I don’t live there anymore. The shed, I mean. There is a chance that I will go back to visit from time to time, not because I want to but because Things Happen and Life Is Unpredictable and that is just the way it goes.
Working late makes me happy. Finishing early sometimes on a Friday also makes me happy. I like it to be one or the other: leaving ahead of schedule to do something fun or wandering out at 7pm with a buzzing head. On Monday it was the latter. I went food shopping afterwards and I thought how weird it was that I was so happy to BE. There was nothing special about my evening or about buying spinach, and Mondays are not particularly interesting days anyway, but there I was. HERE I AM. MONDAY. I have my bags for life. I can put all of this stuff into them, walk out of the shop and not need to check my bank balance immediately afterwards. I can drive home and make myself something nice to eat and then I can write or read or call a friend or practise my winged eyeliner or roll around on the floor or pretend I am a famous woman on a talk show (“Well, the thing is, Ellen…”) or decide what I want to do with my life, like really do with it, or anything else.
Anything else, ever. The day after that, I saw a low-flying plane in the dark as I was heading back down country lanes, and in my head it was a spaceship I would never forget. The day after that, I laughed so hard I cried and Diet Coke nearly came out of my nose. The day after that, I thought about this: “You are different. Before you were in the background but now you make things happen and you don’t care.” I do care, but I can end the week knowing I am so markedly altered that someone who has been with me since the age of 11 is knocked back by it. And then start the next.
SOPHIE JO 