Finding Herself on a Monday
That Monday, Emily awoke earlier than usual. Not from the alarm, nor from any noise—she simply opened her eyes. As if some inner mechanism, the one that had dragged her from bed on schedule for the past three years, had finally quieted. The clock read 6:42. Outside, wet snow fell in thick, grey clumps, clinging to the windowpanes as if trying to seep inside. The air in the flat felt heavy, unfamiliar. Something about the morning already felt wrong.
She lay there, listening to the old radiator groan—an uneven, whimpering sound, like something scratching from within. The pressure must have dropped again. Or perhaps the house was cold. Or maybe the chill had settled inside her—no one could measure where the fault truly lay.
The kitchen held everything in its usual place: the white mug with the crack, the fridge plastered with magnets from cities she’d never visited, a stale loaf on the cutting board. Her hand reached for the drawer of cat food out of habit. But the cat was gone. Had been for a year. Still, her fingers moved on their own. Memory refused to let go.
Emily worked at a copy shop attached to a printing firm on the outskirts of Manchester. Six years now. It smelled of paper, toner, machine-brewed coffee, and someone’s perpetual exhaustion. Every day was a carbon copy of the last. The same faces, the same worn-out conversations, the same hollow meaning. Her coworkers were predictable: Dave with his endless jokes about the wife, Laura who aired her love-life dramas even in the loo, and old Pete, the printer, whose life had ended the day his spaniel died. And her—somehow no longer a person, just a function, a cog in a machine where feelings and breakdowns had no place.
She caught her reflection in the mirror. A face without distinction. Not old, not weary. Just unfamiliar. And the thought flashed: “What’s the point?” Then—nothing. Because there was no answer. There hadn’t been in a long time.
She didn’t go to work. Just never left. Sat on the bus and watched her office pass by like a stage prop, as though she were an audience member too tired to even clap. She rode to another part of town, where once, back in Year Nine, she and Jenny had drunk juice from cartons and kissed boys whose names she’d long forgotten. Everything had been different then. Sweet. Free.
Now, a mint-green kiosk stood on that corner, its menu scrawled by hand. Emily bought a cinnamon latte—her first ever. She’d hated the taste before. The first sip burned her tongue, but inside, it was as if someone had flicked a light on.
She drifted through backstreets, watching an old woman tear bread for pigeons as if dividing her soul, a teen laughing as he toppled into snow, a woman in a scarf adjusting a pram. It all unfolded like a play, and for once, she wasn’t acting—just watching. And in that stillness, something warm and human stirred. As if feeling had been permitted again.
By two, she walked into a barber’s on impulse. No appointment.
“What’ll it be?” the woman asked.
“A chop. Sharp. I want my mum to be shocked.”
The barber smirked, scissors flashing. Strands fell like the past—each a memory, a grudge, a stifled scream. When she left with the short, daring cut, it felt physically lighter, as though someone who’d sat too long inside her had finally left.
She bought a pasty pastry, ate it right on the pavement. In a bookshop, she picked the most impractical read—*Lectures on Metaphysics*—just to prove she could. Choose. Be odd. Be herself. Then she laughed, properly, without reason. Tears splashed down, drawing glances. She didn’t care. For the first time, this was her—laughing, alive.
That evening, her mother stood at the window in the same jumper she wore for Sunday roasts.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Just walking.”
“You’re all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank God,” her mother said, setting the pot to boil.
They ate in silence. Only spoons clinked. Candlelight trembled on the ledge.
“I’m quitting tomorrow,” Emily said. “And signing up for courses. Don’t know which yet.”
Her mother nodded. “Just don’t go quiet. Silence is like mould. It rots everything.”
Emily agreed. Because on that Monday, in a city of soggy snow and weary faces, she’d felt—for the first time in years—not needed, not dutiful, not correct. Just herself. And nothing else mattered.
