Experimenting with stream of consciousness

Well, here she was. This was it, this was hers, all of it. What a lot of it there was, really, compared to what some people had anyway. That was the important thing, to know where she stood in relation to others. You had to know where you were in the scale, why you were there, where you were – whose fault it was that you weren’t higher, better, faster, stronger – in the scheme of things. In the scheme of things. In the scheme of things she wasn’t so badly off. That was what she felt, how she viewed her life.

She got out of the shower (a good place to think she always thought) and stood in front of the bathroom mirror, the sink, dripping, meeting her own eyes for a second through the mist and then blinking and reaching for her towel. She didn’t like to meet her own eyes in the mornings. In the mornings she found herself wondering, wondering what things might have been like, if she was different. If everything was different, if other people were. If somebody had seen her potential, had understood her properly and she had bloomed as she should. (She loved that word, bloomed. Though of course now she was rather too old for it.) The world was obstinate, it had never recognised her perfection, her abilities, her beauty even. At moments like this all that she had felt like nothing at all, especially when compared to what should be hers. What she deserved. Most of the time she could make it seem enough but sometimes, sometimes, she couldn’t help but feel the smallness of her life, feel it pressing in on her, and want to scream.

Her ambitions had never been high, she thought as she vigorously and pitilessly pulled a brush through her tangled hair. As the strands snapped and sprung up again from the brush she felt anger rise in her throat. She had never asked loudly, or for too much, though she knew herself to be extraordinary, yet she had never been allowed to have what was rightfully hers.

Where was her house, husband, dog, child? She slammed the door of her flat and scowled at her neighbour’s cat on the stairs. She knew she was being irrational, yet she let her thoughts run on. Let the bitterness build. Why was it that she achieved so little? She got what she had by working hard. She worked hard at everything, everyone saw that. Everyone at the office complimented her on her hard work. She was invaluable. Yet she knew that they didn’t see her true value, her true potential, because she could not reach it. Why did people who didn’t work as hard as her reach theirs? How could they do so much better than her? Why did the people she knew from college, those who not only didn’t work hard but barely seemed to think if they could avoid it, rise so high and do so well? Why did they have more of what she aimed for, sweated for, than she could ever hope to achieve now? Now that things had passed her by and it was getting too late to strive.

Sally, who she was on her way to meet, was one such; Sally had barely worked at all in college and yet gained higher marks than she had managed after three years of hard work and late nights. Not late nights at parties and socials like Sally had, late nights in the library, at the desk. Still, she’d never been one to hold grudges and when Sally had rung to arrange this lunch last week she’d been happy to accept. She had been.

Lately she’d let friendships slide. She was so tired of always being the one to do the asking, to chase for lunch dates, dinner, the cinema. People had slipped out of her life altogether and she didn’t seem to care. In a way it was a relief to no longer spend time with people whose lives had, for no good reason, worked out so much better than her own. Better than hers when, in a fair world, hers should have been better by far than theirs. It irked her and so as they left her behind she did nothing to stop them.

Even her work, what she prided herself on so much, had slipped recently. She couldn’t motivate herself the way she had in the past. She didn’t really understand why but her mind wasn’t as easy to control as it once had been. Now she lost herself in dreaming almost every day. Her mind wandered. She no longer lived in her own thoughts, instead she spent her time imagining how other people thought and lived. If a man looked at her she imagined how he saw her, how he felt about her, what he wanted to say to her and imagined why it was that he said nothing and looked away. If a woman stood near her in the supermarket then she imagined how that woman would smell her perfume wafting to her across the frozen peas, and how she would envy her that elegance of scent.

This was how she knew that the man who lived with his family across the road who said good morning to her sometimes was in love with her. He could never tell her, he couldn’t leave his children and she could not have forgiven him for doing so anyway. Anne who lived downstairs was always watching her; often she crept down to the bottom of the garden and looked up at her window, because in her own way Anne was in love with her too. She never actually saw Anne in the garden, but she knew that she was there, she was watching. Sometimes she stood in front of the window, flaunting herself entirely for the benefit of those watching, waiting eyes. The attention was something to cling to, although sometimes she peered out of her window and saw nothing but a mess of bushes and plants. Those were the days when it was hard to meet her own eyes in the mirror.

It had been a surprise to be rung, and at home no less, by Sally. She had answered the phone and met her own eyes in the mirror, feeling a sense of shock, almost violation as a voice said her name. Sally had mumbled something about being busy with her career and children as an excuse for not getting in contact any sooner. One of the children was ill apparently. Something trifling no doubt that Sally was blowing out of all proportion to make herself seem more important. She’d been sympathetic when Sally broke down in tears. She’d even agreed to this lunch to get her to calm down.

She hurried along the road, shocked at the brazen glance of a man in a car as he stared at her, wanted her. She turned sneeringly from his eyes to look beyond him.

So it was that she saw the child leaning, standing, not looking. She saw its danger, she realised, from the frightened eyes of the mother, that an expectation was directed at her. She felt the woman thinking about her, knew she was pinning her hopes on her. This was her moment, her purpose, here and now, her hope in the woman’s hope. She breathed in. She could show the world her exceptional nature, her amazing soul because that woman’s eyes flicked from the child to her face. She stepped out into the road, feeling, at last, full of purpose that would reap the proper reward.

There was a moment of suspension. The world held its breath as she stepped off the pavement and watched what would happen.

A breath was taken. The child ran to its mother in time and she, slower than she’d expected, did not move quickly enough, did not listen or see or hear what was around her. Her action had not achieved anything. Her potential had been wasted yet again. For a moment she paused and watched the mother scold the child. She knew that the woman was angry that it had stolen this moment from her, that it had denied her a purpose. She bit her lip and stopped moving.

For a moment, just one moment, all eyes were on her, all thoughts were of her. She felt them, felt them centre on her and felt their regard, finally. Finally they saw her and realised her. She shut her eyes and soaked it in. There were faces, there was movement, there was concern, and it was all directed towards her. She smiled. The world revolved around her for one more moment and lifted her into sound and speed and darkness.