Boredom on the Train

And there you have it, that sums it up, my life – boring. I am practically breaking my neck to get a look at a lady battling incessantly with a stubborn milk sachet further down my carriage, taking silent bets with myself as to whether it would end up all over her pristine black suit, and this just happens to be the most interesting thing to happen to me all day. Actually, that makes my life sound exciting, in actual fact, it’s probably the best thing to happen for 5 months. . . .

My career hit an all time low yesterday when having been asphyxiated for half an hour by the smell of smoke and rotten shit, I am then forced to wipe the brown remains off the seat where my patient had been sitting – it can’t get any worse. I’m an optician, and if the repetitive ‘lens number one, lens number two’, ‘red or green’, ‘better or worse’ doesn’t drive you insane, then being stuck in a confined space with mindless patients for whom personnel hygiene ceases to exist, will.

This isn’t how I pictured my life – a career woman, wearing trouser suits, working in a spacious office, networking at corporate events – how did I end up like this? I’ve worked my way through various excuses, counselling and reassuring myself and often for hours at a time convincing myself that I have in fact made the right decision, that I will truly one day wake up and feel fulfilled, and secure in the knowledge that dishing out glasses is something of value and importance. In all honesty, the real reason, my only motive, fear – I chose a safe and boring path and now I’m paying the consequences.

Looking back at my sixteen year old self, I furiously wonder how I had been so oblivious, how had I not noticed then, something that seems so blatantly obvious to me now. When during my dull and dismal week of work experience in a local practice the receptionist had leaned over to me – ‘I’ve got cystitis’, she said, ‘I’ve got capsules from Boots’. The four walls of an optometric practice was hardly an inspiration for an in depth and intellectual conversation – but that? I was there to gather knowledge about my future career and to gain an insight into what my upcoming years would behold and yet I’d known this woman for less than an hour and she had already chosen to confide in me about her urinary tract infection. Did she not have any other pearls of wisdom to impart on me, no advice, no information to bestow upon me about the operation of this business – no – because there was nothing left to tell.

I’m painting a very bleak picture, it’s not all that bad, the hours are good, I’m home every night by 5:30p.m and the pay isn’t bad. But I spend more that I can afford on clothes I’ll never wear, for things I’ll never go to. All this. . . and I can’t even have a cigarette, because I quit and if I have one then that’s failing and that’s worse then wanting a cigarette. So I’m drinking vodka instead, pathetic I know but I’m on the train and forgot to bring a magazine.

And so, somewhere in between Wakefield Westgate and Stevenage, I come to a somewhat drunken conclusion, my life is going to change . . . and I’m going to get another vodka.