music, tea AND cakes! 


                                            Walking in the cold

I walk to work in the dim morning light. The air is frosty, forcing its way through the gaps in my clothing and licking my skin, creating the soft kiss of goose bumps. I trudge on with my two honour degrees weighing down on me. They told me education would get me places, would make me money and that would create happiness. Yep, thanks for that shitty advice. My breath pours from my lips, dewy drops of oxygen turning to clouds that I walk through, frizzing my just-straightened hair. Another sign of a stellar day. My bad mood, the one I've been in for about six months, creaks awake stretching out its long arms. It expands its massive body, making itself comfortable in my chest.

I play the same game I do every morning; the what-if? game.

What if I quit?

What if I ran away?

What if I got a little bit sick?

Not so much that I’d die, but maybe a little bit of appendices or even a broken leg. Something that got me off work, that would let me have a break from this darkness I’m living in. Today I decide on a nice flu, something that would last about two weeks. I just need the chance to sleep.
The icy ground tries to trip me up, a slide my shoes fail to grip. I tip-toe across the danger balancing on the balls of my feet. My phone tells me I’m late, the time flashing with never-ending accuracy. As I squint at the bright screen, tiredness creeps into my bones burrowing into the marrow for warmth. I shouldn't have stayed up last night, but going to sleep meant waking up on today. If you don't sleep then tomorrow never comes. Except, of course, it always does, hitting me with cold air and my own bad advice. I hate my past self in moments like this. Fucking idiot never learns.
The leaves have fallen off the trees in the last few weeks. I crush there withered bodies into the ground, no crunch left. Just a soggy mess clinging to the soles of my cheap shoes. The identical houses change to shops, smiling mannequins looking down at me. I look for my footsteps, for the imprints I must have left on the concrete. I've walked it hundreds of times in the last few years. They're invisible to everyone but me.
There was a moment I willingly climbed into this rut, scaled down its walls and took shelter in its hidden depths, its listed routines. But now the walls have grown so tall that no matter how hard I try to get out, I'm lost down here. Looking up into a world I can't quite get to, touches of it on drunken nights and in forbidden kisses. My freedom is intricately linked to inappropriate men and a hazy sense of recklessness.
The shop sits in front of me, bloated on its feast of consumerism. It looms like a villain on the horizon, watching me with squinted eyes and dastardly plans. I'm sure it didn't mean to ruin my life. It wasn't its intention to dissolve the edges of my carefully constructed boxes, slipping into the different compartments and painting them its dull shade of grey.
I unlock the door with shaking hands, my gloves a distance memory from Saturday night. I switch off the blare of the alarm waking up cold birds in the parking lot. They screech in annoyance and fly away, covering the sky in a fluttering black blade. I turn the lights on to what should be a perfectly manicured floor and curse whoever left the rails of clothes and the mess of rubbish behind the till.  Good work doing your job, assholes. It's not that I dislike the people I work with but sometimes, when it's cold and I've had two hours of sleep with a full day is looming ahead of me, I really, truly, despise them. Just do your job and nobody gets hurt.
I turn away, muttering jinxes and black words, the negativity building until I stop feeling like me and turn into her. The work girl, my shitty version, the one who gets me through the day. The smell of coffee perks me up as I set up the day, floor plan, emails and handovers. A short apology note for not finishing. Too busy they say but when I check the money it tells me otherwise. They just weren't bothered, wanted to get home and that’s a feeling I understand.

Only nine hours to go...

I shrug it off, the clinging anger, and try to envelop myself in an I-don’t-care attitude. It results in the loss of another tiny fragment of who I am and what I want. I don’t really know who that is any more. Or have a clue what I actually want from my short life. All I seem to know is this clogging black feeling and my inability to find the light.