‘It’s been a bad week’.  *What ever happened to that show?* you think as you walk out of the sweat-inducing house into the shocking cold air outside and head down to the bus stop.  A woman takes a moment to stare at you, because you’re a new addition to the scenery so she obviously has to examine you.  You stare just past her, blankly, into the yellow bus lane lines, lost in the sound emanating from your iPod headphones – the new album you’ve been awaiting for years by a German band less understanding ‘friends’ of yours once bigotedly called ‘your Nazi music’, never stopping to learn they’re actually chanting about love.[br][br]On the bus, you wonder if you should jot all this down.  Superstitiously you think, if the train comes and there’s a free window seat, you’ll write; if it’s on the aisle, you’ll sleep – it’s up to Fate to decide what you’re ‘meant to do’ this morning.[br][br]‘It’s been a bad week’.  It most definitely has.  This has been one of your low times.  You knew it almost as soon as the week began.  One little thing happened, and you were ready to write off the next seven days.  Maybe you were willing it all to go wrong, or maybe you’ve just gone through this so many times you’re starting to recognise the warning signs.  That’s what happens when you’ve spent so long as a felon, a Borderline offender.  A friend keeps telling you it’s not real, it doesn’t matter.  He’s right – but how do you make that transition from acknowledging this to actually putting it into practise?[br][br]Stepping into work later, you realise the whole train journey went by in a haze.  You didn’t write, but you didn’t sleep either.  You just leaned your head back and felt uncomfortable, couldn’t stop fidgeting, blinking hard, straining your shoulder, twitching your left lower back, ripping at what’s left of your bleeding wounded fingers – the right ring finger got it the worst, this time; so much skin was ripped off earlier in the week, it left an gaping, oozing blister attempting to be new skin, reaching out and coating the nail.  It hurt so badly, but you didn’t cover it up in plasters because you know, from experience, under the plaster it will create a new bubble of living skin, on top of what’s already there, an abnormality, like a wart but a genuine part of your finger.  It’s like a starfish regenerating.  Then you’d have to take the scissors and chop it off in order to get your fingers back to their natural un-mutated state, and that would hurt even worse than the wounds did, because it wouldn’t be dead cuticles you were tearing off; it’d be living tissue…like cutting off one of your own fingers.  And how the hell do you explain any of this to the others?[br][br]What would happen if, one of these times when office colleagues who think imagine they must be smarter than you simply because you’re ‘just the receptionist’ launched into one of their pointless stories about the importance of the stock market and how supposedly investment isn’t a form of gambling, you suddenly looked up and said, ‘This morning, when I looked down at the train tracks, all I could think was how easy it would to jump onto them and let the train run me over.  And I wasn’t even scared – that’s how numb I’ve felt this week.’  What would they say?  What would they do if they really knew what hides behind that corporate smile you’ve learned to flash to keep them off your back?[br][br]The director has you type an embarrassing speech for his friend’s 40^th birthday, then asks you what you think.  You’ve never been good at lying, the truth is written all over your face.  Frantically, you try to think of an excuse to soften the blow: ‘It’s not really my sense of humour, but I’m sure it’ll be great at the party.’  He asks, ‘Oh no…but what if there are people in the audience with your sense of humour?’  Without thinking first about what you’re saying, you instantly reply, ‘There won’t be.’  Then you flash the smile, to show that everything’s in good fun, no big deal, it’s okay, we can all continue these roles we play.  Inwardly, though, you think, how could he ever imagine any of his friends would be anything like you?  Maybe you’ve been playing ‘the game’ a little too well, despite continually telling yourself you can’t play it, you don’t know how.  Have you, somehow, along the way, learned how without even realising it?  What are you becoming?  Is it good that you can gain rapport with people you don’t fit in with, for the sake of a job?  Or are you selling out by not being your true self with them?  Why are you even dwelling over such stupid questions?  What makes you so sure any of it even matters?