Fragment #36 - Locked in

I'm back inside. Deep down in my soul. I can't get out. Where my body is right now, it absolutely doesn't matter. I can't stop thinking. I can't stop talking to myself, wondering if I'm right, if I'm behaving the right way... Of course, talking to myself amongst all those people, it's not right. It's absolutely wrong. And so I try to figure out what would be right. And I already know: I should start by stopping to try and figure out what to do. How can I commit to present and society? How can I do that? I know it's possible, I do it every day in the classroom. Why can't I commit to my life the way I commit to being a teacher?

I've lost for long my way in the conversation. I have no idea of what they are talking about. I feel like I just can't be a part of it. I don't know what to say, I don't know enough things, like normal people do. I've never felt normal. I know somehow it's very proud and snobbish to think that I'm this much different. But I've always felt excluded. Have I never really grown up? Have I stayed a child, an insecure teenage girl the other youngsters don't like? And this would explain how I can be good at my job, because it would be the only part of my life in which I can clearly make a difference between the teenage world and the grown up one... How can I be a teacher in my whole life? Do I need to? Why can't I stop asking myself so much questions? I need to... change... But I would still be me...

"Amélie?"

It's reaching me through a blur, from very far away.

"Amy? You're lost in your thoughts."
Alison is looking at me. She asks, in a lower voice, so our colleagues won't hear us – we are in a noisy pub, a cheerful one in the West End, and she is taking the tone of the girlfriend offering a careful ear to your issues: "You're thinking about Mike right?"

I could easily answer "no", it's actually the truth. But what would I say then? That in that pub I'm having a useless and deep thinking about the person I am, why, where does it come from, and how I can change it? When we are supposed to have a nice staff night out, celebrating the end of school, the holidays... It wouldn't make sense.

"I'm actually missing him. This is stupid, I know it can't work out, and he is really trying to see me again so..."

And here we are, we start talking about my messed up love life. I'm trying to fit in some normal conversation. What she doesn't know is that I probably have, at this right moment, on my mobile, a missed call from Mike. Another one. I don't know what to say to him. I don't want to answer. I'm doing it the usual way: I'm cutting Him out of my life. Because the fact I can't believe in our relationship is not a problem which is his to solve. I'm locked in myself, and I don't think he is the one yet who could unlock, if not all, at least some of the doors locked between me and the Others.