Dear Heart,
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
The only bit of respite I get at work from people, whether they be customers or travellers, or both, is when I’m either in the toilet or going to put the bins out. I savour these moments like you wouldn’t believe; a hard concept to understand considering both locations stink of shit, but as soon as I’m in my little cubicle or out with the bin compactor, I’m a happy lady.
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.
There’s a lot to be said for taking a knock to the head. And yesterday I did just that. I was completely engrossed in my task at hand, which was moving a pile of books from one corner of the stockroom to another.
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.
You came into my life, unannounced and unexpected,
Yet here you are, standing tall – you’ve left me totally affected.
With every word, with every piece, of information I’ve digested,
I know you more, I’m in too deep; I think I really should be tested.
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.