Apr 18, 2008 18:42
Something I wrote last night.
It sort of helped me figure out where I am, but more than that it's voiced my fears and feelings about where I am.
It was something I needed to write anyway.
The first of many pieces after a long dry patch.
“Where are you?”
“I’m still at work, babe. I’ll see you later, OK?”
He heard a deep sigh stream through his mobile before she replied.
“I guess it’ll have to be. Call me when you’re coming home. Bye”
Then the line went dead. She knew she had to hang up before she heard his voice again. She sat back against the scratched glass of the bus stop, the dim yellow glow of streetlights cloaking her in a hazy shadow. As she stared into the headlights of the cars that slid past her, her eyebrows furrowed as she blinked away disappointed tears. It wasn’t his work that upset her, or even the fact that he was too busy to see her right now, it was the way he didn’t tell her these things. He didn’t really tell her anything. They had had such a lovely relaxed and exciting night and now he was distant, occupied, elsewhere.
Part of her was scared that he had lost interest, or worse been scared away by her virginity. But she kept forgetting that he was shy at heart, and no matter how much sexual attraction there was between the two of them, it would never be enough to form anything strong and lasting.
The night was fresh; it was springtime. She sat in her red coat, thin white lace gloves, sheer black stockings and heels under a beautiful blue dress, and yet she felt nothing more than ordinary, overlooked, rejected. A thin breeze brushed her loosely curling hair from her face. She scrunched her arms closer to her body although she wasn’t cold. It was one of those dark nights you get lost in. She told herself if she made it out of this she could survive anything.
There was no indication when the next bus was coming, and impatient as she was she started wondering how long it would take her to walk to the next stop. But then her sister’s advice rang in her ears; “even if you walk to the next stop, you’ll still be waiting for the same bus, and if you get up and walk you risk missing it all together.”
The story of her life. Too many times she’d become sick of waiting and had strode bravely along the street, only to be overtaken by a gleaming blur of red metal and left half way between two stops with no hope of catching another for a long time.
Being impatient wasn’t necessarily a problem, it was the way she expressed her frustration that really annoyed her. She would never get anywhere if she kept actively missing the thing she was waiting for.
And it got her thinking, why wait for a bus? Do you even need to catch a bus in the first place? Surely it’s much better to walk the short distances, drive the medium length ones and take a train for the particularly extensive ones. But you can’t go your whole life on foot or in cars, and anyway if she just held on a little bit longer the bus would arrive eventually. After all, if she hadn’t been sitting at a bus stop she may never have met half the people she knew in the first place.
They always say, good things happen to those who wait, and that life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. So surely if she waited and paid attention, she wouldn’t miss out at all. Surely.
my stories,
my life