Slippy roads

Ryuji

I love rain.
I think it's rather calming, especially the way it makes all the people look the same.
Under the grey sky and the water falling like ashes, no matter your religion, your skin colour, your sexuality, your gender or the way you feel about some politicians, when it rains you're like everyone else, looking for a place not to get drenched, covering yourself up.
It doesn't matter how pretty your outfit or you make up is, you just look like everybody else with a big jacket to avoid getting cold.
But maybe im getting too philosophical for a simple employee in a phone company eternally waiting for his boss to give him the days off he keeps promising the exhausted worker to give to compensate the long hours he stay alone in the company to get ahead with the work.

I stretch myself, trying to get my body to remember what it feels like to have a spine. When I look around me, all I can see are rounded backs and computer lights, and if im lucky, eventually the top of the head of some of my coworkers. From my 5 feet 7 perspective, the view looks like adage sea with the colours of the workers' shirts.
I sigh as deeply my lungs compressed by my bad posture allow me to.
Why did I choose this job, again ?
I take a sip of water from the bottle I always keep with me while I let my tired mind wander.
I didn't technically choose this job, i think.
I had to choose it. So it's not really a choice when you don't have any other options, right ? I see myself twelve years ago, when finally moved in our own house with my freshly married wife. I was in a hurry to get things done, to have a stable life. I wanted a job, that would provide me and her a comfortable life, i wanted a cosy life like the ones the main characters of a movie achieve after they went through several ups and downs.
I mean, we've had up and down. I've had up and downs.
My family always pressured me really hard, and the weight of being the only child -and the boy child my mother's family, who only have had girls, was waiting for, was a lot to deal with.
I did all kinds of activities: piano, baseball, went to school after school until nightfall, and really did my best in all these, until it was just much and i fell into a deep depression.
My parents understood.
At least, they tried. They allowed to stop any time and energy consuming activity, and stopped talking to me about how I was wasting my potential if I got slightly lower grades. Actually, they started not talking to me at all, but I guess it was the best they could do.

I close my eyes, to give them some rest after a whole morning staring at a computer screen, while my conscience goes back to that day I moved with Lana in our new apartment.
I remember the spark that lighted up her face when she saw the morning sun’s ray flood what quickly became our room, and the smile that attested her intense joy when she first opened the living-room’s curtain and the overwhelmingly peaceful view displayed under her gaze.
I had spent so many days arranging and rearranging all the rooms for I wanted them to be perfect for my wife, and the face she made was worth every single one of them.
Now, Lana always closes the shutters of our room before going to sleep to prevent the light to waking her up in the morning, and when she opens the living room’s curtains she barely even looks at the view, to not to mention she immediately starts rumbling about how our apartment feels like an aquarium because of the big windows, and that every one of our neighbours can see us.

I catch myself sighing, and I decide to take a break from my work. I can’t focus properly if all I do is to ramble internally about the past, and it’s almost lunchtime anyway.
I stand up, not without almost falling because of my stiff legs, and I head toward the exit of the grey and sad building where I’ve been working for the last eleven years. The weather is sunny, with the sun of those cold, too bright days that only exist in winter. The temperature isn’t cold enough to make the little clouds I like so much out of my breath, but I still shiver and put my hands in my pockets as soon as the building’s sliding doors spit the outside’s bitter air in my face.
I sigh again, for the hundredth time today.