Time To Escape

© Ellerslie / Shutterstock.com

The voice of the HR girl haunted her. “Look on the bright side,” it said. Bright? Despite all the things that had gone wrong? Not bloody likely! Where did people get off telling her how she should feel? She was old enough to make her decisions about her own emotions. She didn’t need any new age types lecturing about the virtues of positive thinking.

Carolina slumped in the train seat and tried to relax, but between the annoying child kicking the back of her seat and an extremely loud woman involved in a mind numbing conversation with her phone buddy about what girly TV show she would be watching tonight, relaxation was near impossible. If only she hadn’t forgotten her earphones, she could have drowned the woman out. As for the child ... just plain drowning was a tempting choice.

It had been one of those days when everything she touched turned to lead. She was fairly certain she was going to be 'let go' from her position in the insurance company. She rarely lost her temper, but today she let fly at a colleague who insisted on questioning everything she did. The woman had burst into tears and gone home, claiming she was too upset to work.

Oh stuff it, thought Carolina. Do I really give a rat’s arse?

She most definitely did not.

It didn't matter what she did or what she said, how educated she was, how talented, how experienced, as far as anyone at work was concerned, she had nothing worthwhile to say. It made her so impotently angry, she almost exploded. However, she'd long ago learned that it wasn't helpful to take her anger out on anyone or anything else. That just usually ended up being embarrassing.

Carolina could not work out what she was doing wrong. She knew she had an issue with gratitude. She wasn't even sure what gratitude really was. There were lots of things that made her happy and which she wouldn't like to lose, but she was not certain that was the same thing as gratitude. She didn't have the knack for feeling overjoyed when she received something that was far less than she was aiming for. She'd been that way since childhood and always hated the whole Pollyanna thing her mother tried to instigate in her. Utter crap. Really, who feels happy with a crayon set when what you really wanted was a bike? Especially if you were appalling at drawing with your crayon set.

Her mother would say that there is an opportunity with the crayon set. You may learn to draw and become really good at it. Carolina rolled her eyes. Her mother and the holy grail of opportunity. Pfft! Well, there was also the possibility that she had absolutely no talent at drawing and the crayon set would sit on the top shelf of the wardrobe gathering dust.

She could feel a pair of eyes staring at the left side of her face. The wretched child from the seat behind was leaning over and smiling at her. She glared at him.

“Fuck off, kid.”

The child slid back and she could hear it whimpering to its mother. Next thing an angry adult face popped into her line of vision, and a pink lipsticked mouth began hurling abuse at her.

She put her fingers in her ears and turned her face to the window. Someone was poking her, but she ignored them. She stared at the vista of grey buildings outside, a cityscape relentless and soul-destroying. She had to get away.

Inspired by a prompt from Cynthia Morris in her quarterly Free Write Fling.