Flailing

Part 1: Happenstance

'Are you alive? Ok, are you sure? I'm pretty sure...' Siobhan was looking at herself in the mirror and she just kept wondering, is she alive? Life happened to her, she did not happen to life if that made sense. 

She had made choices, that is for sure but most of the time life happened and she reacted. That was how she got her education, she was late when sending in her applications and her choices were limited, so she decided on childcare with a focus on administration. She didn't even like kids that much but it was pretty easy, at least for Siobhan so she did it. In her last term a man showed up to one of the classes, he was recruiting for a job position in a nearby nursery and she got it, she didn't even want it but she got it so she started to work in childcare. Things like these kept happening. She moved apartments because of convenience and changed jobs because the opportunity was there and the pay got better. She ended up at the Knight Nursery and the same kinds of things happened. That is how she met and started to date Roger Knight. It just happened.

Now here she was, 36 years old and dating a millionaire in his 60s. People thought she planned it all out but truthfully, it just happened. She wasn't a gold digger by design or nature, something more like opportunity. From what you know about Siobhan Serpent so far, you would probably picture a distant woman and yes, you would be right. Siobhan had been closed off all her life, she just didn't really feel like a part of something bigger, she was not a part of a context, she felt as if she existed in a void. Her parents just called her a lone wolf and they said that it gave her character. They were good people. They did try their best, they just didn't know how to care for a child at all times. Siobhan was left to her own devices a lot and she wasn't around a lot of people her own age. Her mom read to her every night, well into her teenage years and Siobhan knew that however lonely there was comfort in a book. So she read, and read, and read some more. Maybe that was why she went through school pretty much unnoticed.

As a teenager Siobhan felt more lost than ever, she could see how people around her connected and started to make their own choices. They decided on how to dress, how to speak, what friends they wanted and who they liked. Siobhan didn't know any of this. She wore the clothes her mom bought, she thought that slang was weird and unnecessary as a linguistic tool, and she didn't have any friends. Siobhan did have acquaintances. People who by proximity had a recurring role in her life but that was it. She was nice and she even went out and did activities with them but she was not connected, not like everybody else was. She was detached and passive, yet life kept on happening. She even dated. That was when she knew that something was really wrong. She could be with a boy and she felt nothing, even when it came to sex. Nothing.

As she entered her 20s people kept telling her that she needed to date, to meet someone so she did. Every time she was asked out she went, within reason of course. Some were nice, some were self centered. She did try to make it work with some of the nicer ones but she never felt right. Her longest relationship lasted for six months and ended because he wanted her to move in. She made an active decision here to say no, in all honesty this might be the biggest decision she had made for herself and after this she would not date for years. She just went with the flow as some would put it. But she learned something important, she didn't want this again so she became colder and less unapproachable, she built a wall and kept people out much like she did in her younger years, before the pressures of making connections. She was fine on her own.

She liked the nursery, or at least she liked it enough. The people had been nice and they did try to befriend her but she would not let them. They called her a cold bitch and she didn't mind. The pay was ok and the hours fair, she was with the kids as little as possible and had her own office, she liked her own space.

Roger was persistent and she did agree to go out with him. He wanted her for her looks and she didn't mind his money so they became a couple. When the relationship came to the surface the whole nursery was buzzing with gossip about them. Both Roger and Siobhan decided that it didn't matter, they made sense together so they moved on and let people talk. The relationship was ok, it really was. He bought her things and the only thing he wanted was her on his arm and in his bed. The sex was actually not the worst thing, him constantly wanting to show her off was. He wanted her to be something she wasn't, he wanted her to be personable and social so she tried. Every time she did well or at least when Roger thought that she did she would be rewarded, at times he treated her like a dog and funnily enough he loved to call her 'his little pet'. She did not like this but it seemed like more of an inconvenience to tell him than to play along, it was better than the times he called her 'mommy'. The man had deep seated problems and except for the mommy kink it was mostly about control, about making people fall in line. He wanted her to respect him, so she did. Respect could mean lots of things but to him it meant giving him total access to every part of her life. He possessed every part of her.