I always had high and renewed hopes for the New Year, I
always excitedly jot down a list of things I wanted to achieve, countries I
dreamed of visiting, kilos I desperately needed to lose and I go about
my year working on my objectives with such optimism you’d think I was American.
But this year feels different, something is definitely missing…I didn’t even
make a list! I am consumed by something else, less superficial than a few kilos
or some Hollywood-inspired objective.
First day back in London after the long Xmas break, I
already know I don’t want to be here and it wasn’t the lack of sunshine or
morning coffee at home or the familiar safety of my parents’ house. This time
it’s different and I can feel a chasm opening and slowly widening.
As I proceed with my usual work commute, the sky is a dull
grey unpunctuated by anything, I can’t see where it begins and where it ends, people are so quiet on the
train you’d think they’re on their way to their executions, the only sounds
coming through my headphones are coughs, a lot of coughing!
In the office, I sit at my desk and as I look around, I see my
colleagues milling around the floor, repeatedly wishing each other Happy new
year, nobody knows when it’s appropriate to stop, the media hadn’t spoken on
the subject. They sit in front of their
screens, they run to meetings, they hold papers in their hands and discuss
business, I feel part of the engrenage and simultaneously out of place,
something nags at my brain, the feeling of being trapped is strong, like a lab
rat, I think of the long hours we’re expected to work for nothing in return but
the boss’s own pleasing, of the work-week that seems to be designed subtly enough
to send us home lobotomised for the evenings and comatose for the weekend.
Resistance is futile, I am part of this system, this modern
society that transformed us into new-world slaves, I am a slave, an
agent of the system, a slave to the matrix.
The feeling is stronger in the last few years, all I see is
flaws, this modern society model we live in is flawed, it works only to enrich
the ruling elites and enslave the masses, full of social conventions put in
place to control us, transforming us into sheep. Once you wake up and see it,
you can never go back to “normal”....either that....
…or I am getting my period soon!
