#84 - A Helping Hand

Today’s words: Disgust, Testy, Dependent, Scale

Word count: 449

Completion time: 48 minutes

Summary: Sometimes we need someone else to fight our battles for us

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I wouldn’t go as for to say that I was dependent, she just helped me out whenever I needed it. I needed her when I had to stand up for myself, to get out of embarrassing situations, to present my work to the class, to smile at strangers, to get out of bed sometimes when ‘mild distaste’ turned to ‘putrid disgust’ in reference to my hygiene, I needed her... Fuck. I needed her, didn’t I? On a scale of one to ‘drowning in the shallow end of a pool with armbands on’ how pathetic was I coming across? She was always at hand, appearing like an apparition in the mirror of a haunted mansion, ready to take my strings and control me if I got my limbs in a twist. It’s shameful to admit, but without her, I wouldn’t be able to pick myself off the ground.

A prominent fear of mine is to be faced with a testy person, someone who’s always prepared to demean me either by shooting me an ill-mannered glance or hinting heavily at my incompetence. I felt small, smaller than a mosquito and twice as irritating. What made it particularly bad was my tendency to cry at the smallest provocation, something which those types of people inspired most.

“I’ve explained it once already, what’s so hard to understand?”

This sentence was spat at me a week into my job.

“My daughter could probably get it, and she’s six,” I heard her mumble before she began to recite the command again.

“Hold on...”

She sighed. “What?”

“Do you speak to all your colleagues like this? And if so, are you expected to be met with a meek response like a child too scared to put their hand up to use the toilet? Just because you have a senior position in this company does not warrant you to be snobbish, impatient, and, quite rightly, a bit of a dickhead. Maybe if you presented yourself in a pleasant, more tolerable way, people would actually give you a bit of respect rather than bitch behind your back about the way your ass looks in those ill-fitting trousers that you insist on wearing every other day; wearing two sizes smaller won’t hide the fact that your backside could stop a locomotive in its tracks.”

It had happened again, she had come out to ‘save’ me.

The woman didn’t know what to say in response, so we both stood there nervously eyeing each other before she dashed past me, face flushed scarlet.

I knew I’d have to face her again, she worked on the same floor, but I hoped that my saviour would materialize whenever that time came.

Oh dear.