Finding Yourself on a Monday
That Monday, Emily woke earlier than usual. Not from the alarm, not from any noise—just opened her eyes. As if some internal mechanism, the one that had dragged her out of bed like clockwork for the past three years, had finally shut off. The clock read 6:42. Outside, wet snow fell in thick, grey clumps, as if determined to seep through every crack in the window. The air in the flat felt heavy, unfamiliar. And something about the morning already felt wrong.
She lay there, listening to the radiator groan. The sound was uneven, almost whimpering, like something scratching inside. Probably the pressure had dropped again. Or maybe the house was cold. Or maybe she was the one who’d gone cold—no one could measure where the fault truly lay.
The kitchen was unchanged: the white mug with its hairline crack, the fridge plastered with magnets from cities she’d never visited, the stale loaf on the cutting board. Her hand reached automatically for the cat food drawer. But there was no cat. Not for a year now. Still—her hand moved on its own. Memory had a stubborn grip.
Emily worked at the copy shop attached to a printing firm on the outskirts of Nottingham. Six years. The place smelled of paper, toner, vending-machine coffee, and someone’s perpetual exhaustion. Every day was a carbon copy of the last. Same faces, same tired conversations, same hollow purpose. Her coworkers were predictable: Dave with his endless wife jokes, Sarah, who even in the loo broadcasted her latest dating drama, and old Pete, the printer, who’d stopped living the day his dog died. And her—less a person, more a function in a system that left no room for feeling, much less breaking.
She caught her reflection in the mirror. No striking features. Not old, not weary. Just unrecognisable. A thought flickered: *What’s the point?* Then—nothing. Because there was no answer. There hadn’t been for years.
She didn’t go to work. Just never left. Sat on the bus and watched her office blur past like a stage set, herself a spectator too tired to even clap. She rode to another part of town, where back in Year 9, she and Sophie had drunk juice from cartons and kissed boys whose names she’d long forgotten. Back then, everything had tasted different. Sweet. Free.
Now, a mint-green kiosk stood on the corner, its menu scrawled by hand. Emily bought a cinnamon latte—her first ever. She used to hate the stuff. Took a sip and felt her tongue burn, a light flickering on inside her.
She wandered through the streets, watching an old woman tear bread for pigeons like she was parceling out her soul, a teen laughing as he face-planted into snow, a woman in a scarf adjusting a pram. It all felt like a play, and for once, she wasn’t acting—just watching. And in that watching came a quiet warmth. Not pain, not joy, just something human. Like she’d finally been allowed to feel again.
By two, she walked into a salon. No appointment.
“What’ll it be?” asked the stylist.
“A cut. Sharp. I want my mum to panic.”
“Consider it done,” the woman smirked, picking up the scissors.
Strands fell like the past—each one a memory, a grudge, a scream she’d swallowed. When she stepped out with a short, daring crop, she felt lighter. As if someone had left after sitting too long in her chest, stealing her breath.
She bought a cheese and onion pasty, ate it standing on the pavement. Went into a bookshop and grabbed the most impractical thing she could find—*Lectures on Metaphysics*. Just to prove she could. Choose. Be odd. Be herself. Suddenly, she laughed—really laughed. No reason. Tears spilled, strangers turned, but she didn’t care. Because for once, it was her. Alive.
That evening, she came home. Mum stood by the window in the same jumper she wore for Sunday roasts.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Just walking.”
“You’re all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank God,” Mum said, setting a pot on the hob.
They ate in silence. Only the clink of cutlery. Candlelight trembled on the sill.
“I’m quitting tomorrow,” Emily said. “And taking a course. Dunno which yet.”
“Just don’t go quiet,” Mum replied. “Quiet’s like mould. Eats everything.”
Emily nodded. Because on that Monday, in a city of slush and weary faces, she’d felt it for the first time in years—not needed, not dutiful, not correct. Just herself. And nothing else mattered.
