Validate Me by Charly Cox

Author:Charly Cox [Cox, Charly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-09-12T17:00:00+00:00

#woke

I woke up this morning

Misinterpreted my privilege

I’ll tell you I’m mourning.

Selfish Care

My will-he-won’t-he relationship had been officially he-won’t for a few weeks and in-between convincing myself I was dying of terminal illness, loathing the bones of my body, and incurring incredibly impressive debt to Deliveroo and Klarna, it was the sight of his name that churned my insides in the most cruel and undignified way. I had been avoiding department stores (and now, even my beloved Duty Free) in terror: one stray squirt of his aftershave could kick the backs of my knees in and have a pristine woman from behind the beauty counter calling security, gagging me with her silk neckerchief as I smash each bottle off the shelf like a T-Rex who’d finally afforded his arm extension op.

‘A sample, Madam?’

‘A sample of nauseatingly happy times? Get stuffed, mate.’ I couldn’t risk it.

But the other places lingered under my nose still, the other places not only unavoidable but greeting me with every waking second as though they were doing me a kindness. ‘Suggested’ lists, unopened voicemails, photos begging to have the faces recognised, filling my body with the most putrid acid, concocting another cocktail in my stomach. So far down in the pit of my intestines it was almost comically a shooting pain in my rectum. Anxiety, leading the way to remind me of what he really was.

The melodrama of my every thought and sense had pursued me to Heathrow, one 11-hour flight away from freedom of heart. It had chased me down with such aggression that asylum was all I had left. The notion of feeling so uncomfortable and rigid had become a certain kind of comfortable – one that I was frightened to keep seeking comfort in. Perhaps, I thought, if I unleashed myself to the swell of spontaneity, just like all other good bourgeois heroes of mine whose stories I’d dogeared and underlined and idolised, perhaps if I forced myself to truly just ~live~, I would be able to recapture a sanity so long ago felt. I can hardly help myself as I walk through the connecting flight tunnel and before I turn my phone off I hit send on a tweet that simply says ‘Goodbye, strange world.’

‘Good.’ I think. ‘Ambiguous.’ I think. ‘My friends might worry, strangers might offer sympathy.’ I think. ‘This buys me some time, to see if anyone really, truly, actually cares.’

Flight mode on.

It’s selfish and it reeks, but no more than the man who sits himself behind me and reclines his seat barefoot and rests a toe on the arm of my chair, I reason, half convinced. I suppose when given the opportunity to do as we please and block out the immediate consequence, we are all the same.

I unpack my kit meticulously. Oils and self-heating eye masks, miniscule sample pots that have been labelled with numbers to ensure they are slapped on in the right order. One book on leadership (I have never worked in an office), a copy of

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