I'm Home

Sometimes I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams. The loose thread is more terrifying than it sounds, it is daunting and distracting. As an adult we learn not to play with them or pull them from our clothing because it causes a tear, a pull, a ripple. There are times when you pull the thread and the fabric remains the same, as though nothing happens, but usually to get rid of the thread we must use the scissors.

Growing up, the threads aren’t as appealing, you no longer want to pull them from their resting place, they become something minuscule and easy to ignore. This isn’t the case for all adults or all children. We all know adults who pull at one thread, causing one after another until they can no longer recognise the piece of clothing. There are some children who can ignore the threads protruding from their clothing and continue, as adults claim to do.

This is where I am, living with the pulled thread and seeing what’ll happen.

There’s a woman sitting next to me writing down numbers in a well-worn notebook and referring to an app on her phone. An app with a title to do with calories or tracking her weight, there is nothing wrong with her appearance as far as I can see. She is blonde, late twenties and adorning a wedding band. She continues to calculate each fragment of food she has eaten to the last crumb, I can read every word she is scrawling but I can’t quite understand them.

This woman was nice enough when she asked to sit next to me, distracting me from my book, she seemed nicer than most if I’m being completely honest. As a woman, I’ve never understood the point of calorie counting, some nutritionists advise it to keep healthy, but to me it seems to be the unhealthiest thing in the world.

To obsess over something so rigidly that it causes eating disorders and distracts you from enjoying the little things in life. Imagine having a cup of tea before bed and realising you can only have three more sips because you used two sugars instead of one. I am not judging my seat fellow for her actions, or feeling sorry for her, I merely wish we lived in a world where she felt like she could eat without counting, whether it was her health or her body image, I’ll never know.

I was tempted to ask her why, or to compliment her so she didn’t dwell too long on that extra sugar. She left at the next station and gave me a gracious smile. Just another person on the train I’d never see again.

I’ve been on a lot of trains these past few years, most of the time I’m alone. Loneliness is often looked upon as something to fear, something that is regarded as someone who is friendless, single, a loner, isolated or a widow. To be alone can feel terrifying, but it is also the most liberating feeling in the world. It is being silent because there is no obligation to speak, it is being comfortable because your skin is the only thing holding you up, it is being with yourself behind a closed door rather than behind a glass pane to the rest of the world.

I enjoy being alone with my thoughts, if I’m being entirely honest, being around people, people I’m not entirely myself around, can be exhausting. This is a strange way to look at socialising, but small doses are fine, as it is for so many other people in the world. I find it hard to trust people who are uncomfortable with being alone, even for a minute, to me it’s as though they don’t like who they are and if they don’t like who they are, the person they’re portraying to me is very far from who they truly are.

My next train companion was a man who dropped his apple. I handed it back to him after it rolled under my seat, he thanked me, then we continued to read our respective books in agreed silence. I wonder if I’ll ever meet these strangers again or if I end up as an extra in their dreams.

After an hour on the train I decided to move, to find a table to sit at as the customers on the train began to thin. I sat opposite a teenager with red hair and a face covered in freckles. He was one of those people who stared out of the window for the entire train ride, without headphones or a book, just the outside to keep him entertained.

I continue to read my book, I always want to finish a chapter or reach the end by the time I arrive, my fellow bookworms will understand how unnatural it feels to place our bookmark on a page in the middle of a chapter. And those of you who don’t have this anxiety, are probably the same people that refuse to break the spine on a book—monsters.

I glanced up at the boy a few times as he tried to read the blurb of my book, the outside had grown dull with skyscrapers. The voice from the speakers announced the next stop and a fat man sat next to the boy. I watched as he squeezed in beside him, behind the tiny table of the train.

The red-headed boy looked at me and smiled, he wanted to laugh as he pushed his body further toward the window. I wanted to laugh at how uncomfortable the situation had become, at how much this was a person who needed to count calories, not the woman who had left the train half an hour before.

As the clouds blackened the train started to become full again, more people opting for the train home rather than walking or cycling. Night drew close as the rain ran across the windows beside me, I was so fixated with the tiny droplets, I hardly noted my table becoming empty. The rain did not cease for the remainder of the journey, which wasn’t unusual, it is England after all.

Another hour passed, and I had finished my book and started to glance around my carriage, but I had no idea what for. I spotted one other person further down the train but there was no one around me. The clunking of the train against the rails filled the silence which accompanied the darkness. I took off my glasses and checked my watch for longer than a normal person, allowing my eyes to readjust and work out the time as the hands ticked by.

I will be at my stop in ten minutes and then I have five minutes to wait for my next train. It is a journey that I’ve done several times before, one that could never feel gruelling to me. I’ve taken this route at all times of day and most of the time I don’t get a seat and I’m cramped into a corner by the doors, hoping I don’t fall down the gap that you’re always told to mind.

The 10 minutes passed by as I watched the tiny tadpoles of water run along the window in wobbling straight lines until they were out of sight. I checked my phone for a second before returning it to my bag at the sight of ‘No Service’ in the right-hand corner of the screen. The voice overhead announced my stop and a smile rose to my face without my control. I stood, put on my jacket and tossed my overfilled backpack over my shoulder and waited at the door, waiting for the green flash of the button.

I ran to my next platform with purpose and without need, the train was delayed as usual. I checked my phone again and tried to control the reactions that kept creeping up my face. I’ve sat on many trains and stood on too many train stations to count, so I wonder what stories people make for me when they see me smiling at my phone or reading alone. These are interactions we’ll never have and never know, and there is something mythical about it.

We’re all strangers observing strangers, and never knowing where the other is going or where they’ll be for the rest of our lives, yet we take an interest in them, even for a second. My second and final train arrives seven minutes late as the rain is beginning to clear for the evening. Random stars flickered above me, poking though the clouds as waited to board the train. I stepped on to the train and found an empty seat, waiting for the train to move and becoming even more impatient.

I’ve told you that I get this train so much, but I haven’t told you why. I suppose I’m waiting to see what you’ll make of me, what you’ll make of all these people who I never knew on a train. These countless hours spent alone on countless trains are hours that so many people can relate too, maybe it’s a commute, or visiting an old friend or going into town for a night out. For me, these train rides are taking me home.

I took a risk, as people do when they pull the loose thread from their clothes, I pulled the thread and there was a ripple in the fabric of my life. When something in your life changes, people are too quick to cut away the option, to take the safer route and straighten their clothes as though there wasn’t a protruding thread, but if I never pulled at that thread I wouldn’t be here, with ten minutes left of my journey.

Taking risks is a whirlwind that thousands of people get caught up in every single day and many of them will keep pulling at threads and changing their lives over and over in the hopes of finding happiness. There are other people that will never risk pulling the thread. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that with every change, there’ll always be a thread to pull, but that doesn’t mean you should always grab the scissors.

As I step off this train, I am reminded of the phenomenal adventure of a ripple that came with pulling at a thread, because it led me to you, and when I see you, I’m home.