Desiderium

1 - Vitanda est improba siren desidia

One musts avoid that wicked temptress, Laziness

London.

It never appealed to me as a child, and it most certainly doesn't when I am a fully grown adult. Some people adore it and wouldn't want to live anywhere else in the world. I, however, couldn't think of anywhere worse. The noise, the commotion, the constant swarm of people who all seem so isolated and separated from the world. However many people, myself included, see cities as a means to an end. A place brimming with opportunity, and most importantly, money.

My parents spent an absolute fortune on a private education, which to say the least got me nowhere. I graduated after a tedious four years of my life from Cambridge with an English Literature degree with no hope, no dreams and absolutely no enthusiasm for pursuing whatever career my life would take me. However my life escalated drastically and I fell into a situation where I was completely out of my depth, and in order to save both myself and the people I loved. I fled to London in the hope of starting afresh.

*
It was nine am. Having asked half heatedly at the nearest coffee shop to my flat for a job, which they declined due to my obvious lack of commitment, I found myself slumped on a bench beside a bin that was overflowing with greasy wrappers and bottles that gave off an odour that was far too disgusting to even describe.

I felt like a mad woman who had recently escaped an asylum only to find that the world she had been locked away from was so much worse that the dingy room she had been tortured in.

What are you doing with your life Scarlett? I asked myself. You can't let him affect you this much, it is ruining your life!

The truth was that I was a mess, if you hadn't already guessed. This was no life to live. Living off baked beans and cheese, with the occasional piece of toast, and spending my days staring aimlessly at a television screen, not watching it but simply drifting over the warble of celebrity wannabes. I was quite frankly terrified, I didn't want to go out, my past had scared me to the point where I was confined to my living room.

I sat upright on the bench and glanced at my mundane surroundings. Old couples lazed on the grass, children bounced around the play ground that was a health and safety nightmare and teenagers that thought they could do anything with their life smoking weed behind the trees. As I gazed at these people who seemed to have no worries in their lives, I realised that I couldn't do this to myself anymore. I had approximately fifty quid in my bank and any second my landowner could turn me out of my flat that I hadn't paid rent for in four months.

I had to make a change, or I would spend my life living in this cloudy, meaningless life.

And so I picked myself off from the bench. Your probably thinking, why? Why now? Why have you suddenly changed your mind? The truth is that I don't know, I don't even know what goes on in my head half the time, my brain makes choices on its own without asking me for a second opinion. I guess it was more like a revelation, like when the apple fell on Newton's head or Archimedes 'Eureka' moment, there was no explaining where the thought came from, it just did.

And with that in mind, I decided that I needed to stop wallowing in my lazy lonely life, crying over the past, I needed to move on and become a fully independent, occupation driven woman.

*
It had been three days since my revelation and to be honest I was no where near to that independent woman that I had envisaged but I was making steady progress. I had de-cluttered my decrepit flat, of greasy wrappers and dirty clothes, and began to sort out my life. Having unearthed by laptop from under a pile of bills, that I hadn't paid, I wiped off the dust and began searching for a job that a partially qualified female could do.