secrets and solitude

Here's a little something I wrote a long time ago. Time passes and she feels like an old lost friend, but this is a story about myself.



"I just think we should distance ourselves from her." She took a considered sip of her cappuccino, careful not to tamper with the perfect froth sitting on top, placed the cup back on it's saucer and turned to the group. "What do you think?" She was not looking for a consensus, rather daring someone to object.

And so it was that I lost every friend I had made at school, without my even knowing. 

I was seventeen years old when I suffered the worst of my bullying. The teasing of my Primary years proved to be nothing when I later encountered the ripple effect of a simple say-so from the leader of a crowd. 

I returned daily to the cafe where my ostracism was decided. It was a beautiful place to sit quietly. In the middle of the most commercial and plastic part of the city I had found a sanctuary. This place was a storey above the noise of it's surrounding shopping Mecca. High ceilings and white walls lined with furniture and an endless supply of caffeine and cake. I would nurse the same coffee for hours with a notebook balanced on my knee and a watchful eye looking out for those I still foolishly believed friends. I was not there for myself, I was there in the hope that I might bring back the days I had only glimpsed, of a friendship forged over coffee cups and ashtrays on a balcony above the hubbub of the city. Hindsight proves that a wide berth had been forged around this shop in the daily activities of these former friends. My presence rendered their once-regular a no-go zone. But I wasn't to learn of this for many months yet, and thus I created my new lonely home with company, not solitude, in mind. 

"I collect people." She nodded to the surrounding group of contrived eccentrics. "I have an artist friend, an actor, a singer, a couple of  dancers and now," she had looked to me, "I will have a writer." She rattled off the list like a proud mother, as if their creative achievements might in some way be attributed to her. Perhaps she wished herself their muse. Perhaps she was just like me, trying to prove to herself that she had value.