After Work - read more


So walking along this road now, this road that I've walked along ten thousand times before, with my red hair and my little black skirt and my office girl's green jacket, I notice people passing me, checking me, weighing me up. Trying to find something out about me by the face I show to the world. Exactly the same as we all do; guessing, not knowing for sure and I just keep my feet going on and my heart and my mind ticking over, because my love still lives in me in a way he doesn't in anyone else and until I decide the time has come I can't allow that to die. Even if I wanted to explain it to someone I wouldn't know where to begin. It's drummed into you from the day you're born that the past is something you move away from and a normal person would realise that and get on with living their life. Find somebody new and let the memory fade...organically, I suppose, till it finds its natural level, in among all the other things that are finished, dead and gone. But I'm not a normal person. I'm mental, I've been in a mental home, I've had tests done and results produced and files opened about me. I've been discussed by serious people, in comfortable chairs round polished wood tables, people who nod their heads very slowly to show they've understood something and rattle their pens against their teeth while waiting their turn to speak. I've taken drugs, all sorts of drugs, and they've reacted over the years with whatever it is in my head so that now I sometimes feel physically sick unless I can look out of the window and I get this frightening thing where it's like I'm not seeing through my own eyes. And my sexual habits are a little unusual and I don't see what's so good about having fun all the time. So, all in all, I'm not normal. I'm a bit strange as it goes.