NOT GIVING UP ON FOREVER

Chapter 8

Pip pip pip pip! the alarm clock would just not appease.

"Oh, no, not that, please!" Anna beseeched.

Her head was pounding, and though she never drank, the loud music, dancing, and impressions did not make her different from the most inveterate drunks in the morning. It was a sober hangover.

Anna tossed the phone on the floor, and it shattered into pieces.

"I warned you," she mumbled, looking towards the crashed parts of the device, but forced herself to get out of bed, feeling all charm of terrible morning mood and the forthcoming study and work after it. The day promised to be intolerably long.

Anna sighed and began to dress lazily. She collected the phone in parts, confident that the device would still work fine, and wandered into the kitchen. The screen lit up, and one by one, the notifications of missed calls and messages flooded the screen.

Work took up all of Anna's time. She focused on her career, and only money was her motivation for any effort. All dreams of quiet family life, a bunch of kids, and a caring husband scattered like a fog, giving way to travel plans and purchasing material goods.

For herself, she decided that it would be, if not better, but more comfortable. She considered such a way of living an impenetrable shield, and the chances of ending up being hurt were close to zero.

She stopped filling her head with novels and focused on making money, not caring how much she had to earn—the process itself gave her a strange pleasure. There was something about it that showed confidence in the future. Friends and family could always ask her for financial support (often just using her, which still was unimportant), self-esteem from the munificent wages rose beyond the heavens. Nevertheless, Anna did not tell anyone about it. She just kept on toiling hard, and her success was proportionate to efforts.

She used to come back home late at night and, instead of rest, met friends, sometimes until the morning. It was not a correct distribution of time allocated to sleep, but Anna was sure that if she'd give vent to her inner introvert, she would spend all the evenings at home locked up, losing the last skills of socialization.

She always felt comfortable alone. People complaining about the lack of a soul mate caused her only irritation. She did not consider herself neither the "second half" of anyone nor needed "best" friends, understanding that one does not live on the island. People must communicate with each other by some unspoken rules and play all sorts of collective games like "boss-subordinate," "you and I are friends," "polite neighbors in the hood," "this is me, and this is me in social networks."

Deep down, she wanted to fall in love. To fall in love so that all this role-playing would make sense, that she was someone's if not second half, but the love of life at least. That there was this man, for whose sake all this worthless routine of life would make sense. But she always swept those thoughts away, trying to destroy them as soon as they appeared on the horizon of consciousness, until one day...