i feel myself receeding in this cubicle. the more i work, the less i am, the less i have become. in giving myself to work - to colleagues, to children, to marking, to the endless setting of papers, i have lost myself -my desire to live life as i have always believed. i am giving up on living life as i have dreamed, in the pursuit of comfort and conventions. in eating lunch with mundane colleagues who inspire me to kill myself lest my life turns into something which resembles their lives. it takes all i have not to cry out in despair.
every day is a fresh day, a fresh day is supposed to bring new promise into life. a fresh day is supposed to make you feel revived just by thinking about the excitement that the day beckons. or am i just to naive to expect any more from life rather than just a comfy bed, family to return home to at the end of the day and a job that manages to pay the bills.
sometimes, i wish i were just like everyone else. or do i? i still adore my weird personality, my individuality.
every morning i wake up and i wonder if i should go to work early. the drive is no longer there, yet, a sense of responsbility still keeps me going ahead of others to finish up my work. every morning, the nice colleagues greet me, but it's all i can do but to tell them that i would rather be anywhere but here.

At such a time, i wonder if anyone knows where i am.

the underside of my thighs are frigid with cold, pressed against the partially rusted steel chairs. my fingers are losing the colour of their vitality and i will soon no longer be able to feel them. if tears rolled down my cheeks now, they would freeze just above my cheekbones and i imagine that anyone looking at me like that would think of a comic figure with frozen bits of ice on his cheeks.

lifting myself off the steel chair, i begin to walk. perhaps it is time to end the quandry of solitude, if only for a while.

i walk to my small log cabin. my toes feel pinched in my grey boots, my fingers are frozen in my gloves. to get the key out of my coat pocket, i would need to pull off my gloves, which make my hands so oversized they cannot fit into my coat pocket. i pull off the glove and then accidentally drop it on the snow-covered ground. bending down to pick it up, i see something else on the ground. it is a heart-shaped key ring. it isn't covered by snow, so i presume that it hasn't been there for long.

i open the door to my log cabin and enter the cabin. The place is, as i have left it. Sparse and smelling of varnish, with a carpet in front of the fireplace. there is an armchair and a low small table beside the carpet. a picture of a cottage in the countryside is the only thing close to any from of a decoration in the cabin. the bed is just across the fireplace. shutting the door, i ease myself into the armchair and start to take off my boots when there is a knock on the door.

there wasn't a peephole for me to see who is at the door. cautiously, i opened the door. i am a little alarmed to see a little girl, of about six, standing in the cold outside. i studied her for a moment. Her hair was in a neat bob, her eyes questioning, her cheeks red. She wasn't carrying anything with her, and certainly did not appear dangerous. she didn't look surprised to see me, neither did she seem frightened. Before i could say anything, she asked politely, "Could I come in?"

"Are you with your mother?" i ask, stepping out of the cabin to look around. but there was no one around her. Afraid that she would catch a chill, i hustled her inside and then shut the door behind us.

After entering the house, the girl's child-like demeanour seems to undergo a slight transformation. she faces the fireplace, her arms akimbo and her back facing me. "Do you like children?" she asks. I am stumped by her question. Why would anyone knock on my log cabin in winter, enter it and then ask me such a question? But i answer it anyway. Part of me wants to see where this all is going and the other part of me wants to know who she is. The other part of me feels as though i'm in a surreal state.

"Well, i don't think i'm a motherly person and i used to like children, but not anymore," i tell her.
She laughs without turning around, an action that seems contrary to her age.
"Why?" she says after her bout of laughter.
"Look, why have you come here?" i feel confused, as though she were the adult and i the child.
She laughs again and turns around. I study her again as she does so. She has full lips and eyes without the wide-eyed look of a child. There is a hole in the palm of her mitten, a tiny scar above her left eyebrow.
There was something about her that reminded me of someone i used to know, i was certain of that. i searched my memory for any clue that could provide me with a hint as to who she reminded me of. Then slowly, a faint memory crept into my mind.

It was a weekday morning, not unlike any other. I had just taken my breakfast with my cousins. It wasn't what i would consider a daily occurance. My cousins had a hardware businesss which they had taken over from their father, so they would take orders for goods like plastic and foil and then deliver the goods to their customers. One of their customers lived near me, so some mornings, they would call me and ask if i wanted to have breakfast with them and then they would offer to give me a lift to work. It was a pretty nice arrangement, and we always had a pleasant time starting the day together. My cousins and i were pretty close, especially since i had no siblings. So after breakfast, we crossed the road to where my cousin's car was parked and began the short drive to my workplace. It was a rather humid morning and i can remember some sweat dripping down neck as i asked my cousin about the decorative item in his car.
"Tommy, why's that cat not moving his arm?" I asked to bursts of laughter.
"Oh that, we got that from a friend. It's supposed to be solar-powered but stopped working after a day," his brother, Raymond chuckled.
Just then, Raymond's wife, who was also in the car with us, pointed at a middle-aged woman who was crossing the road some distance away from us. The cars coming from the opposite direction honked at her and she appeared to be startled, as she stopped for a while before crossing the road and pausing in the central road divider.
"I wonder if she wants to cross the road," Tommy remarked as he watched her. The woman had also appeared to be watching us coming towards her.
Tommy brought the car to a rather abrupt stop, making Raymond's wife cry out in annoyance as she was trying to get something from her bag and the slight impact had caused her things to spill out on the car seat.
"Well, I guess she's stopping for us then," Tommy said as he accelerated. What happened next will forever be imprinted in my mind. The woman dashed across the road just as he accelerated. i watched, too shocked for words, as we knocked into the woman with a sickening thud. her arms flailed, and for a split second, i saw her mouth agape in shock. for a moment, i thought she might just fall back onto the ground with little injury, but she she slammed onto the windscreen and i watched in horror as tiny cracks appeared where her head was. i probably would have let out a shrill scream at this moment, i couldn't even be sure if it was raymond's wife or i who had screamed. her body perched on the hood of the car at an awkward angle, i can hardly be sure if she was alive.