Choices

 Not quite from the archives, but I wrote this back in June 2013 and completely forgot about it...

Choices

Wearily I rub my eyes, my colleague is sat on the seat opposite me, our train heading towards the office.
    "Feels like Thursday," she pines, it's only Tuesday.
    I nod in agreement.

At work I head upstairs immediately, flick the kettle on, grab my preferred mug and am about to spoon in a miniature mountain of coffee, when I realise the jar is empty.
    I try to cast my mind back to yesterday, remember that last cup of coffee I had, and I'm certain - adamant - that there was definitely enough coffee in the jar for at least three more cups.  I can't imagine who else might have had a coffee, it's a small office, my boss is away on business, and everybody else prefers tea.  Could I have been wrong?
    I pop to the corner shop to buy some more coffee, hesitating at the display comprised almost exclusively of Nescafe brands and one cheap alternative that, experience suggests, will taste distractingly acrid.  I could walk further down the road to a supermarket, but I feel bad for not being at work, I want to conserve my free-time for more important opportunities, so I nab the smallest jar of Nescafe - reasoning that I can get a more ethical alternative quite quickly - and head back to the office.

I text my girlfriend, just something inconsequential, but, after half an hour, I still haven't received a reply.  I try to imagine all the things she might be doing that would prevent her from checking her phone, wonder why she doesn't realise that I just want a little bit of validation, just something to remind me that she still cares about me.  I guess that's pretty desperate.
    Perhaps I was being too optimistic, I reason, even going so far as to call her my girlfriend is a bold gesture.  I mean, we've been seeing each other for a while, but I guess I'm more emotionally invested than she is.  She says it's all quite new to her, I think she's treating it as a bit of fun, a little bit of experimentation, but for me it's serious, I mean, for her it's a choice, but for me it's not a choice, I was born this way, it's who I am.
    Maybe I'm being naive to think that I can get her to change her mind, see me the way I see her, I guess?  But, at the same time, I don't want to force someone's hand, we've always been very honest with one another, but I can't help how I feel, or, at least, how I think I'm going to feel and when it comes down to it; to that decision between seeing her and not seeing her, I'm always going to go for the former.  I guess I'm selfish like that.
    Because that's what it will be ultimately, me forcing someone, who has told me from the start that this is just a bit of fun for them, to sit there whilst I parade my emotions in front of them, a little song and dance, tell them how much they mean to me, but, at the very same time, feel overwhelmingly cruel and guilty that I'm essentially trying to blackmail them into one of two things.
    Either they go back on themselves, cave in, try and take things seriously - against their wishes.  Or, they're the executioner, and they tell me in plain terms that it'll never happen and we probably shouldn't see one another anymore.  I know these are the only two conclusions, but I'm too cowardly to accept that.
    It's hypocritical of me, the amount of times I've told people that my lifestyle is not a choice.  It's one of those questions you wind up tolerating; "Oh, so, when did you choose to be..." You try not to let the eye-roll show.

I struggle to sleep tonight, I wake up, feeling like I've been in bed for hours, though the clock says it's only 2am, yet the sky is a blue-black, like the sun's feeling impatient this morning.  I nod off again, molding the pillow into a makeshift body for me to hold, and then, in what feels like seconds, I wake up again to a  blazing, bright day and the clock tells me it's 7am.
    However, there's something unnatural about the morning, the feel of the streets, the manner of my fellow commuters, it's calm and orderly, like it would be after the rush hour.  But each clock I check just reiterates the time, it's ok, I'm not running late.

At noon I stand in the supermarket staring at the range of microwave meals that often comprises my lunch.  There's a nice looking mushroom risotto for £4, but another in the cheap section.  Out of both boredom and curiosity, I inspect the labels of each.
    Whilst the list of ingriedients blurs into insignificance it's the place of manufacturer that ultimately grabs my attention, with both risottos having been produced and packaged in the very same factory in Chertsey.  Ultimately, I realise, the only thing different about these two items is the packaging, one designed to look decadent and delicious, the other functional and basic.
    But I still buy the more expensive one.

I sent a text to Iwona again, even though she hasn't replied to me since yesterday.  It's been a few days since I saw her and I miss her, though I'm loath to mention this as it might seem a bit too clingy.
    Are we the unstoppable force and the immovable object?  Should one of us bow out gracefully before somebody gets hurt?  I can't help but daydream that there must be some reason, some unconscious something, that is why we haven't done this yet.  Though I suspect that we're both too selfish, we both want to get all we can from the other and only relinquish our hold when we absolutely have to.  In that respect, how is this unlike any other relationship?
    She told me she thought I was open minded, I think that's another stereotype people assume, that because they think it's a choice they imagine that all people are hard-wired to want the same relationships as everyone else, so anyone who chooses otherwise can flip-flop between the two.  If you're a guy who likes guys then there's nothing stopping you from liking girls, if you're a girl who likes girls then there's nothing stopping you from liking guys, but if you're a girl or guy who likes the opposite sex then getting with someone of the same sex just isn't the done thing.

My mum re-married shortly after my father died.  I wasn't shocked, I'd known for years that they weren't happy together, in fact, she'd been sleeping on a sofa in the lounge for the last year or so of their relationship.  I think, if he hadn't had that heart attack, they would have got divorced around about the same time.  At least I hope they would have.
    They didn't want to be married, that was obvious to me and my sister, but they stayed together until we both left home.  I was there last, saw the strained conversations most clearly, in that final Summer, after I'd finished University, earning some money before I moved up to the city.
    I know that they only stayed together because of us, to make sure that we came from what they considered to be a stable family.  It wasn't a stable family, whatever mask of domestic happiness they thought they had created barely covered their lies, eyes the most telltale feature, and stern mouths held fast as inappropriate comments passed idly over awkward dinnertimes.  The farce of my mother carrying duvets and pillows downstairs every night, making her little nest, and then waking up first - or so she often believed - and re-creating the illusion of their normality.
    My sister doesn't trust marriage now, but it once felt like the only way for people to move forward in life.  These ceremonies, she argued, represented the illusion of progression.  We had, as a society, created a series of events designed to act as milestones, deceiving us into thinking that we had achieved something, that we had accomplished a goal as a person, distracted us from the fact that we were, in actuality, unchanging, still fraught with the despair of our youth.
    Nobody chooses to be born.
    My mother once said, though she was half-asleep when she told me this, that I was an unwanted pregnancy.  That her and my father had been fighting, she'd gone out and had some drinks, came home to find him crying, and she took pity on him.  She didn't even think about the fact that she might have gotten pregnant, I guess she had deluded herself to think a child could only be conceived in love.  When she started showing, when the doctor could confirm that she was going to have a daughter, she thought it was too late to abort me, though she wanted to, she wanted to say to the doctor there and then, Please, make it go away.  But, the look in the doctor's eyes had frightened her, made her feel guilty, she couldn't bring herself to do what was in her heart and months later, I was born.
    Both my parents remained quite distant from me, I was raised more by my sister, only a handful of years my elder, but still, as an eager five year old, she'd help change my nappies as best she could.
    I was an anchor though, holding my mother to that relationship.  If I had never been born she could have been free.

It's the end of the month, payday, and for a few fleeting hours my bank account will bob up to the surface, out of debt, draw a deep breath and then sink back under the waves.  I have never really understood it, I try and budget, I don't go out as much as I used to, I home cook as much as possible, don't drink as regularly.  But still, the money goes.
    I scour through my statements trying to find the anomaly, the leak, an unknown standing order perhaps.  But there's nothing out of the ordinary, and when I add it all up, it's exactly right, somehow - despite my best efforts, despite getting a raise again recently - that money still goes and I'm left pawing at the dappled sunshine seen through water, caught in the undertow.
    I want to move out, move on, get a place to myself, start to make what little effigy of happiness I can, but I don't think I can do this on my own.
    That's when I think I'm putting too many of my hopes and dreams in Iwona, too much responsibility unknowingly hoisted upon her shoulders.  But surely, she wants these things too?  And I'll wait, I don't want them now.  But is it naive to keep scratching at the door, like some optimistic puppy, hoping to be taken in?
    I feel guilty for feeling the way I do, as if I've allowed Pandora's Box to be opened.  But I don't feel like I was complicit in the decision, this emotion was lumbered upon me as much as I am lumbering it upon Iwona.  I feel like my mother, pregnant with something unwanted, desperate to get rid of it, but incapable - perhaps afraid - of doing so.  For me, it's because I never want to be alone.  What did my mother want?  Once I was born the slow wait for me to leave began, was it so she could move on with her life, regain what was long lost?  It wasn't her fault that she and my father fell out of love?  I have to wonder if they were ever really in love to begin with?  But, how do we know?
    Love is subjective, which is maybe why it's easy for some and difficult for others.  I wish I could care less, I wish spending time with Iwona wasn't so wonderful.  I feel like a slave to unconscious decisions, but at the same time I am the only one who has the power to do anything about them, but it's only really the power to stubbornly battle on or to walk away.  What kind of choice is that?  There is no fork in the road, just one path, and we can either continue or turn around and retreat.  Perhaps cowardice is just a derogatory term for wisdom?  I know that I'm going to get hurt, but I keep moving forwards.

I had an important meeting this morning, but my train was delayed due to signalling problems and I missed my connecting service.  I wound up getting into work 90 minutes late, having missed the meeting.  A colleague had stepped into my absent place and done, so my boss told me, a brilliant job filling in.  I began to feel my tenuous grasp on my job slipping a little from my fingers, and all I could do was say I'm sorry, it wasn't my fault the train was delayed.  Feebly adding, It won't happen again, but it's not like I can control that.
    For the rest of the day I'm shaking, my emotions are heightened, I'm perhaps a little too curt on the telephone to clients.  I don't know why I feel this way, this is a job I've never enjoyed, yet I've stuck it out, never really looking for another role somewhere else, because I can get by doing this, I'm making a decent wage, I don't want to set myself back.  But I'm not making any progress either.  Sure, they up my salary every now and then, but where does it go from here?  What am I trying to achieve?
    Two weeks later they give me my notice, I have a month left at the office and I should start seriously hunting for a new career, but I give in to procrastination just as I have done for these past three years.  Expecting someone else to pick up the pieces when it all falls apart.

I've been standing still, too afraid to walk forwards, too proud to walk back.  I've let others find me, try and urge me to walk on, or at the very least, go back, see what it was I was heading towards, and try again.  But we don't know, the path began without our permission, it just appeared, one day nothing and the next day expectation.  Except, you can't see the end of the path, you don't get to dictate that either, and maybe you'll walk for a hundred years or maybe you'll walk for a day.  Me, I shrink into myself, someone will come along soon, someone will put their arm in mine, they'll want to walk side by side, keeping me company, making sure I'm smiling, and they'll give me hope that there is something to look forward to.  All paths have to lead somewhere.

Careers

All the hands had shot up in the air, each face lit up with eagerness, backs stretched and bottoms lifted off the seats, as if not being picked to answer would cause them to lose their flimsy purchase.  Helen was quite pleased, she had become all too used to an awkward shuffle, an audible inhalation, or a pensive murmur whenever she usually asked a group of children what they want to be when they grow up.
    Carefully, with exagerrated precision, she pointed to one boy whose name was Jamal.
    "I want to be famous," Jamal beamed.
    "Ok," Helen nodded, he must have misunderstood the question a bit.  She picked another child, a girl called Susan.
    "Me too, I want to be famous as well."
    Quickly glancing around the circle, and at the slackening in those raised limbs, she began to suspect that every child was planning on saying that.  Just to make sure she picked another.
    "I also want to be famous," Magda bashfully smiled.
    Helen lowered her clipboard, usually she would have written each child's respective choice in the box next to their name, but today they all remained blank.
    "Does everyone here want to be famous?"
    "Yes miss," a boy called Ben said, "who doesn't want to be famous?"
    Helen sighed, clicked her tongue, "It's not really a career though.  That's what today is about, finding out what career you'd most like to pursue."
    "What career did you pursue, miss?" Susan asked, well-meaning but ultimately infuriating.
    Helen, you see, had wanted to be famous too.  When she was eleven she'd even been in a few adverts after a friend of her parents, who worked as a casting director, 'spotted' her at a birthday party.  Helen had gone to drama clubs after school and at the weekends, been the lead in a number of school plays, taken singing classes twice a week, and auditioned for a great number of stage schools.  But the auditions were unsuccessful, she found herself doing a theatre course at a mixed discipline University instead, though she never really wanted to be a stage performer.  Sure, she managed to wrangle her way into a few student short films, but the scripts were clunky and whatever efforts she made to raise their level just seemed futile at best.  Ultimately she grew bored, her course offered nothing of any real interest, and besides she'd made some good friends and started seeing this guy called Luke, and she thought there could be a future there.  They'd talked about moving in together after University, somewhere just outside of London to suit both their needs, because despite her apathy the only career path she really knew to pursue was her desire to be a television actress.
    So, when Uni was over, and after a couple of Summer months spent at their respective family homes, they moved to a small flat in Walthamstow, where she would commute into the city to try and attend whatever auditions she could scavenge and he would drive into Essex to intern at a nature reserve.  But Helen didn't really care for any of the roles she went for, she restricted herself to only film work - be it shorts, adverts, television, low-budget features, etc. - and each part seemed to offer nothing, no progression, no light at the end of the tunnel, and she was conscious of unintentionally building a resume littered with bad credits.  She would look at the filmographies of actors she admired and see the intelligent progression of their career, compare her age to theirs and worry that it was already too late.
    This began to impact her confidence, she knew she'd need to get a job to tide her over whilst she waited for the good parts to come her way, but she wasn't so keen on doing something ultimately unfulfilling like waiting tables or tending bar - it's not that she felt like she was above these jobs, having done both whilst at Uni - so she got an administrative role working in an online shop.  She made some good friends there, friends who really helped her when Luke ended their relationship after four years together, she moved into a house share in the city and then one of her housemates, who worked for a recruitment agency, told her about a vacancy within the company.  A little tired of the online shop's somewhat repetitive nature, and looking to work face-to-face with people, she applied and got the role that would eventually lead to her going out to schools to meet children to help advise them on pursuing the right career for them.
    "What do your parents do for a job?" she asked the children, leaning forwards and gesturing enthusiastically, trying to steer the conversation in a more productive direction.
    "My mum's an accountant, and my Dad mends electrics." Jamal responded quickly and proudly.  After a pause he, unprompted, added, "But my mum's mum was a baker and her dad was a taxi driver, and my dad's mum was a nurse and my dad's dad made furniture."
    "Very good," Helen was rather impressed, she couldn't really recall what her own father did, something in an office somewhere.  "That's impressive that you know all that."
    "But miss," Jamal innocently began, "doesn't that prove that what your parents do won't matter to what you do?"
    She was somewhat stumped, but then her point hadn't really been to give the children a sense of heredity through employment.  However, it had made her think about the cautious intake of breath that her mother had taken when she told her that she was moving near to London with Luke to pursue acting.
    "Are you sure that's a good idea?" her mother had said.
    Helen had rattled off their joint plans in defense, but also in defference, hoping to convince her mother - through her passion for the notion - that they were really going to try, that this would be the best for both of them, her and Luke.  However, ultimately it had proved to be their undoing, they found themselves two ships merely moored at the same port and with each day the different worlds they sailed into became their real homes, the city for her and the wilds for him.  But Helen couldn't help but think that her mother's sharp intake of breath had been the light to the touchpaper, sewing a seed of the doubt that would push distance between them both, like a tree busting through concrete.  But she never could have comprised, that's what she reiterated to herself there, right there in that classroom, she couldn't have turned her back on her acting and stayed out in the countryside for him.  Then she looked at herself, as much as anyone can, and remembered that she was not an actor, that she had not been to an audition in six years, that at first she had placed that dream on the backburner expecting to come back to it, but as time had wore on the notion had gathered dust, like so many things, and ultimately become like tinnitus, forever there, unchanging, and over time subsumed.
    Having been on that drama course she did know people who had continued to work away at it, hoping to become an actor, and she'd seen them rewarded with varying degress of success, and she'd felt bitter about it, sneered and wrinkled her nose when she'd seen the name of one of her contemporaries in the credits of some tv show, willing them to fail, sometimes masochistically watching the show and hoping that their performance would be so monumentally awful as to restore her faith in her own abilities, even though they lay dormant and unused.  If she could not be an actor then no-one, nobody but the pre-established celebrities she had no chance of knowing, could be.  It felt ok for the famous people she didn't know to be famous, because it was almost as if they were born that way, molded and designed for fame, they weren't one of us, they were Olympian Gods carved from stone, birthed into greatness.  She knew that she was formed from humbler stuff, so it didn't seem unfair that they had it all and she had nothing.
    That's what the reality shows changed though, they began to give people the impression that fame was a raffle prize, that celebrity was inside us all, and if we were there, if were lucky, it would be unleashed and once it had been discovered our trajectory would be unstoppable.
    But that was a world alien to Helen.
    These children though, they lived every day expecting some mysitcal talent scout to walk anonymously into their school, point their finger and hoist them - like a cuddly toy in an arcade machine - out of their squalor into a dazzling, glittering world of wonderment.  They could wave goodbye to their friends from the window of the limousine, perhaps come back to parade their newfound celebrity in their faces, bask in the fawning adoration, especially of those who once doubted them, laughed at them, pushed them over in the playground.
    Helen decided to grab a coffee from the staff room at the school, she stood listlessly stirring her sugar into the ill brown liquid, her mind wandering.  A teacher approached her, Ms. Cotton, recognising Helen from a previous visit.
    "How were they today?"
    "Hmm?" Helen responded, a little startled.
    "How were the children in the group, they've had a strange time recently."
    "Strange, why?"
    "Oh, did nobody tell you," Ms. Cotton edged the kitchen door closed a little, "one of their classmates died a few weeks ago."
    "Oh God, that's awful."
    "I don't know if you'd remember him, Billy Hudson."
    "Yes," Helen lied, she could barely remember any of the children she'd just been talking to.
    "Well, it's such a terrible thing, he took his own life."
    Helen froze, she was genuinely taken aback, "What?"
    "Oh, he was depressed, he was part of the school drama club and this casting director came in, looking for boys for this new film or something, well, Billy had a casting, but he didn't get the part." Ms. Cotton poured herself a tea.
    "And he killed himself?"
    "Yes," she said, adding the milk, "hanged himself with a scarf from his bunk-bed."
    "Because of the...?  Were things ok at home?"
    "Yes, as far as anyone knows, I mean, a lovely boy, wonderful student, really tragic."
    Helen finished her coffee, she talked with Ms. Cotton about other things going on in the school, about their plans for the summer, inconsequential things.
    Later that evening Helen sat on the sofa in her flat, a beer in hand, a dinner plate with the remnants of a Chinese takeaway by her side, and a talent search show on the television.
    She watched the hopeful file past the judges, each one giddy with the possibility of escape from whatever life lay on the other side of those doors, and she laughed unintentionally at those clearly lacking in talent yet full of delusion, she welled up at the awkward people who expressed unexpected abilities, or scoffed at the good-looking excitable groups who coasted through on - what the judges called - 'star quality'.
    But more than that, she wondered what any of them could hope to gain from it all, what did they want?  One young boy was crying in the hallway, having just failed his audition, the presenter put a comforting arm around him and thrust the microphone to better capture his sobs, and the boy wailed; "I just want to be famous."  Not earning any sympathy from Helen, but that's all any of them wanted really, they all just want to be famous, and all Helen wants is to feel better than them, that no matter what fame the successful ones may find she can feel, in the pit of her stomach, that it is a fleeting fame, a transient glory limply afforded to the naive by a triumvirate already caluclating how best to package, market and - ultimately - discard the performer singing, dancing, trying before them.
    When she was little, and the teacher had asked everyone to draw a picture of what they wanted to be when they grew up Helen had struggled.  In the end, on that day in primary school, before the casting director had unearthed her, she had chewed the end of her pen, lost in thought, trying to sneak a peek at the drawings the other children were busy scribbling.  Eventually, in an effort to try and relieve her creative block, Helen had just drawn a picture of herself as she was right there and then, no uniform or scenery, nothing to indicate any sort of designation, and then when the teacher had come around and asked her what job she had given herself, Helen had shrugged and said she didn't know.
    Ms. Cotton, earlier that day, had off-handedly referred to a five year plan, she hoped to become the head of the Science department, she had some ideas for changes she hoped to put forward when she achieved this goal, and she'd asked Helen what her plans were.  Helen had shrugged, tried to visualise herself in the future, but, like that primary school precursor, all she could picture was her as she was in that moment, nothing new.
    Fame, she thought, for those eager children, was merely a way of staying in that moment, that lazy moment, but being removed from the responsibilities of a world that refused to acknowledge.  A way to be given a gift of apathy, you don't need to try, you don't need to worry, you're famous, you don't have any problems.  To not be famous was to be burdened with everything, all the impossible misery of the world, and if that was the only alternative then that is why Billy Hudson had strung his scarf around his neck and hanged himself.  For all the good Helen felt she contributed to this world she might as well do the same.
    She took another slug of her beer and turned off the television, finding her reflection replacing the reality show, and she sat there and watched it until she fell asleep.