The Meeting Room

The first Monday back felt wrong before anybody spoke.

Same interview room.

Same whiteboard.

Same targets written in dry marker
like any of us would remember them by Friday.

A month earlier
I’d been living out of overnight bags,
walking into unfamiliar offices
where people shook my hand
like I mattered.

Hotel bars in Leeds.
Drunken conversations in Birmingham.
Standing outside smoking areas in Glasgow
talking to people I would never see again.

Movement everywhere.

Then suddenly
I was back under fluorescent lights
listening to the same meeting
I could probably have chaired myself.

And all I could think was:
if I stay here long enough,
I will become one of the men
I already feel sorry for.

That afternoon
I walked into the local Wetherspoons
and asked for bar work.

No plan behind it.
I only knew
I couldn’t bear another Monday
that felt exactly like the last one.

At first it felt like freedom.

Sticky bar tops.
Broken glasses.
The same old bloke ordering Guinness
at exactly half past nine every night.

Finishing shifts at midnight
and ending up in another pub afterwards
with people I’d only met that week
already behaving like old friends.

And the girls.
Christ.

Anyone who showed me the slightest attention
became important to me immediately.

A smile across the bar.
A hand on my arm while talking.
Some tiny signal
I would carry around for days
like it actually meant something.

I fell in love constantly back then.
Quietly.
Hopelessly.
With people I barely knew.

I thought women liked confidence.
What I had was noise.

I was awkward, loud, overfamiliar.
The sort of person people find funny at first
and exhausting eventually.

And still I kept going.
Late nights.
Three hours sleep.
Nine o’clock meetings
with yesterday’s shirt hanging off me
and stale lager still trapped in my breath.

Talking too loudly in the office
because silence would have meant admitting
something wasn’t working.

Eventually my manager called me into a room.
Not angry.
That would have been easier.
He looked tired more than anything else.

I remember apologising immediately
before he’d even really started speaking.
Then sitting there
staring at the carpet tiles
while he explained
that I couldn’t carry on like this.

And underneath the embarrassment
was relief.

Not because I wanted to leave.
Because somebody else
had finally noticed
I was disappearing from the place.

When I walked back into the office afterwards,
I felt strangely exposed.
People glanced up briefly
then back to their screens.

A few mates asked if I was alright.
Most already knew.

The last few weeks passed quietly after that.
Not dramatic enough to be tragic.
Not exciting enough to feel brave.

Just the slow understanding
that I could no longer become
the version of adulthood
that place required.

Sometimes I still think
about the life I might have had
if I’d stayed.

The pension.
The routine.
The safety of knowing exactly
where I’d be every Monday morning.

But I also know this.

Some people slowly disappear
without ever leaving the building.