It’s funny how much your outlook on a day, your surroundings, the world can change, all subject to different influnces.
Take today - in fact, the last few days – in my own wee life. I’ve been fairly low for the past couple of days. After thinking on it a while, I’ve narrowed down the causes to having, firstly, little to focus on aside from staying at home doing zilch, no job, money in the bank that is not really mine, that I haven’t earned, and my nearest attempt at anything love-life-wise being limited to cyberspace (and love is far too green a term there I think. Think of it more carnally-centred than that). I had lost focus, I thought, and thus self esteem went plummeting into the floor. Secondly, it has been raining. Raining raining flipping raining. I have realised recently that my mood is definitely affected by the weather. I’m much more likely to feel down on these days now, whereas I can happily skip through sunny days with few cares.
These two things have an unquestionable effect on how the world physically appears around me: essentially, it becomes a trap. My home city, even though I love it, becomes samey, monotonous, the stereotypical little place you want to get away from because it’s become so stifling. I become much more aware of sounds and movement – today on the way to my interview, having already had a funny five minutes and potentially late, the sound of lorries, buses and cars rushing past was deafening, and I felt like every time Mum changed gears I was being thrown about like a ragdoll. It makes you want to scream. Added to this, I feel trapped within myself. Like there is another me attempting to escape from the parts of me that I loathe (these parts I tend to have invented for myself, because it appears my imagination is also used for evil), these parts having become a shell, so to speak.
It is completely mad, therefore, that things like that can change utterly. The sun coming out can do the trick sometimes. But it can be the act of simply letting all that has wound you up out and pulling through to the other side that really changes your world view. On coming into the office where my interview was scheduled, flustered from lateness, family squabbles and many other things, I looked in through the door, panicked and burst into tears in the middle of the hallway. I phoned my dad, convinced I couldn’t go through with it. He snapped at me to go back, tell them I couldn’t do it and just leave, obviously I’d made that decision. It was lucky he’d been so matter-of-fact, and luckier still that my interviewer just happened to come down the stairs for her cigarette break and found me, still in a state, mascara running down my face. I thank her for giving me a few moments to get myself together and really make the decision to stay (and my dad for the arse-kicking), because somehow, absolutely miraculously, I dabbed away the rogue mascara, dried my eyes, walked into the interview and came out with a summer job. Incredible, then, that at that moment, my world view transformed. My city, my mind, the world seemed without end again, full of colour, hope and possibility. And I barely noticed the traffic.
So I suppose if there is a lesson to be learned here, it is this: even at the lowest times when it feels like you’re about to fall off the precipice, giving yourself one huge haul up, even if you are afraid of losing grip entirely, can be your route to freedom, and living.
