I told my colleague the other day I actually hugged a pillow in bed one night not so long ago. But not only that, I laid the pillow out on what would have been his side of the bed and put my arm round it whilst lying on my side, just to emulate the spoon position.

“You’re breaking my heart,” was my colleague’s only response when I told him what I’d done.

At the time I didn’t think of the practice as something to pity, but after doing it for the third night in a row, I threw that fucking pillow on the floor in frustration. And disgust.

Yes, I can hug a pillow and pretend it’s a nice, warm pliable body instead a cold, cotton stuffed piece of crap. But can it hug me back? Can it fuck. And that’s what I hate. I missed being hugged.

Suggestions please.

Hug donations kindly welcomed.

There are some things you don’t miss about relationships, and for me, that is one of them.

Still, because we live within walking distance of each other, we decided to meet up for a breakfast birthday coffee. I couldn’t exactly come empty handed (and carrying a soggy umbrella doesn’t count either) – so the day before I went in pursuit of purchasing him a birthday card.

Seriously, have you ever tried to find a suitable card for an ex? It’s impossible.

No, I don’t love him. He’s not the world’s perfect boyfriend. He’s not my gorgeous fiancé. He’s not the “someone special in my life” either. Similarly, he’s not a dear friend. He’s not my shining light, or my best bud.

Boyfriends; Fiancés; Husbands; Best Friends – No, no, no and NO! He was neither of these things; perhaps once upon a time, but certainly not now. I continued looking around. I saw a section for everything else EXCEPT exes.

Well obviously! I hear you cry – they are exes for a reason.

But what if you’re still on friendly terms with your ex? And by friendly I mean you no longer have the urge to throw a brick at their head. What sort of card do you get them then?

That’s when I saw it.

The HUMOUR section.

Perfect.

I sidled over and picked out a few that caught my eye.

Terrible, just terrible.

Everything was either humorous stuff for couples or so god damn silly, if I gave him the card he’d have smiled painfully and issued up a silent prayer of thanks that he was no longer stuck with me for the rest of his life.

The lack of choice got me thinking – there is an untapped market for cards relating to ex partners!

Just imagine the fun that could be had. I began imagining such cards existing.

To my ex, I slept with your best friend – HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

To my ex, the only thing big about you was your ego – HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

To my ex, I slept with your Dad – HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

To my ex, You’re a cunt – HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

The possibilities were endless.

Unfortunately, this is the real world. And my only choices were between a carrot in a wig or a card depicting an easily frustrated IT guy.

Well, you can probably guess which one I went for.

Oh ho! I hear you cry.

Why does that warrant a moan-laden blog post?

Because Heathrow airport is full of holes, so when it rains outside, it’s rains inside too!

There I was putting books out, as per usual, when I felt something wet spray lovingly across my face. Last time I checked there wasn’t much need for water in a bookshop; pages aren’t quite as readable when soggy. And the only time you usually feel a spray of wetness is when a person sneezes and the book they’re holding isn’t quite wide enough to catch the mist… before closing it gently and replacing it on the shelf.

God, I fucking hate it when they do that. Kids are the worst for it.

So either I was being sneezed on or there was a leak. Part of me wishes it was a sneeze; I’d simply shoot the sneezer a look of disgust and then be sick for the next three days. A leak was much worse. I’d have to mop up the water with some Starbucks tissues (because we’re too cheap to buy a mop) and then put a bucket out to catch the water, along with a sign saying “WET FLOOR, SWIM WITH CAUTION.” All that and I’d still have to call property services to tell them to mend the bloody roof.

So you see I wanted it to be a sneeze, really I did. A sneeze would have been easy peasy, lemon sneezy. Or something.

But it wasn’t.

It was a leak – a huge leak. And because the ceiling tiles were metal things with little holes in (think speaker covers) the water sprayed everywhere. The bucket (which was really an empty crate we use to transport books in) wasn’t big enough to catch the onslaught of water.

So I did my mopping, or rather tissuing and I put out my little crate (although fat lot of good that did as it had more water around the damn thing than inside it.) The only thing left to do now was to ring property services. And dry my hair. But I couldn’t find their number. And I didn’t have my hairdryer handy. It’s as if they didn’t want to be rung. So I did the next best thing. I went for a walkabout to find someone who knew. I’d barely gone ten paces around the corner before I saw it.

Buckets.

Everywhere.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Splash.

A multitude of WET FLOOR signs dotted around the place as if it was trying to tell me something. Oh it was. WET FLOOR.

CAUTION.

YOU MAY SLIP AND FALL AND BE FORCED TO CALL AN ACCIDENT CLAIM HELPINE AND EARN A FEW DAYS OFF WORK ALONG WITH SOME NO WIN NO FEE CASH…

Well, I could wish.

I stood short at 5ft4 looking all around me, for miles I could see nothing but little islands of people surrounded by water.

Well I wasn’t going to swim through that. I’m sure property services would’ve changed their number by now anyway seeing as they must have received about a billion calls from Heathrow today asking them to mend the BLOODY ROOF.

So I did what any upstanding employee would do, I turned back around and carried on putting out books.

I just hope someone remembers to empty that bucket…

No more, no less.

I touched upon the subject of my personal crisis in my last update. And I now feel the time’s right to elaborate, not because I wish to have all eyes on me, but because this blog has always been my outlet. Just because I usually post humorous things, doesn’t mean I don’t have other feelings. Just because I make light of situations, doesn’t mean things don’t impact me.

Right now my room is a mess. I have clothes lying haphazardly all over my floor. Packaging from recent DVD purchases lay scattered about in a careless manner. These things reflect how I’m feeling. For the past couple of weeks I haven’t wanted to make any effort to get up and go to work; it’s probably the closest to depression I’ll ever allow myself to feel.

And yet I did go into work. Every single day I went, even when my itinerary for the day was one endless, mindless task of shifting books into a more orderly fashion. I would rather throw myself into a shitty job then allow myself to physically wallow.

Rejection is a bitter pill to take; most of the time it’s forced upon you. No one wants to put themselves out there just to be knocked back, or down – or crushed. And yet it happens in everyday life, it’s a part of life. Without it, we wouldn’t know what we’re capable of. We would have nothing to compare to that feeling of knowing what getting what we want feels like, if we didn’t know what it was to be rejected.

In that sense, I can appreciate the sentiments of rejection.

The whole point of it is to figure out where you’re going wrong, or what you could do better. It’s about objectifying your actions into a way that improves you as a person.

I’m not saying I’m perfect, far from it, but what if you feel that everything you gave to someone was everything you could possibly give, that it’s everything you are – and yet you were still rejected for it. To the point where that person doesn’t even acknowledge your existence anymore?

How am I supposed to get my head around that?

Objectively speaking, I should realise that this person isn’t worth it. Surely if they can’t even give me the time of day, then why do I continue to fill my time with thoughts of them?

They said they were honest with me from the beginning, if that’s the case, then why do I feel as if every feeling they said they ever had towards me, was a complete lie?

Because if they didn’t lie, then why weren’t their feelings enough to keep the friendship alive?

He said my words were too strong.

I am anything but weak.

Which is why I hate the fact I’m feeling this way over a guy. I’ve been through much worse and I’ve let it affect me much less.

He said he doesn’t regret knowing me, only the ugly way in which it ended.

It only turned ugly when he rejected me completely from his life.

He said I was too forceful in pursuing the friendship after he ended it.

I thought you were supposed to fight for the things you wanted. For the things that meant something to you.

I am tenacious, not desperate.

I can’t make somebody like me; I just thought at one point, they actually did.

And that it was enough.

Eventually I made it home after what felt like a very long walk of shame; my eyes could barely stay open long enough to see whether I was putting the correct key in the lock. And I was in my room for less than a second before I managed to somehow undress myself completely – before finally falling into bed.

For the past few weeks I’ve been somewhat sad about the fact I sleep alone; that there is no warm, pliable body next to mine to hold and cuddle in bed. But this morning, as I stretched my legs out, as I twisted my body horizontally across the mattress and bunched the pillows up into a comfortable mess underneath my head, I was glad there was no one there to get in the way; least not to see the state I was in.

The truth is, I hadn’t just got in from a heavy nights partying. I wasn’t even drunk. I’d just finished a twelve hour shift at work after a two week stretch of working myself ragged. The limp was from standing up and bending down repeatedly, from stretching, pulling and defending against the books which seemed to like falling on me for no other reason than to cause me pain. And my makeup was a mess from having my hands touch my face constantly, wiping away the sweat and tears of pure frustration.

My colleague and I were tasked with the impossible: to sort out and tidy the four stockrooms at work. Easy you think. But when you realise they’ve been used as a dumping ground for the last year and a half and that the only order they followed was chaos and lots of it, somehow it didn’t seem so easy anymore.

Indeed, there was many a time when I would randomly shout out in frustration, “What evil deeds did I do in my past life to deserve this torture – I’m a good person!”

My colleague could only agree and say he hoped that in his previous life he had tortured a whole myriad of people, in lots of nasty, terrifying ways. Only then would this hell seem worth it.

How many books I handled, I couldn’t tell you. How many particles of dust I inhaled, I couldn’t tell you. How many litres of sweat that poured forth from my being, I couldn’t tell you. I’d like to, but the numbers simply don’t register.

The physical aspect aside, it was the mental demands of the job which really got to me. It didn’t help that I was, and still am, going through a bit of a personal crisis. Moving books from point A to point B doesn’t require a lot of thought, just a lot of physical effort, and so I was often left with my thoughts. For two weeks I was constantly locked in my own head about the shit that was going on in my personal life; round and round it went driving me crazy. It got to the point where I very nearly spoke to a counsellor about things.

If it wasn’t for my colleague who listened to my fragile ramblings, I would have made that call.

I absolutely hate – HATE, talking about my problems to other people. I feel they are my burden to carry and no one should have that amount of crazy put on them. But being locked in a caged stockroom with only one other person, he sort of had no choice.

When I wasn’t trying to figure out WHAT WENT WRONG, I was breaking randomly into song. From Michael Jackson, to Frankie Goes to Hollywood, I sang it all. I could make a song out of anything. Even books.

For some reason (and that reason is no one buys them) we had an endless supply of Duncan Bannatyne books. It’s sad to say perhaps, but I even managed to create a little ditty out of those as well.

“Duncan Bannatyne… be my valentine… don’t let the sun shine… out of your – ARSE.”

Arse? My colleague enquired. That doesn’t rhyme with shine.

Well obviously, was my response. I just like the word.

I was truly inspired.

Or cracked.

The last day of our little project started at 6pm on Friday evening, and we worked right through until 6am Saturday morning.

As passengers started filling in at Heathrow to catch their flights, my colleague and I quietly exited the terminal. As people were coming into work, we were going home. As the day was just starting, ours was just ending.

What happened in the stockroom stays in the stockroom. And in the words of my excellent compadre and colleague, it’s been emotional.

Remember to love without limits; your capacity is fathomless. Never be afraid to show someone the depths of your feelings; just ensure you wet their toes first – you don’t want them to drown.

Keep beating.

Keep living.

Keep loving.

Love,
Teesee

Escaping the confines of my caged stock room earlier today, I ventured to the bathrooms; one of the many overused and abused locations at Heathrow. I was sitting on the toilet for no more than a few seconds when I heard the unmistakable cries for help in the cubicle next to me.

Help.

Excuse me.

Hello.

I’m stuck.

Hello?!

This went on for a few minutes whilst I tried to snuffle my laughter. I imagined a woman arse deep in toilet water, preferably unflushed. I imagined her scrabbling at the cubicle walls with her bare hands, perhaps a shoe coming off in the process.

Unfortunately, I knew better. For the past couple of weeks now I’ve had to listen to the repeated cries of help from various women (at least I hope it’s various and not just the same woman forever stuck) coming from one particular toilet cubicle.

I avoid this cubicle like the plague, it has a dodgy lock. But I do frequent the one next to it. I get what is effectivley front row seats to the most desperate sounding pleas ever uttered.

I need to catch my flight.

I’d like to see my kids again.

I can’t die in here.

Hello?!

Eventually some random toilet-dweller (that wasn’t me) came to the aid of the stuckee and offered this piece of helpful advice: Turn the handle to the right.

It won’t budge.

To the right. That’s the RIGHT.

It won’t move!

Talk about pointing out the bleeding obvious. As if the woman hadn’t tried opening the lock the traditional way beforehand.

Usually I grow weary before someone eventually lets them out but today’s locked in lady sounded particularly feisty, so I stuck it out while she was obviously stuck in. I was in for the long haul.

Ten minutes or so later, some cleaners arrived – I think they brought with them a mop. I’m still not sure how they expected this to help matters. But whatever they did try, didn’t work. I heard some scuffling next door and knew it was time to vacate my little hidey hole.

I flushed, pulled up my seriously dusty trousers and exited my cubicle. Then I saw it.

A leg.

Then another one.

The woman was only climbing over the top of the door! Her bag was strapped to her back to complete the ridiculous adventurous look. It was like watching Lara Croft scaling the great heights of Heathrow, only with a sheet of toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

I only pray tomorrow brings more toilet trouble. The things I live for.

It was Saturday morning and I was feeling energised. Ok, that’s a lie. I’d caught sight of myself in the mirror at Asda earlier that morning and realised two things:

1. I had bags under my eyes. If I was in WHSmith’s I’d have charged myself a penny for each of them.

2. I needed a change.

A change of pace, a change of location… and really, I just needed some change for the pasta I’d decided to buy. Being frightened of my own reflection spurred me into action. So of course I took a trip down the stationery aisle.

When in doubt – write it out! I went looking for something to motivate me. Something which I could use to catalyst me to get up each morning and think – ah, that’s what I need to do today.

The bastards had nothing except post-it notes and I could hardly write my goals down on those. For a start I was likely to get papercuts. Then I’d have bits of paper stuck to my bedroom walls. And then they’d fall on the floor. And then I’d sweep them under my bed and forget all about them. It simply wasn’t do-able.

So I made the decision to take a trip into Ryman’s; that heavenly place where I can get lost looking at pens that come in so many different colours, I could probably taste the rainbow, I would have almost certainly been able to draw it. And then I found it. The mecca of all list making – the pin board! But wait for it, it also had a white board attached. Ignenious! As soon as I saw it, I knew it was the one. I could both pin and write – draw if I wanted to, all my goals and plans for the rest of my life. Or at least until I got bored.

My plan was already starting to come together. I’d be motivated in no time! But hold on a minute. I just had a board. I needed something to write with. I needed pins to stick my bits of crap up with. Otherwise my board would remain empty and listless and I’d be stuck in demotivation mode FOREVER. Or until someone was kind enough to lend me a pen.

So I browsed the store and I found some funky metallic pins that come in lots of special colours. And then I found some white board markers to, you know, write with. I could now spice up my goals with a splash of green, blue, black or red! Not only would my goals be out there for the world to see – but they’d be pretty too.

I went up to the till with my purchases. I was smiling thinking about all the things I was going to accomplish. And then the cashier told me the total.

£15.27!

Just for a stupid bit of wood, some pins and some bloody pens?!

Well, I knew what my first goal would be – to find a new job to pay for this load of over-priced tat.

As soon as I got home, I got to work on my goals. First I needed a name. I needed something which showed I was in control, that I’d thought this through.

I chose “Plan B” as my title.

Clearly because Plan A hadn’t been working for some time, aka my entire life. Plan A sucked. Plan A hadn’t gotten me anything except a job I hated which paid barely enough to cover the cost of making a Plan B.

Finding a new job is easy though. I can find lots of new jobs, they’re everywhere – but could I secure one? That’s the hard part, so my first goal looked this:

Find a new job, do not act like a twat in interview – get said job.

The not acting a twat part was very important. I always act like a twat during interviews. I usually say the first thing that comes to mind as they ask me questions.

Them: Why do you want this job?

Me: Because it was either this or prison.

I didn’t get that job.

My second goal was thusly:

Save lots of money from new job.

My hope is to secure a job at a bank so that I can literally save money FROM work. It’s not stealing if I just save it right?

My third goal went something like this:

Put moolah towards new flat.

That isn’t me saying I’m going to point a cow towards my new flat, that’s me saying I need to put money towards the renting of a new place, a nicer, more expensive place. Now, there’s nothing wrong with my current place really, except the location, the town, it’s people and the fact there’s five of us living under one roof. Less is more. Unless of course we’re talking chocolate, in which case, more is moreish.

My fourth goal stated the following:

Complete Jessica novel.

Because it’s almost done. Really. I just can’t figure out the ending. I suck at endings. I hate saying goodbye. And I can’t write the never-ending story, that’s already been done.

My fifth goal was more of an on-going thing:

Travel baby – Hounslow hightstreet doesn’t count.

My weekends usually consist of travelling into town, puchasing a beverage (today was a Mars milkshake from McDonald’s) buying some stuff (pasta, my board etc) and then going home. It’s hardly what you’d call exciting (or glamorous) and doesn’t really make for very good Monday morning conversation at work the following week. I need to get out there and explore Feltham maybe. If I’m feeling daring.

By this point, I was running out of stuff to set my sights on. New job, check. New house, check. Lot’s of money – check. If I had all that, what else did I need?! Ah, my tattoo. The one I’d been promising to get for months now. I’d yet to find a suitable location for it. Each place I’d considered so far seemed either too trashy or simply wrong.

Hence how my sixth goal ended up being:

Find a suitable location on body for tattoo.

Preferably somewhere I can forget all about when I’m older when I regret the damned thing. Perhaps I should have used this space instead to actually figure out what I want first, rather than where it’s going to go? I always do things backwards.

At this rate, I was going to be living the perfect life in no time. The trouble is, I still had some space to fill.So my last goal was more of a statement. It read:

Keep dancing bitches.

I think there’s a three minute video of me dancing around in a drunken state from last night somewhere. It seemed fun at the time. I think it’s a good ethos to live by. Dance like no body is watching.

Well yeah, except for the one holding the camera. I hope that never gets out.

And that’s been my Saturday so far, productive, no? I’m sure in the coming weeks my goals would have been mysteriously wiped away and replaced with more sensible things like a shopping list: milk, eggs, bread. And don’t forget the bacon!

And if all else fails, there’s always Plan C.

Stack.

Pick up.

Walk.

Put down.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

So after the hundredth time of doing that, you would have thought I’d have gotten it down to a fine art. I could have done it with my eyes closed. Perhaps that was my mistake. I was on the final step of that glorious process and as I was straightening up from moving yet more books – my eyes were closed in a world weary sort of way – when my head connected with the metal latch on the stockroom door. I say “connected” like it was a type of metaphysical connection, as in I had a moment with this piece of metal that changed me in some meaningful way, but it didn’t. It was a full on physical connection, complete with pain, shock and dare I say it, slight hysteria.

Fuck.

It hurt.

I screamed. Literally screamed.

ARGH. YOU FUCKING CUNT.

Then I burst into tears. Shocked tears. Painful tears. I felt like a five year old who cries instantly after falling over and scraping their knee. Only I was grown woman, my hands were black from the dust and I was wiping my tears away with them, leaving black smudges over my face.

I was a mess.

Tentativley, I prodded my head for the damage. No blood at least. But there was a dent. I had a fucking dent in my head. I was still crying and I still had more books to move.

So I stopped my crying and went back to moving books; that’s what I was being paid for after all – not to stand around dazed and in pain. I’d obviously taken leave of my senses at this point if I thought that was more important than my health.

Anyway, some forty minutes later when my colleague returned from his break and we started talking to fill the dusty silence, something strange happened. Every time he said something, I found it so hysterically funny, I couldn’t stop laughing. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a funny guy and says humorous things on a regular basis, but this time it was hysterical. I was manic. Hahaha. Ha. Ha. My world was spinning a little.

Have you taken a knock to the head he asked me?

And then I remembered I had.

Thankfully my shift was ending soon after, I don’t think I could have continued laughing in that capacity without eventually cracking a rib.

So what’s with the title of this post then? How does it relate to my head busting day at work? It doesn’t. It’s what happened after.

Friday afternoon I’d scheduled in a date with one of the coolest dudes on the planet: Peter. He’s my pick me up, my put me down and my clown around. We’d barely been in his flat five minutes before the first bottle of wine was opened. I thought perhaps the alcohol would have blocked out the pain in my head, but it didn’t. If anything it made it worse. So I drank more in the hopes that eventually I’d be too gone to feel anything.

Hey it worked.

Trouble is, when you’re drunk, you’re easily persuaded to do things you wouldn’t normally do. Which is how I found myself dancing around his living room with yogurt on my face to the track: All over your face – by Cazwell.

Was it the knock to my head that caused me to act like a yogurt covered twat? Perhaps it was the obscene amount of alcohol I consumed which I stupidly mixed with ibuprofen. Honestly, I’d like to say it was all of the above, but after listening to the track again this morning, I can happily say I’d smear yogurt all over my face and dance with wild abandon, again and again.

What a great end to a shitty week.

For my sanity has left me, or perhaps it’s just arrived.
I never knew the difference until you looked into my eyes.
And as my world began to turn; I found you caught me by surprise.
With every passing moment, we come closer yet, to our goodbye.

You stayed only for a second, I’ll remember you longer still.
I’ll try and count forever, but I don’t think I have the will –
To see that far ahead as I keep on looking back.
Know only this, I miss you; I watch our curtain fade to black.