Being Good, Feeling Bad

On Monday mornings, phantom selves, and the long habit of feeling wrong for standing still.

I just couldn’t help it, it felt so wrong. Sitting in my living room, Monday morning, the sound of wind in the trees and birdsong at the edges of my distracted mind. I sensed a parallel me, logging into work at 8am and plugging away at the next engineering challenge. It was a ghost, a phantom - close but impossible to meet. My cup of coffee sat beside me, tiny particles of water vapour rising from the rim, releasing its deep aroma, linking my senses between parallel selves. There was something about the sunlight, it had a deeper quality to it, I felt like I hadn’t really seen it before.

My phantom and I were both still earning an income, except I was no longer able to continue how things were, I had been involuntarily thrust into a far smaller size. How could I deserve to have my bills and my food paid for, when I wasn’t contributing anything? I knew the logic, the company I worked for had measures in place to support its employees and their health, so why did I feel like this? What was the crime I had committed?

The sound of the school run outside transports me back to childhood; I’m bleary-eyed, trying to wake up, the rain sharply needling the flat roof of my bedroom. The realisation hits me, it’s a school day, and to make matters worse; it’s swimming today. Cold water, cold tiles, shaking from cold or anxiety, impossible to tell. Verruca socks.

The terror of being seen in a body that didn’t make sense yet. Visceral dread drags my stomach downwards; I stare from my bed at the unpainted wooden door adorned with magazine cutouts, I don’t want to leave the comforting warmth of my duvet, the sanctuary that is my childhood room, I can’t do it, I wish I were anywhere else, anytime else.

This became a repeating pattern for me, the dread of expectation, the guilt of not being able to participate. Decades later Covid-19 spreads rapidly, I am ejected from the system along with all other non-essential workers. The sudden release from routine was paradoxically liberating. Weekday walks in the park when I would otherwise be kept to my desk. Much more time to read, to make our new home ours, to consider deeply important questions about myself that I otherwise just didn’t have time or energy for. Only when my employer started phasing people back into the office, which for some time didn’t include me, did I start to feel vulnerable and guilty once again. Perhaps the system didn’t need me now after all? I certainly still needed it.

The sound of the school run was over, replaced with the gentle quietness of the village. My shoulders loosened. The coffee had gone cold, but something seemed to have warmed inside me.

I sit in my study breathing deeply the aroma of freshly cut grass, the sound of eager birdsong filling the room, Oatie perched on the ottoman in the conservatory watching the birds. Today’s expectation; weeding the flower beds. Spring really has begun.