Don't You Forget About Me

by Mhairi McFarlane

Something and everything had changed. I didn’t know yet that small moments can be incredibly large.

I’d never had a spark like this before, and certainly not with a male, whose skin, I’d noticed, was like the inside of a seashell.

I’d gone from not noticing Lucas ever to being consumed by noticing him constantly. I developed the sensory awareness of an apex predator: at any time I could tell you where Lucas was in the common room, without you ever seeing my eyes flicker toward him.

He put nothing on show, you had to find it out for yourself:

He was self-contained. By contrast, I felt uncontained.

When I spoke, he concentrated on me intently. Through Lucas’s fascination, I saw myself differently. I was worthy. I didn’t have to try so hard.

Lucas said, as he tentatively smoothed the wisps from my ponytail back into place: “Is your hair real?”

I wiped tears away. “Yes, this wig is my real color. I get my wiggist to match them up.” Lucas said, unguarded and weak from the mirth: “It’s beautiful.”

Tinkerbell tits.”

what-

In truth, I put a bit of flair into the performance for my own sake, not the customers’. I am not merely a waitress, I’m a spy from the world of words, gathering material. I watch myself from the outside.

Lately, I am feeling the fact that I used to be “of ages” with people I worked with in the service industry, but increasingly I am a grande dame. The thought makes my stomach pucker like an old football. The future is a place I try not to think about.

I am a writer in waiting who needs to earn money,

They told me that a free lunch was a perk of my meager wage, and I soon discovered that’s an upside like getting a ride on an inflatable slide if your plane crashes.

is a size of hypocrisy that can only be seen from space.

it’s the bubblegum-pink faux fur. It’s armor, it’s my personality in textile form. It’s up there in sentimental value after my ancient tortoise, Jammy.

I consider a blunt response saying, “I’m washing my nipple hair that night.”

HELP WH-

Is there anything less charming than someone trying to push you into something unwillingly and acknowledging they are pushing you into it, and carrying on anyway?

I explained: I notice things. Appreciating the absurd was a useful skill in my childhood.

This is the trouble with being unconventional. You never know when you’re simply being annoying.

but this gives me a chance to rehearse my story, get the lines right to make Robin laugh when I tell him,

this is what they all think. Oh how, er, “unlucky.” Trouble seems to follow her around, doesn’t it? How many times is that now? Mmmm. It enrages me and at the same time worries me.

“Oh, don’t be a diva, Gog.

And I was scared my expectations were never going to be met. But I’ve learned it’s better to have unrealistic expectations than none at all.

The empty was there before Robin, and he was a distraction from it.

athletic ability to find the positive—the sort that’s drilled into girls especially: be grateful, smile!—isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes you should ask yourself why you’re having to.

You can say more to someone you’ve known for twenty years, who knows the bones of you.

after crashing around your bedroom (alone? I assume) for an HOUR at 2 A.M. you think you can play your Taylor Swift songs on headphones and I won’t hear you SINGING ALONG. THE DISRESPECT IS STAGGERING.

He has curling, jet black hair, just long enough to scrape behind his ear. I realize what’s drawn my gaze is that he’s not greeting anyone or joining in, but doing a studied, sulky performance of “brooding,” a modern disco’s answer to Mr. Darcy at a ball.

When there is so much left unsaid, your mind is free to fill in the words that were never exchanged in a hundred thousand different ways, and believe me, I have.

“Yes, I know who you are, I’m old but I’m not crackers,”

“Dat’s your husband.” “But I don’t have a husband.” “When you grow up and get married.”

I wipe hot tears away on the journey home and wonder how much is my sister’s lack of faith, how much is my mum’s observation that I’m passing my shelf life,

I’m as much a combination of outward bolshiness and inward terror of inadequacy as I was when I was an adolescent.

The dog slaps its paw into my lap, and I lift and shake it. “Hello! Very nice to meet you! Who are you?”

“Can we go for a curry?” Mum despised spicy food and I’d never so much as had an Indian takeaway. Dad didn’t miss a beat. “It’s Saturday. You’re the captain.”

“You’re not forgettable, you’re like a darling cherub,” Jo says, stoutly and affectionately,

Jo’s going to make someone the loveliest mother ever one day, but for now she can be my best friend.

I wake up with a startle from a nightmare. I’m in a brutish medieval village and the members of a baying crowd are taking it in turns to fire arrows at me.

Your real problems are never the things you fret most about.

“Sometimes because the people we wanted to care for us, didn’t care for us, we live with a deliberate lack of care for ourselves. A way of getting back at them, through self-neglect.”

😭💔💔

“Revenge, perhaps a buried desire to be rescued. And embracing a failure that you feel you’re marked for anyway.”

Perhaps my problem is, I keep confusing the difference between making jokes, and being the joke.

“I head to the kitchen with a flutter in my heart rate and lead in my boots.

I am not in the middle of the mess, but in the center of a tiny triumph. I have done something valuable, using my own initiative. I feel . . . oh this sounds daft, but I feel like an individual for a change.

I feel helpless in a way you don’t often experience beyond childhood, like when I let go of my helium shark balloon in the city center, circa age seven. As it soared up and up I tried to believe it was going to miraculously snag on something and be returned to me, when in fact I knew, as it bounced on air currents, that I was spectator to it dancing away forever.

“I’ve begged her for a second chance, to no avail. Please can I enlist your help to try to convince her? Who here thinks she should give a man prepared to lay himself bare like this a second chance? Put your hands up if so.”

This man…is a psycho . What-

Don’t be ‘heartless landlord.’” “I think you’ve got our pub confused with eHarmony. Here we are.” He

it makes me think of outings with Dad. I crush the thought as soon as it’s formed because with Geoffrey here instead, the universe is warped and will be forever.

I’m sure she’ll be right as rain by tomorrow.”

It reminded me of when we studied Othello

SHOULD BE woorking on my Othello assignment right now