The girl in work
A note found down the back of a couch at a squat.
There was this girl in work. She’s wonderful. She’s under the impression that she’s ugly and while I understand how it feels I know she’s wrong. She looks like a Disney princess. Not even externally does her beauty lie: she’s conscientious to fuck and has excellent taste and humour. I saw her stifling a smile when she’d remembered something funny. It was charming. I drew her a cat. I talked to her a lot before asking her to go for a hot drink with me. “What’s wrong with a cold drink?” “It’ll be hot if you attend.” She said she’d just started seeing someone but it was sweet of me to ask. I felt very anxious about that – I entertained the possibility that she told a white lie and just didn’t like me as much – but she continued to be nice to me and I felt better about it. I’ve a lot of respect for her for that.
Work is a call centre. I’m in customer service, although some customers seem to think “service” means you’ll do anything for them, regardless of the consequences, or even if it’s possible. They regale you with things they’ve already told you a number of times. They say they’re disgusted when in truth they’re mildly inconvenienced. They’re a minority of customers, but it doesn’t help that I was scheduled seven days in a row. The seventh day was a slew of bizarre queries. I’ve very little respect for someone who’d get angry over something like a piece of jewellery taking longer than twelve hours to travel the length of the British Isles to get to them, especially when things like the moon getting closer are happening.
The girl was there on the seventh day. She was taking everyone’s picture for a company-wide social media thing. She told me to strike a pose. She told me I looked cute but sad. I told her I’d been taking tablets for that for years. She told me she had too.
On my lunch, I organised a housewarming party on the internet. I saw a picture of the girl with an old boyfriend who was far more handsome than me. I’d thought I was punching above my weight but at that moment I felt an absolute cunt. Back at my desk I suddenly couldn’t type any more. I had trouble breathing. I gave myself a minute or so in a quiet room.
I couldn’t pin down a single reason as to why I came close to an anxiety attack. I put it behind me. I managed to have a laugh with the ladies at the desks around me; we talked about shingles: they the disease and I the roofing. Going home was soothing. It was a chilly night for early September and there was mist coming off the river Alt over the road. I felt like I was in a montage with M83 playing over it.
I got home slightly out of breath. I had a cup of tea. I started reading a book. The book was Malentendu à Moscou by Simone de Beauvoir. Some of the vocabulary was archaic and I was feeling like I had no control. I started feeling inadequate. I thought about the girl. I thought about the email from HR saying it was reasonable to work so many shifts in one run. I tried to go on my flatmate’s Playstation but I couldn’t get the telly to work. I was fumbling with the buttons and hyperventilating. I felt a bollocks-for-brains.
I whimpered slightly and went into the kitchen. I got a knife. I went and sat back down. I looked at the knife and it looked back. I put a song on. The Avalanches’ Remix of Belle & Sebastian’s I’m A Cuckoo. It made me think of the girl. It was happy. She looks a bit like the girl from the EP cover. I tried to cut my arm and while the knife was too dull to cut me it still hurt a bit. I went to get a better knife. I got a bread knife. I got a heavy duty, serrated bread knife. I cut my arm until it bled. I felt like my internal pain was converted to external pain and it was much easier to handle. I could rationalise it more easily. That’s why I did it. Amateur acupuncture, if you will. A cut on the arm is a mild inconvenience. I didn’t do it with a view to harm myself except in the aforementioned way. It put everything into perspective. I don’t want to die any more. I still have access to the girl’s beauty. She’s not the sort to lie. She’s collecting donations for her mum to help Syrian refugees in Budapest, for fuck’s sake. I’m no bollocks-for-brains. My foibles make me human. The customers who get angry over trivial things are still a band of twats, though.
The knife is still on the couch, under a cushion. It’s got my arm blood all over it. I’m half-hoping someone’ll find it. Maybe they’ll give me a hug. Or a box on the ears.