This is a story I wrote as part of my creative writing portfolio in my Honours year. I think about this story often because, although it may seem unexceptional, I had inadvertently predicted my future.
During Honours, I had dreams of moving to Jo'burg. My then-boyfriend (now-fiancé, ahem!) was living there and I just totally fell in love with the city. But instead of moving there in 2018, I trekked to the Eastern Cape to write an MA thesis at Rhodes.
Thereafter, I finally made it to the 011 as I'd taken a job as a features writer at a magazine. Newly qualified, I was earning a pittance and churning out unthinkably uninspiring writing. I became this nameless protagonist I'd written about in 2017. Huh, so funny how life works.
Wipe your eyes, and a new week has started. Monday morning: the alarm beeps incessantly and she swiftly assassinates it with the whack of her right hand. At a sloth-like pace, she rolls up and out of bed, not yet ready for the week that has jumped up excitedly to meet her.
The pills are taken with some lukewarm tea (milky Ceylon, no sugars – she’s trying to cut back). She fusses in front of the mirror for far too long, trying to get her onyx bangs to fall onto her forehead just right. Her hair has a tendency of parting itself in the middle, and this doesn’t support her new haircut’s logistics (or aesthetics). Eventually giving up, she huffs out of the bathroom, slings her handbag over her shoulder, and she’s off.
She works at an up-and-coming lifestyle magazine, and she hates how clichéd it is:
new ways to decorate your home;
minimalist living – food and furniture;
what to eat to become the best you;
new superfoods – nature’s answer to all your needs;
glamping: holiday destinations for the reluctant camper;
ten steps to job satisfaction.
Ironically, she’s far more than ten steps away from any form of job satisfaction, but she’s in no position to pull her nose up at it. A girl’s got to eat, so a girl’s got to hustle. After months of job-hunting and cold-calling, just as she was about to take ‘Rejection’ as a middle name, she was called in for an interview. She got the job even though she was over-qualified and relatively underwhelmed.
Her family reacted with raised eyebrows as if to say: You? At a lifestyle publication? Improbable, yes, but not impossible, she thought to herself. Now though, a few months on, she leans more towards the impossible.
Her colleagues are the type of people who take jogs on weekend mornings, who do yoga whenever they have a spare second, who condescendingly own rescue dogs, and profess to actually enjoy the taste of wheatgrass. This, undoubtedly, contributes to her cripplingly low self-esteem. Her thighs rub together when she walks, she has a slight gap in her front teeth (to match her hair-parting), and in summer, her breasts sweat onto her belly despite her attempts at numerous fad diets.
She wonders what her colleagues think of her – her general unfitness, her packing leftover pasta for lunch, and her spells of anxiety so harsh that she has to take off work. Do they whisper about her when she goes to the bathroom? Do they even take enough notice of her to form an opinion?
Never in her life had she imagined herself as a writer at a lifestyle magazine; her eighteen-year-old self would swear: not even for a million rand, never. And yet, here she sits in her well-lit open-plan office. The printer drones with newly printed documents, and the air-conditioning emits the faintest of buzzes. Co-workers talk shit, mingle at the water-cooler, speculate about office romances.
The mundanity of it all seems ridiculous to her – she is the ‘before’ stock footage of an infomercial for some life-changing course offered by a botoxed motivational speaker.
She just feels rather alienated and alone in her work environment. Most of the time, between cringe-worthy copywriting and some ridiculous editing, she lets her mind wander. How is it that she got here? Is her job really that bad? Is her ‘entitled millennial’ attitude coming to the fore? What did she expect? What is it that she actually even wanted?
Her ever-pessimistic family had warned her when she brazenly embarked upon her studies of the Arts, much their disgust – who will hire you / what work will you do / what kind of money do you think you’ll earn / can you support a family doing that.
Then, she had dismissed it as mere vitriol, the same-old ballie talk of generations past and those to come. But now, she considers these questions, and finds that even now, she cannot really answer them. She is more rudderless now than what she was at seventeen.
Sometimes, she imagines dissociation; an attempt to will it into being, perhaps. She sees herself floating over the office space, a plump cloud as fat and soft as a summer rose. She glides over the printers and partitions, and manages to escape through a window. Above eGoli, she soars. The air pollution of the city slips over her like water off an anorak; she is protected, safe.
Here in the air, she sees herself lingering, just watching the passing show. It all feels so real: the sun pleasantly baking her broad backside, the wind ruffling her hair, her head feeling groggy and her ears popping from the altitude. It’s a pseudo-dream she doesn’t want to wake up from. She’s a dusty feather.
The bubbles burst up in the water-cooler and she’s brought back to her nondescript office in Randburg, just off Malibongwe. Business as usual.
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