Music Prompts: Get It On

As part of the Music Prompt Challenge this fictional post was inspired by this week’s Tuesday Track.

***

When she opens her eyes, the first thing Emilee checks is the window: is the sun shining? She’s not so lucky this morning, there are clouds all over. Although it doesn’t seem like it’s going to rain, it’s far from a cheerful sight. Emilee sighs. It’s so much harder to get out of the bed on days like this! It’d be different of course if there were a hunk like Dave Gahan waiting for her…. She smiles at the thought. She’s a tad obsessed with him, true, but she would love to make a guy like him fall in love with her for once and for all. How great would it be if he wrote songs for her. Or if he’d declare his undying love in an interview. Yes, that would be nice. He could say like:

“I know what people say: I’m in that stage where middle age hits you on the head with a hammer. And they say you’re like: listen middle age, I’m not gonna give in, I’ll prove you I’m still a man and will get me a 25-year-old. Well, it’s not like that. It was rather like she came and hit me on the head, not middle age. I am OK with my age and comfortable with it. But when Emilee came round, she was like a storm. She totally swept me off my feet and I can tell you that it was everything but comfortable. It still isn’t. I admit that I’m totally lost which scares me sometimes. In my relationships, I always used to know where we’re going, what we’re feeling, what we want from each other. Now, it’s like I’m lost inside a tornado and have absolutely no idea how I got there and what would happen next. And you now what? I’m bloody enjoying it.”

Emilee can see the wide, happy smile on the singer’s face and even though it’s only happening in her mind, it makes her feel better. She sighs: she’d be just so lucky to get such a confession. Especially from Dave Gahan but let’s face it: he’s a happily married superstar living in New York, she’s a customer service consultant in Belfast, their roads would hardly cross.

But then again, she’s never received such passion from anyone either. “Does it really exist? In somebody else’s life?” Emilee keeps thinking. She can’t actually recall seeing it in real life, although her parents come quite close. But it’s not like that firework love that she’s seen on the screen, on stage, in books. Is that all fiction then?

“It must exist” she thinks. “If so many people write about it, they must’ve experienced it!”

That’s just hope dear Emilee. It might just be all hopes and dreams – the same ones that you have these mornings and some nights when you feel lonely and you want someone to be there for you, to hold you, to prove their romantic feelings for you. Because that wouldn’t only make you feel better about yourself but it also would make the world a better place.

“But why do I need someone so much to make me happy? Shouldn’t I be happy on my own?” she thinks.

She’s happy. Kind of. It’s that elated happiness that she longs for but she knows she’s got a good life. She’s healthy, intelligent, nice and talented, and she knows well that her future is full of opportunities.

But she’s afraid to choose any of those options because that would close all the other doors. And what if she makes the wrong choice and a better one is behind one those, now forever closed doors and she’s wasting her life behind a bad one?

She likes to think of those many possible paths she can take. She likes to think that she can have any future she wants. Only if she had… something. Something more. More talent, more beauty, more luck. Anything. There’s always an “only if” that gives her enough of an excuse not to take that road. Not to take any road for that matter. And that same thought makes the one that she CAN take, second best. Something, that’s not perfect, only a consolation prize.

So she just rather sits in the hallways, with all those countless doors around her, without taking any steps into any directions. Fantasizing about what would happen if she did and “only if” things were just a little bit different. It would be a place of total happiness.

At which point even her fantasy stops and runs back to the hallway, whining, yowling that she’s too scared, she’s petrified of that future, she can’t really go there. Total happiness is so unknown that it’s scarier than her current life.

So she’s choosing nothing. She’s not closing or opening any doors. She’s going nowhere. Sometimes fate pushes her through one or the other door but she’s always coming back to the hallway, blaming all her life for actually being there.

Not recognising that the only reason she’s not leaving that place is fear. Fear of the lack of drama, the lack of difficulties, the lack of everything she knows.

Because what remains if she doesn’t have all those things?

***

Emilee is one of my favourite characters, so flawed but can’t help loving her. She’s lots of stories to tell, some I’ve already wrote down, so she might pop in again 🙂 

 

 

About Miss Andi

Learning to be unapologetically me but healthier. Shamelessly personifying my dog, Mia, who is my soulmate, though doesn't let me read as much as I used to. One day I'll finish a novel that will not save the world - but might make it smile.

View all posts by Miss Andi →