Monday’s Awakening
That Monday, Emily woke earlier than usual. Not from the alarm, not from any noise—just opened her eyes. As if some inner motor, the one that had dragged her out of bed on schedule for the past three years, had finally cut out. The clock read 6:42. Outside, wet sleet fell, grey and clinging, as if determined to seep through the window cracks. The air in her flat felt thick, unfamiliar. Something about the morning was already off.
She lay there, listening to the old radiator groan. The sound was uneven, almost whimpering, like something scratching inside. Probably low pressure again. Or maybe the house was cold. Or maybe she was—who could measure where the fault really lay?
The kitchen was as she’d left it: the white mug with the hairline crack, the fridge plastered with magnets from cities she’d never visited, the stale loaf on the cutting board. Her hand reached for the cat food drawer out of habit. But the cat had been gone a year now. Still, her fingers moved on their own. Memory had its own stubborn life.
Emily worked at a print shop copy centre on the outskirts of Manchester. Six years running. The place smelled of paper, toner, vending-machine coffee, and someone else’s perpetual exhaustion. Every day was a carbon copy of the last. Faces blurred together, conversations were stale, meaning long worn away. Her coworkers were predictable: Jack with his tired jokes about his wife, Sarah, who aired her love life even on loudspeaker toilet breaks, and old Pete, the printer, whose world ended when his bulldog died. She wasn’t a person anymore—just a function, a cog in a system where feelings and outbursts had no place.
She caught her reflection. A face with nothing remarkable. Not old, not weary—just not hers. The thought flickered: *What’s the point?* Then, nothing. No answer. There hadn’t been one in a long time.
She didn’t go to work. Just didn’t show up. Sat on the bus and watched her office drift past like a stage set, while she played the audience—too tired even to clap. She rode to the other side of the city, where, back in Year Eleven, she and Lucy used to sip juice from cartons and kiss boys whose names had long faded. Back then, everything was different. Bright. Unshackled.
Now, a mint-green kiosk stood on that corner, its menu scrawled by hand. Emily bought a cinnamon latte—her first ever. She’d always hated cinnamon before. The first sip burned her tongue, and inside, it was like someone had flicked on a light.
She wandered through the streets, watching an old woman crumble bread for pigeons as if dividing her soul, a teenager laugh as he tumbled into the sleet, a woman in a scarf adjusting a pram. It all felt like theatre, and for once, she wasn’t acting—just watching. And in that watching, something warm and human stirred. Like being allowed to feel again.
By two, she walked into a barbershop. No appointment.
“What’ll it be?” asked the stylist.
“A cut. Sharp. I want my mum to freak out.”
“Got it,” the woman smirked, reaching for the scissors.
Strands fell like the past—each a memory, a grudge, a stifled scream. When she stepped out with a short, daring crop, her body felt lighter. As if someone who’d sat inside her too long had finally left.
She bought a pasty, ate it right on the pavement. Strolled into a bookshop and picked the most useless title—*Lectures on Metaphysics*—just to prove she could. Choose. Be odd. Be *herself*. Suddenly, she laughed. Really laughed. Tears spilled, passersby glanced, but she didn’t care. For the first time, this was *her*—alive, unshackled.
That evening, she came home. Her mum stood by the window in the same cardigan she wore for Sunday roasts.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Just walking.”
“You’re alive?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank God,” her mum sighed, setting a pot on the stove.
They ate in silence, spoons clinking. Candlelight trembled on the sill.
“I’m quitting tomorrow,” Emily said. “Taking a course. Not sure which yet.”
“Just don’t go quiet,” her mum replied. “Quiet’s like mould. Eats you alive.”
Emily nodded. Because on that Monday, in a city of sleet and weary faces, she’d finally felt it—not needed, not dutiful, not *correct*. Just herself. And nothing else mattered.
