Gray Skies

What's wrong with people?

Chapter 9

What’s wrong with people?

My stubble is getting longer, it’s starting to hide the contours of my face, creeping down the edge of my lips, I notice my eyes are crusty in the mornings around the edges, like white scab.

I wonder what that is. Maybe I should get myself some eye drops flush all the rubbish out it probably gathers from the pollution in this town.

Work was boring again, repetitive, I feel like a machine programmed to do the same thing day in day out, no margin for error. I receive my first call of the day, I glance at my phone in excitement, once again in hope that it was her, calling to tell me she misses me and to make me feel better, on an island near me, deserted as I am. Disappointed and still annoyed, I register that the caller is a university friend, in a matter of seconds I fabricate a forthcoming conversation between us:

“Hey man, how are you?”  He kicks off

“I’m ok.. What you been upto?” I ask uninterested, what I really wanted to know was, what do you want?

“Not a lot” he replies and then starts going on about his own life and all I can do is nod and say “uh huh” which will obviously end up in the “what’s up man you ok?” that’s when It all comes flooding in and starts again. The pointless questions they ask, like the Spanish inquisition, as if they have been recently employed by HELLO magazine and they are just looking for some dirt on you, fulfilling their own needs of feeling good about themselves knowing your life has taken a turn. You just want the conversation to end there so you can carry on as normal, alone. I decide not to pick up. It’s just easier to avoid the call. Its nothing personal.

That wasn’t hard was it? Think about it, if you picked up then you’d have a hundred and one questions to answer, where have you been? What happened the other night? What you been upto? The 5 w’s, what why who where and when. You can ring him back when you want to, this is all about you, you are in control and you decide who you want to talk to and who you don’t.

I let those who are concerned know that I want to be left alone and not to contact me, it’s only fair. It’s been almost a week and the slow but consistent stream of text messages and phone calls are almost becoming a nuisance, because it gets me excited for a millisecond that it’s might be her contacting me, the one I’m so madly in love with, the one who’s brought me here, my parachute.

Every time I realise it’s not, the disappointment shadows the gratefulness that there are people out there who care about my well being. It’s like finding a prize in a bag of crisp, excitedly you open it because the visions in your mind are so strong that you’ve won a million quid that there is no way you can lose, all you win is another pack of crisp. Disappointed in your luck, you place the winning ticket in your wallet for a rainy day, only for it to be a reminder of how close you were to being rich, never to be redeemed.

I don’t reject calls, I simply don’t answer them yet I find myself staring at each call till the caller gets impatient and hang up, a part of me feeling guilty. No one leaves me a voice mail.

Its dark, my room unevenly lit with the dull orange light emitted from street lamp outside my window, the frame of the windows cutting the rays casting a shadow on the wall next to my bed. I lie there reflecting on what I have achieved in my life. The thought is short lived and I find myself reading recent text messages again:

 “You feel like talking?”

“I hope you find the answers you are looking for”

“Good luck, I hope you resolve your problems”