Vignette #5

Waiting for delayed trains on a sweltering day is never fun - it's a subjected neccessity. A neccessity because I need to get home, regardless (I'm tired and feeling unwell) and subjected because I never asked for this.

As the day progresses beyond the specified time in which the train was meant to come, I become more lethargic and I find myself slumped limply on the station bench. I just want to go home.

In my idleness, my mind wanders off. I think about where I am now (a graduate, unemployed and still living off someone else's income); I think about what I am going to do (more years of training to become only half of what I want to be); I think about who I am (a frustrated train passenger waiting for her delayed train to arrive); I think about you.

My mind's whirring now, intoxicated by insecurities and worries. I take a deep breath amd find my chest tightening - all this just at the thought of you. I think about how loneliness was once my subjected neccessity.

I had been abandoned by someone I thought I could depend on and in my loneliness, had to nurse the wounds this person left me with.

Subjected because I never asked for this. A neccessity because it was a valuable life lesson I needed to learn.

I feel sick. The insecurities of abandonment and rejection is making my head swim. So much so that I almost didn't notice the train that whizzed by at full speed. I look up, startled. I can see the many faces of the passengers it contained but I couldn't focus - eveything blurred and swayed as I tried to look at the train - but then it passes...and the train disappears into the distance.

I kept looking at the point in which the train last left the platform - it was gone now, no doubt still continuing it's journey through Surrey, through a route which I wasn't taking and I thought about where those many faces I saw were going.

When my train pulls up (twenty minutes later and an hour late), I have almost forgotten about that fast train which made me jump. But when I did finally remember it as my train began to depart, I spared it a thought...and then I thought about you, about how you came not at the right time, but at a time after a life-jerking startle and how you could have to bear the burden of someone else's past. I don't want that.

As I get off the train, I feel better and make my way home. I leave the train which was bound for Central London and think no more of its contents. I am finally back in my flat; I can now relax and forget about today...and plan my tomorrow.