Notebook and Pen - Prt.1
I watched feeling ice cold on that humid July evening as my life crackled and popped in a flurry of hungry flames and lung clogging smoke. I hung my head so my dark hair curtained my face. I didn’t want my eyes to betray the bleeding of my broken heart to the gathering onlookers. Even in the face of losing everything but the notebook and pen clutched to my chest and the bag slung around my shoulders, I couldn’t bear to openly cry.
I had spent the afternoon at the library in a dizzy excitement, determined to get down the names of every suitable literary agent and publishing house in the country. My chipped red nail polish had been splattered with deep blue ink as the ferocity of my scribbles proved too great for its delicate nib.
I had left the library elated, floating on that strange metaphor for happiness, ‘cloud nine.’ I had smiled and greeted strangers where previously I would have weaved through the pavements with hunched shoulders and determined humility.
Waiting for me on the kitchen table, you see, was my first completed novel. I had been determined to finish it before the landmark of my twenty-first birthday; a dot on the map of my life span I wanted to feel proud of. I had managed it, with two weeks to spare and had bought a bottle of wine from the off-license to toast my success for having done something that mattered.
But that great heap of printed word had cost me more than just the four-pounds-sixty-three to celebrate. I had torn up a university application, alienated friends, got a job I hated and disappointed my parents in the process of completing it.
So as I’d been pushed off my proverbial cloud at the sight of the flames engulfing my flat, it didn’t come as a shock to me that I cared nothing for the material possessions going up in smoke; they had largely been cheap and ugly anyway. Nor did it surprise me that I couldn’t care less for the shoebox full of sentimental objects I’d traditionally kept by my bedside since I was a child. The thought of my destroyed work tore my heart into tiny pieces before any other loss could touch it. It was as if I could cough and the fragments of my pain would be swirling with the ash in the air around me. It hadn’t after all just been a great heap of printed word; it had been my great hope; my great escape; my big bloody pipedream.
As a crowd continued to form and flashing blue lights swamped my blurry vision, I decided that short of going mad, my best option was to run.
So I did just that. I ran and I kept running. I ran until it felt like my ribs were going to burst right through my skin.
It had started to rain and I realised the fire would have gotten my umbrella too, so heaving from me desperate fleeing, I sheltered in a nearby street café that smelt of stale coffee and greasy bacon. Then I cried, I cried so hard when I sat there and my thoughts caught up with me that I was asked to leave for disturbing the other customers. I was mortified with having not only openly cried, but completely and utterly broken down all over the sticky white table. The waitress suggested that perhaps I was better off going home, which made me cry harder because I didn’t exactly have one of those anymore.
But I left all the same, pretending like I did.
Then I walked, I walked in that rain until it stopped, and I found I had wandered to the train station. My plan, albeit one I hadn’t fully acknowledged or even come up with consciously, was to get on the train and go home; back to my parents’ house to explain the whole huge mess of how my life had just gone up in flames and how I planned to move back in for a while. But actually when I bought my ticket it was one to anywhere, because I quickly realised that I couldn’t face carrying out that plan; I couldn’t face their confirmed disappointment and anyway, as far as I could remember my room had been converted to a nursery for my sister’s new bundle of joy. So instead I got on the next train that pulled into platform six; six for the number of years I had been writing my novel. I decided I would get off at the last stop; wherever that was.
Turned out it was somewhere in the middle of nowhere by the sea. That was kind of nice in a really surreal way. I hated the countryside, the seaside, anywhere that was just too quiet. I liked the hustle and bustle of the city, the way it could shout over things you didn’t want to hear.
There was something about the silence of the countryside that reminded you that you were alone.
But after what living in the city had just dished me up and with my notebook and pen for company I sort of liked it. It offered a relief and comfort, like I’d somehow transported myself into another, kinder existence where reality wouldn’t be able to find me.
I drifted down to the bay and sat where the dry sand ended and pulled my pumps off so the icy sea could wash over my feet. Then I opened my notebook and tore out the page listing publishers and agents, screwed it into a tight ball and threw it to the mercy of the waves. A shout of fury echoed in the wind blustering about my ears. I only realised it had come from my mouth when I clunked my teeth back together.
With a new clean front page I started to write down what had happened. Some people would drink themselves into a blur in the face of adversity, or suck on poison filled paper-tubes. Some might seek mindless sex with a faceless stranger or more sensibly the comfort of friends and family. But I sought a pen and paper to pour out my heartache in the only way I knew would truly satisfy my soul. I thought I could survive any of life’s crap as long as I could write. I guess for me it made breathing a little easier.
However, a cigarette never failed to clear my head so I could write in the first place and so with quaking fingers, I opened my soaked through bag and lit up. Then I found my bottle of celebratory wine and bitterly unscrewed the cap, squeezing my eyes shut as I poured it down my neck until I coughed and spluttered. I guess I sought writing first but was willing to take anything else that promised to help take the edge off as a supplement, apart from the family and friends, they could sod off for all I cared.
The tears I hadn’t even realised were still dribbling down my cheeks drained just as my wrist began to throb and I stubbed my fourth cigarette into the sand. I tipped the empty bottle upside down catching the last golden drop with my tongue. Then I lay back on the wet sand and gazed up at the sky, wondering what I’d done to piss off the universe so terribly and whether this time I should just let it win.
