This monologue had been chilling in my brain for a little while, when I saw a brief for monologues about the feelings of the in-between. I wanted to write about this glorious comment my friend jessie made, so this felt like it fitted perfectly. I'm not sure where the rest of it came from - somewhere deep seeded and unspoken maybe - but I hope you enjoy nonetheless.
My friend, Jessie, she’s one of those friends who takes really good pictures. Like insanely good pictures. You’ll be downing your pint, but through her phone camera it looks like one of those glossy, if slightly grainy memories you’ll tell your kids one day. She’s got shots of us at the library, in the queue for the post office, Christ even on the toilet, and she makes them all… glow. And then we look back at the pictures and they have that magical, transformative thing and I don’t remember the test I’d failed, or the £13 ASOS dress I had to return because it made me look like a plastic wrapped sausage, or any of the messy bits. I just remember the being togetherness instead.
There’s something Jessie said once that’s stuck with me. I don’t know why… it was a stupid thing, like just a comment that she didn’t really mean. We were walking, and the sun wasn’t setting but it felt like a sunset. The sky was filled with colour, blues and purples and the clouds blending them together – like it was water coloured… each hue easing into the next. And then the birds came. There must have been a hundred, two hundred maybe. I actually don’t know I’m no good at guessing these things. They flew overhead, and suddenly they scattered across the horizon, like an explosion but in a soft, gentle way. So now the sky wasn’t easing hues but filled with life, fizzing over with energy and direction. And there was no drama about it, no spectatorship, no audience, except for Jessie and her phone, and my eyes watching what she watched. And she was grinning, a full full grin, and she said – to herself – “I love it when birds do that, that’s my favourite thing that they do.”
And I realised that I had never thought about what my favourite thing was that birds do. I hadn’t realised it was a favourite thing that people could have. I hadn’t realised that we can just look at things and like them. That’s so stupid because of course but I guess – I’m not explaining myself well here – I think I mean that I hadn’t known that the world is there to be liked. And loved. And enjoyed. Because, I think, the world never often feels like something that’s got much joy in it. Except in Jessie’s pictures. And I often find myself wishing, or like looking forward to when a moment will just be a picture, and thinking about what caption Jessie would put, who’s going to comment and what they’ll say. Looking forward to then so that I can enjoy now and see the good in it. The joy. The fun and all that. And I think… I’m scared that means I’m never really… happy – not in the sense that people are meant to be happy. That I imagine it or reconstruct it or find it in a story – a narrative, a version rather than in life.
That thing that the birds were doing – they were dispersing. They’d reached their destination, the end of their shared goal, and now they’re splitting off, looking for their own nest. Their time as a collective, as a group – as a single mind, that time was done. They’re on their own now. I feel a bit like that. Like I’m not part of that… like I’m not part of a… like I’m out on my own. I cleared out my camera roll the other day and there’s nothing new… nothing since graduation, just screenshots of bus timetables. Nothing to reflect on, so I just end up looking at the same old albums… God I sound depressed. I’m not- I’m uh… I just miss- I just…
Jessie’s working in HR now. London. Yasmin’s doing a post-grad, law conversion or something in Belfast. Emily’s working in Cambodia, no idea exactly what but her stories look fantastic. Everyone’s scattered. It was time to be out on our own. Time to stand on our own two feet not just drag each other along through the messy, tangled, sticky bits. And I’m trying to see it how Jessie did, to see how beautiful being dispersed was. To see how joyful and exciting and explosive it is. But nothing feels explosive right now. For me. It feels stagnant. Still. In the worst way. And I’m not sure how to be, how to live without them. That sounds so dramatic but what I mean is – I think I’m usually the follower. But now there’s no one to follow. That I’m left behind a bit. Stuck. And I’m not sure where to find that anymore – the fun, the life, the fizzling the…
I’ve tried to find a favourite thing for everything. I’ve tried to find a favourite tree, but it’s stupid without Jessie, they’re all just trees. But I still like the birds, I like when they flock in a V, when they rotate to give each other a break, when they call out to let the others know that they’ve found a half-eaten bagel on a street corner. But I think maybe Jessie was wrong, well no- she was right – it was the best thing that birds do – they leave each other so all of them can survive. They’d never find a nest big enough – never find enough food in one spot. But I think maybe the most impressive thing birds do is when you’re driving along, somewhere isolated, still, sparse, and you see one – just one – swooping, diving, propelling itself, entirely alone. And I think about how it’s alone and does it anyway, it doesn’t need encouragement, it doesn’t need company or competition, it doesn’t care if people don’t look up to see it or if they do. It’s just what birds do. And you can’t even take a picture because it’s gone before you can stop. It’s just what it was. And I think when I see that – that’s when I get the closest. To feeling happy right there. Because I know I won’t see it again – and I can’t really tell anyone else about it. It’s just for me, and it feels… it feels enough. For a moment.
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