I don't normally write about feelings because I tend not to have any feelings to write about. Things that would make other people sob make me laugh, things that would make other people laugh make me go 'meh' and things that would make other people want to better themselves make me watch enough episodes of The OC to forget all about any problem life could ever throw at me.
In short, I am cold.
Either that or I experience all the feelings at once and want to attack things with fire, but I find it's best not to talk about those moments, so I won't.
Anyway, recently something happened to stir up a feeling and I didn't like it; it made me feel uncomfortable, which was another feeling all together. Suddenly I had two whole feelings where before there lived none.
"New feelings brewing in Duffman. What... would Jesus do?"
This first feeling was guilt. Bloody horrible guilt. I imagine I've done a lot of things in my life that should have made me feel guilty, but I've ignored that urge because it didn't seem fun at the time. I couldn't ignore this urge though; it was upon me before I knew it. It had hit me in the face and was gripping to me like an overly clingy child, and it was a child that had brought the feeling upon me.
I was on my bike at the time waiting to cross the road. I hate cyclists who run red lights; they take their life into their own hands and put anyone nearby's at risk too, just to get somewhere a little bit faster than normal. Pricks. But on my commute home from work there are a lot of places where the lights are there for show rather than safety. The crossings outside the supermarkets are nearly always empty, and you can see far enough down the road to tell if something is oncoming. I'd looked; there was nothing, so I was all ready to go. Until...
"Wait there darling. Wait for the green man, just like this man on his bike is going to."
SHUT UP, PARENT. Suddenly I was forced into having a conscience. Who the hell wants one of those? I turn mine off at all available opportunity to prevent me getting down about the fact I can't eat cake or that cats don't warm to me in the way I'd like and that girls see me from a distance and turn to walk in the opposite direction. Who knew so many women could run so fast? Now I was being tricked into turning it back on. All of those moments in time I had ignored were now rushing back towards me, reminding me of how a normal human being would have reacted had they been in that situation. I didn't want to feel like a normal human being. All of this was not for something major or something that would have a lasting impact on anybody, at all; it was purely for the sake of teaching a kid how to safely use pedestrian crossings.
Weighed down by morals and social responsibility I pulled my breaks back on, put my foot to the floor and waited as zero cars went past for the next five minutes. The whole time the little girl was looking up at me, rather than the lights, as if I was her marker. 'When you go, I'll go,' her eyes told me. Bollocks.
While those five minutes didn't matter, and that parent using me as a teaching tool didn't trouble me as much as it would if those lessons were about how to be a good citizen, it still annoyed me that one little feeling could bring on a rush of all the others I'd subdued for the past forever. They're going to take a whole lot of locking up again.
I may be some time.
