Sort of can't figure out what I'm living for. In the worst sort of way.
I know that I have been through crap in the past. The world is not ending. I am okay. But I feel uncontrollable sadness.
I want so much to be friends with my mum.
And when I say friends, I mean it.
I don't think, I actually need her as a maternal figure.
I don't think I need that.
She cries and tells me that I don't need her anymore.
And I feel guilty and I cry and I hug her and I tell her that of course I need her.
But I question it; I question myself, I question her
Perhaps, I don't need her as such.
Perhaps, I could live without her?
And she goes on all the time about how I should spend time with her because she's my family but I don't even have a fucking family anymore
And then Nikki lies on my bed as she so often does at night,
And she cries in a way I was not sure she was capable of.
Because, she has so much sadness in her.
And I have so little.
And she needs me so much.
And she doesn't think I need her as much.
So I feel like I don't need anyone.
But I feel so lonely sometimes.
I feel like there's someone missing in my life.
And I want them back. =S
I'm starting to think that maybe it's me
So, yeah, moving on to more procrastination... I wrote a short story today that I actually like (I've written 6 or 7 by now and they all suck, so me liking it is quite an achievement)
If you can bothered reading about a cynical girl and a homeless boy, this is their story:
Ellis was annoyed, tired and stressed as she began her journey home from the train station, equipped with her heavy bag and oversized blazer that her Nazi school made her wear. She walked down the side of the car park and glanced at the rows of cars that had as little variation in colour as their owners did in personality. She snorted as she saw identical businessmen race to their cars as if getting home thirty seconds earlier would save their lives. Perhaps she was a cynic, for she saw little beauty in the world or its occupants and had no desire to change this view.
As she scanned across the cars, something caught her eye that was out of the ordinary. A young boy, around her age, was scrubbing his feet with a bar of soap and the tap against the car park wall. As she stared at him, he looked up and caught her eye for a glimpse of a second before she quickly averted her gaze and pretended to be looking at the trees. She turned down the narrow path that took her home and sighed with the impatience of a teenager who was not yet old enough to drive. “Excuse me” she heard and the barefoot boy ran in front of her, carrying his soap bar and scrubbing brush in a small plastic bag. As soon as he was a few paces ahead of, he slowed to her speed, “sorry” he added, as if running around her had inconvenienced her in some way. “Well, not really” he grumbled as he quickened his pace.
Ellis saw ahead a small tent with a blanket poking out that had never been there before, and considered the possibility that this was his destination. “You don’t have to be,” she called from behind him, “sorry, I mean”. He turned around and smiled at her,
“Society dictates that I must” he replied with unusual sophistication for someone who had washed their feet at a train station car park, and continued walking towards the tent.
“Yeah, well, I never listen much to what society dictates” she muttered as the curious boy took a quick step into the tent, and returned without his soap or brush.
“I’m Ellis” she said and held out her hand which he took in his.
“As in, L-S?” he asked grinning.
“Something like that”, she smiled.
“I’m Jay” he released her hand and she felt something that vaguely resembled disappointment.
“As in, J?” she asked, mimicking his previous grin
“As in, it was all my ma got out before she died” his smile did not fade, and Ellis wondered if his lack of concern for his mother’s death was genuine or just a pretence, “It could’ve been Jason, or Jayden, or Jamie; but all she managed was ‘Jay’, so here I stand”
“So I guess I’m beating you by a whole letter” she joked
“And, judging by that blazer, about 3000 classes of society” he added, raising his eyebrows
“I thought I’d already mentioned how little I cared for society” and she sat down next to the tent and gestured for him to join her
It was remarkable, thought Ellis, that she could spend all day with people she’d known for her entire life, and yet not feel connected to them in the same way that she did here with this perfect stranger. Remarkable, too, that his life interested her more than any class at school. At school, she learnt about all the different people in the world, but never thought about who they were, what their stories were
“Do you have a home?” she asked, a little more seriously.
“Of course I do,” Jay grinned again “it’s right here” and he placed his hand against his heart, “we’ve all got some sort of home, don’t we?”
“I suppose” she replied, wondering whether the four walls that surrounded her for most of her life could be considered a ‘home’.
The pair sat on the grass outside the tent for many hours, talking about the world and how horribly depressing the both found it. Ellis noticed a sparkle in Jay’s soft blue eyes as he spoke, that she’d never seen in anyone else. She wondered, only for a moment, what her mum would think of her sitting near a car park talking to a homeless boy, and the thought brought a mischievous smile to her face. Eventually, the sun began to set and she decided to make her way home to put a dent in the piles of homework she’d been given that day.
As she walked up her garden path for the seventy-fourth time that year, she noticed what she had never before seen. The four walls that she had been thinking of mere hours ago as not resembling a home, now appealed to her in new light. She had a home, which was more than she could say for Jay. She had a family too, and as annoying and selfish and heartless they could be, they were alive and they loved her. Her keys made a familiar jingle as they turned in the lock and she stepped inside with the realisation that, for the first time in a long time, she was home.
