Our final days

Hey,
All that I've known for the last year and a half ended last night.
For so long, my area of study had been my life. I complained so much about it that I'm surprised my friends didn't knife me. I probably would have.
It was hard. Something I never thought I'd achieve but when thinking back, getting a diploma is the thing I am most proud of in my life so far.
I was able to spend a year with some of the most amazing people I've ever met. I don't know how it was possible to find 28 people who gelled so well together and stick them in one place for a long period of time.
It wasn't always fun but it wasn't always bad. I am sad to be losing people I have formed so many close bonds with but life always moves on.
Through Facebook, conversation will continue and I will be able to keep an eye on the progress of each and every one of the people I care about.
And although promises have been made for "weekly catch-ups", I very much doubt this. Some will move away to persue their careers in other parts of New Zealand or even other parts of the world and work will be far too busy to spend one day a week catching up. Even Friday drinks would be difficult considering by 5pm Friday, we will all be totally wasted from the daily exhaustion of working all catching up to us.
So last night was possibly the last time we will all be together as a group. A scary feeling. But I do have complete confidence that I will not lose touch with the members of the group I formed a closer bond with.
But now I have to ask myself, what next?
Supposedly I get a job. But I've never had a job, I wouldn't know how to go about getting one and I certainly wouldn't really know how to do one when I got it.
Having studied for a year and a half, you'd think that'd give me the perfect opportunity to get a job in that field and as good as I am at my field, I don't feel like I would like to do it full time. Maybe 2-3 days a week at most or every day part time.
I would like to become a writer of some description though, I think.
Maybe that damn psychic was right.
And on that note, here is something I wrote recently. I don't think it's much good but I thought I'd share it here.


The Calm and Quiet

All was quiet. Or at least in her mind it was. Thoughts ceased to exist. Maybe because the world around her was so loud.
The yelling never stopped, from 8 in the morning, through till 10 at night, a high pitched scream rang out through the house with a lower, but still high pitched whine meeting it, always connecting as if they were boxers throwing punches for a world title.
For Jacqui Jones, her world was as silent as the sound heard by a person wearing earplugs in a room where no one was talking.
Why did the boy have no respect for his mother’s orders? If she had disciplined him earlier in his life, at 15, he wouldn’t be such a shit and she wouldn’t need to yell.
He would follow simple tasks like taking a shower for the first time in 4 days without protesting like bikers, angry at the government.
Hell, maybe he would take a shower every day without command.
Maybe the pro smacking crowd had the right idea, maybe he could have used a few rounds with a jug cord or a metal spoon.
It didn’t do Jacqui’s parents any harm.
At least they lived in the right neighbourhood for her yelling. A neighbourhood where the ringing of sirens was a constant occurrence and the boys in blue were almost considering not answering the next call from this area code.
The people of the neighbourhood were part of the pro smacking crowd, they’d smack anyone, child, adult, family, friend, young, old. They all deserved it. Maybe one day they’d beat each other to death and the boys in blue could sit down and eat their donuts in peace.
Sometimes there was music in her head, it was good for blocking out noise on the days where her eardrums were filled to breaking point.
What Jacqui needed was to get out, she needed to leave before the sound drove her into a world of padded white rooms or worse, steel bars.
She tried to be calm and ignore what was going on around her but sometimes getting to the place where there was no sound was a mission.
Sometimes she was a wasp who’s nest had been shaken a few too many times, who couldn’t stop her stinger from coming out to punish.
She would raise her voice, use words she wouldn’t want her grandma to hear and clench her fists, ready to strike out at whoever or whatever was in her line of vision.
Then all would be quiet again.


Varelai Armstrong.