longing on a monday morning

something that i've found that I wrote a long long time ago.

so many things change, so little changes.

SO...

Monday morning. I get up begrudgingly and have a quick bath. I need to wash my hair but the quick bath has become a long bath after falling asleep and now its twenty-five to nine. Getting out of the bath I catch a sight of myself in the fogged up mirror, depressing. I franticly gather my clothes and put them on without any care as to what I look like. As I do up my trousers I suffer how tight they have become around my waist. I sigh and mentally promise myself that I’ll do something about it. Another promise that I’ll never keep. Plugging my iPod into my ears and running down the stairs I clutch at my bag and swing it swiftly round my shoulders as I slam the front door with a satisfying smack.

The walk to school is a lonely one, littered with grey. Grey houses, grey pavement, grey little children with their grey mothers, a grey cat with placid grey eyes. It’s not until I escape my crummy little estate and reach the main road that my walk becomes interesting. (When I say interesting I say it in the same way that I would say that a pasta recipe my mum has tried out is “lovely” or the way that I would say that the new Take That record is “rubbish” before going home and listening to it, singing “have a little patience!” without a care in the world.) It is here where other people start to appear. There are only a few, and only a couple of them I recognise. They’re the kids that you hear stories about. Bad childhoods, bad parents, sad stories. The sort that you feel sorry for despite never having spoken a word to in your life. I must be late if these guys are coming in, I think to myself. I open the little pocket in my blazer to find my phone and sure enough its 8:48. I’d better rush. I need something to keep me trudging towards school. I fumble around in my pocket to find my iPod and unlock it. It’s on shuffle so I press the button and go through the randomly chosen songs, stopping on each to test myself on who each one is by. The Clash, Jamie T, Bloc Party, REM…ahh Rebel Rebel, Bowie. Bliss.

Just as I reach the apex of the long hill separating my home from my final destination and begin to make my way down, I spot Ryan and his girlfriend whose name constantly escapes me until the point I realise that it has never been in my grasp. Ryan nods, I nod back. He’s one of those people that a few years back I never thought I would be friends with but I now am surrounded by. I used to be bullied you see. I was just unpopular. I suppose that it was the luck of the draw. I don’t like to talk about it. Now I have quite a few friends like Bryan. Big guys who’ll stand up for you if some other big guy thinks your hair is stupid and decides to make a comment about it. I imagine that being friends with these guys gets you a badge that you can wear proudly on your lapel until you become one of those guys and you have to give your own badges to the defenceless. Badges pop out of my head and are replaced by the guilt of being late as soon as I turn left and into the white metal gate.

There are a few stragglers along with me walking toward the 1960’s school building. As I walk past the schools administrative centre I keep my eyes looking dead ahead, like a single mother refusing the existence of a Big Issue salesman, in case I inadvertently catch the eye of one of the ladies in the office or, worse, our headmaster. I lock on to the blue double door and follow my flight plan. But something stops me. I hear the slow crawl of a car behind me. It stops. The passenger door opens and shuts again almost instantaneously like the flap of a hummingbird’s wing. I take out my earpieces and truly open my eyes as She moves towards me, almost running but without the urgency. Only despair. She holds me, gripping on to me as though I am all she has, and places her head on my shoulder. Her silken smooth hair, as frictionless as a frosted lake, tickles my cheek and I hold on for dear life. The hug lasts only as long as a comforting hug between two friends should, just at the time before it becomes a cuddle. She looks at me and I look at her in eyes, the colour of a rich, velvety dark chocolate. She’s obviously been crying heavily but the only empirical evidence is the single silver tear which strolls down from her left eye, past her blushed cheeks and toward her thick red lips before dripping off her chin and onto the concrete below. She tries to speak to me but she is far too caught up in whatever caused her to be in my arms. Instead she looks at me, grabs my wrist and beckons me to follow.

Her guiding arm leads me back along my original course but as soon as we step through the blue double doors we are back off it again, turning left into a long corridor containing many different alcoves, each containing a multitude of identical lockers. We step immediately into the first alcove. She composes herself and begins to talk to me. She has been arguing with her mum again. It started off minimally but escalated into one of those all-guns-blazing, World War III style arguments. I know what that feels like. I have those with my own mother every month or so. They start with us arguing and ending with the two of us crying and apologising for all our many failures. I comfort her and tell her that it’s going to be ok. I don’t know if it will but that’s all I know to say. She’s says it’s not. She drops her bombshell, she’s leaving. I look at the ground.