Purple Woman

As a young man, he was a lot more timid than he showed. Considerably more thoughtful and sympathetic. But they weren't profitable characteristics in the real world of work nor with women as time and time again throughout these formative years, he saw women go for shallow men with the actions that connoted confidence. He witnessed careless, cocky and charismatic men get jobs he believed required more subtle attributes. His adolescent summers consisted of him, half-consciously half unconsciously mirror such men in the swimming pool within his uncle’s apartment complex. These summers were thoroughly enjoyable for him however his overarching memories for this period involved his ‘always busy’ uncle and the lack of connection with him. He remembers on one occasion while everyone was getting ready to leave the pool, his uncle arrived in his suit and tie pleading with his daughter to go back in the pool so ‘they’ could play. The following 30 minutes consisted of his uncle throwing a ball to his daughter in the pool while he stayed by the sunbeds on the phone. The uncle would intermittingly move the phone away from his ear and whisper ‘2 minutes honey’ in the direction of his heartbroken daughter. But he was learning to minimise these sentimental observations and discussion about such observations. In the final summer before he left home for his first ‘real job’ he wrote in his one-dollar notepad – “I could tell you that I’ll make all your dreams come true but you don’t want that”. He knew it was cheesy but he kept it because he thought it was one of those lyrics that first triggers a ‘cheesy’ alarm in people’s heads but after time, it digests and settles as a truly heartfelt combination of words about personal limitations which just didn’t immediately resonate with a reader or listener. That one-dollar notepad didn’t make the bag he took for the city and the pages and pages of notes he wrote thereafter were more concerned with corporate growth than personal limitations.

Just under a decade since he left home and he could count the number of times he returned home on two hands. He knew he was working too much, but he couldn’t deny how good it felt to be fully invested in ‘it’. He struggled to articulate ‘it’ to whoever asked, before making a joke that maybe he was too close to ‘it’ to sufficiently ponder the contents of ‘it’. He questioned whether this was the first time he had fully committed his time to something but not for long enough to extract an answer. Time away from work and prospective clients dwindled which stirred a hunger in him to ‘make the most of it’ when he was free. While he indulged in excessive hedonistic behaviour almost every weekend, he maintained his regular consumption of thoughtful media in private. Thoughtful meaning not so black and white, not so inflammatory, not so focussed on keeping everyone in the circle of fear. Though watching self-reflexive videos when you’re chronically hungover doesn’t exactly line up like a yogi’s posture. He found it harder and harder to manage, not the viewing material on his phone while befriending the toilet and the ever-cool ceramic floor, but the incongruity of it all. Holding (and partially living) two contradictory ideas in his head at the same time and telling himself it's wisdom - but like any human, there are times of doubt for him. He recalls distinctly a friend of a friend of his, who was a schoolteacher, tell him that the job really wasn’t as rewarding as people think it is. He used to counter any active thoughts of changing career. That this empty feeling he endures during throughout the week was universal regardless of job or lifestyle. However, there are times when he's sending a video of a beautiful girl asleep in his bed to his friends and questions is all this saltwater going to make him sick, or is he already sick. But, on a Tuesday when the drink and drugs fade away and a cute waitress gives him her number his faith in the fickle process is restored. He knows what they want and doesn't have the courage to pursue what he needs.

I feel like I've been programmed not to enjoy free time. I used to love this sport, the whole glitz and glam around it and now all I can think about it is fucking Monday’s meeting.

He writes on the first page his notepad his Auntie bought for him years ago. It stayed in his bedside drawer as he always meant to get around to it. ‘You always used to love writing reflections down’ she said when she gave it to him. She wasn’t wrong but now, returning after all these years, he had an element of stage fright. He didn’t know if an introduction of sorts was necessary, so he jumped in with his overarching realisation of the day.

After Monday’s big meeting in work he decided to take a break, he didn’t know how long but a step back from his office and the city appealed to him. ‘Appealed to him’ in a similar way that giving up smoking appealed to people, it would probably feel somewhat tortuous process but there was an underlying sense that something good would come from it. The discomfort set in almost as soon as he finished lunch at his rural home, two hours from anything that could be reasonably described as a town.  What should he do and why was he so uncomfortable with his own presence? Early Monday evening he began pondering, this was what his goal or dream or whatever you want to call it, was. Earn early and retire, but what now?

All the people he categorised as friends were busy. Life was still throwing them curveballs while he could only see his walk straight ahead. He almost yearned for a minor crisis involving someone he knows. To be needed on a real human level. After a few whiskeys, he wrote

Maybe I need myself…

He didn't know how to respond so he waited. When he told the company he was leaving he could see that it meant nothing to them. It was just another procedure. This didn't surprise him though. It made him feel great about his re-pathing. The 6 days ‘off’ had helped him come to terms that a lot of the relationships in his life had unwritten contracts. There was no point regretting the tears he battled for an unfaithful partner, he was just proud that he was out now. Better late than never was the name of his high school band's first song and he felt so good that he wanted to run back to his air-conditioned garage and sing the shit out of the chorus. Receiving emails from people he didn't consider friends during the next few weeks flustered him. Were they trying to gain something from this?

‘I'm writing a book on the power of the colour purple’. She was middle-aged and her skin was cracking, in total defiance to the common reason provided for people of her race ageing gracefully. Looking at this woman selling purple jewellery made him smile. Not the inauthentic smile that he mastered in the office but a smile that showed his less than perfect teeth. A smile that had no ulterior motives. What that woman was expressing was something pure, something so foreign to him that he lost his sense of self. No structured pose, no me or I. A ‘profound observational experience’, he would later describe it as to his friends who would disregard anything that sounded remotely new agey or spiritual. What this woman provided was the exact opposite to the fake sympathy blown towards him weeks previous. Bystanders would say he stood staring for 20 minutes, but he or time weren’t really there. He turned off the autopilot l. He was in a realm never before experienced, where all he could expel was gratitude and it was coming out of every pore in his body. Was he in that body? Regardless of his embodiment at that stage or not, he was grateful but still a little uneased by his inability to understand what happened to him. Racking his brain, a book he read some years ago about a banker going crazy came to mind. This banker, working very intensely for over 25 years went to the ATM one day and couldn’t remember his pin. His memory then continued to dissipate as seconds later he couldn’t remember his wife’s name, his name or who he was. Maybe too, in a rural market in Connecticut, he was coming to terms with the suppression of himself.

He didn’t have the vocabulary to express what he experienced, and maybe there were no words. Maybe attempting to put it into words would be a fruitless endeavour. He just knew he experienced things differently now. The next few weeks were spent digging for the personality that disappeared under the layers and layers of work-related performance. He went back to old records he bought and old photos hoping it would set off something, but it wasn't that simple. This was a journey of unlearning and no photo or vinyl could do the work he needed to do to reignite this stronger connection with himself he now yearned for. That day, the woman writing the book on purple was handing out stickers which said "be somebody or uncover who you are. Your choice" and while it was cliché he liked the phrasing of it. The man who up until very recently asked his remote "what should I watch" had to make a decision. The buying a nice car, apartment, house, moving to a new house, changing car, all these things weren't choices to him. They were merely things to tick off an ever-evolving list followed religiously by many like him. Instead of asking himself 'why am I doing this' it was more 'oh, I saw this on the list before'. While he questioned more and more the control he had over his life, the purpose of his next endeavour was his choice (he believed) and he was choosing to start uncovering and discovering.

By Jim O’Connell