truman show

Sometimes I think you could easily be forgiven for thinking that the world revolves around you, that everything that has ever happened in history around the world has been all about your coming.

Life is subjective. My life is different from yours because it is unique to me; yours is unique to you. I couldn’t ape yours, not even if I tried. I couldn’t possibly feel what you feel. Even if you told me explicitly what it means to be you, I could never capture your life accurately through my own. With that in mind, I think it is the human condition to forget that with every second that passes, there are millions of people living and breathing, experiencing their own version of this life. We can’t comprehend that. It’s too big. It doesn’t matter how selfless we are, how much we care for others, the act of living is essentially about ourselves. You can love your family, your partner, you can care for the plight of strangers, but it’s your life.

This is a bigger subject than I am usually comfortable with on this blog. It’s a world apart from the transport rants, complaining about some fuckwit man, or lamenting another idiotic night out. Sometimes I get these moments of reflection, usually squeezed between strangers, safe in the bubble of the iPod, staring at the wall as we sit outside Clapham Junction on another delayed train, or hippo-like in the bath with my hair dye colouring the water with a pinky tinge. Sometimes these moments are forced on me. I’ve been rendered bed bound this weekend after a particularly stupid episode on Friday. Sales Girl’s birthday coincided with the first proper day of let up from the thing I was moaning about on Monday, so of course we went out to celebrate and got tanked up on champagne. Admin Girl vomited all over her new shoes, and I was in bed by 1am only to wake up crippled on Saturday and spend the day crying and curled around a hot water bottle, and self medicating with leftover antibiotics that The Doctor - the one I am marrying - told me ought to shift it. Thank god last time this happened they gave me 21 tablets rather than the 9 I had needed - why? Don’t care, just thank god.

So yeah, my behaviour saw me trapped at home this weekend.

A package arrived in the post. I sat in bed, burning my butt on my hot water bottle, and leafed through the yellow pages. I couldn’t read much of it. It was too personal, to read more would have been like an invasion. But it got me staring out of the window, while Polly and Sybil ran about like a pair of loons before settling next to me to sleep, pondering what it would be like to be someone else. Other people are conducting their lives with every moment that I spend navigating my own. They feel things, they see things, they commit words to blogs. They have love affairs, wants, hopes, needs. It’s not like I don’t know this, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that this isn’t my own personal Truman Show.

The package is now safely stored in my bottom drawer, in case the owner ever wants it back.