Everyday Stranger

Is This My Life?

Yesterday I had a meeting in a different part of London. I got up at oh-God-hundred and hauled myself off to the train station. The night before had been a bit weird-I checked in with X Partner Unit, who has been doing some cleaning out of his own. If I don't take our cats, they will be "gotten rid of". Arrangements are now being made for rabies vaccinations and testing, so that they can bypass the 3 month quarantine (the UK doesn't have rabies, and so all animals entering the UK must be aproved through a 5 month EU process or put in quarantine (aka a kennel and a cage) for 3 months to make sure they don't have the virus. I couldn't put my cats through that, so they will go the approved EU route.) My Swedish farm cats will be joining me later this year (good news, eh Stevie!) and I am so happy about that.

He's packing me out of his life and moving on, and I am glad about that for his sake, but I do miss his friendship. Mr. Y was a sweetheart about it all, and very understanding.

Mr. Y got up with me yesterday morning, even though he didn't need to. Safely secured in his flannel robe I bought him, he sleepily hugged me and provided me with a hot mug of coffee, with just the perfect amount of milk in it. We sat on the couch, sipping the coffee, and when I left I held my hand up and we linked fingers, promising to see each other soon.

Once on the train, I sat there, looking out the window, crossing and uncrossing my legs, moving sleepily on the scratchy green seats. The sun was making an appearance in the low grey sky, and I settled in, iPod earphones in place, music stretching its way through my ears.

I got into Paddington Station, and I am still just so amazed that this is my point of entry into the world of Dream Job. That several times a week I get to slide my way into the Victorian structure, so large and gaping that I could throw a stone towards the curved steel-beamed roof and never come close to hitting it. Is this my life? This new me?

I made my way down to the Underground, amongst the throngs of people. I love that moment when you stand on the tube platform and you can tell a train is coming. The air within the station gets sucked and pulled in, and then with a sudden whoosh it heads out of the tunnel, being displaced by the dogged train, and blows your hair from your face and your bad mood from your soul.

I rode the train, and then switched, and when I emerged I was at the stop you take to see Buckingham Palace. People hustled all around me-men in their business suits looking stressed. Tourists with small backpacks and good walking shoes looking tired but impressed. Double decker buses hauling their daily ware to their destinations and cab drivers menacing the lot of us.

In the building, I was stunned to find that the window behind me overlooked the London Eye and Parliament, just a bit away. The Union Jack flew high on Parliament, flapping in the wind managed by a half-sunny half-grey sky. The meeting commenced, and I dug in, taking action points and discussions, finding my way through the new world of Dream Job.

When the meeting ended, I ate a sandwich staring at the view across the way-Parliament. I work here? Is this my life? It's so amazing to me. It's so incredible that I came all the way from the pit of hell to the dizzying heights I am now. And what a distance there is to fall this time, should the fall come.

Leaving the office, school girls with pleated skirts, minty scents, bunchy-kneed tights and wayward ties danced up and down the sidewalk. My mood was high despite my stress about work, the fracture in the relationship with my family, and my heartbreak over the collapse of relationships around me. Businessmen, heading back the way they came, looked more grim than before. I smiled at each one of them, and although they were startled at first, each one of them smiled back.

And when I got to the train station, Mr. Y was there on a bench waiting for me. I walked up to him, arms flung wide, and engulfed myself in his scent. People walking past us on the platform smiled at us and continued on their way, heading towards their partners, their kitchens, their families, their dream-filled beds.

And later, when we went to bed and after a long session of lovemaking in which he gave me a number of dizzying orgasms before finishing off one for himself, Mr. Y planted a small line of kisses on the curve of my right shoulder. He turned me over on my side, slid his arm around me and hauled my bottom into the warm curve of his pelvis, picked up my breast like a small bag of warm sand and held it in his hand, falling asleep that way.

And as I fell asleep, I thought: this is my life.

Please God don't let me fuck it up somehow.

-H.

PS-exactly one week until I turn 30. Wow!