Consistently failing at life's most simple of tasks

Please allow me to make a little confession today; common sense is not a virtue that has been so heavily bestowed upon your humble narrator. The everyday skills required to live a trouble free existence do not come so easily to me, and as such the task of travelling across the country to see my dear GF is one that is both daunting and troublesome all at once.

The cost of the ticket is quite steep, well being honest it is vertical, so when I finally get that ticket in my hand I know I should cling on to it for dear life but I am very forgetful and regretfully must admit to having lost it more than once. But last week it seemed as if all of Heaven’s forces were working together to make the act of merely going back home one of the most painfully excruciating tasks possible. Or that I was just more scatty than usual.  But I prefer the flowery way I put it.

So I bought my return ticket and it all seemed wonderful, I was going to see her and it would be lovely, wondrous and everything it always is. Until three days before I am due to return home and she asked me if my ticket, of course I have! Am I the kind of person who would ever lose something as expensive as that? Going to my coat pocket where I know it has been the entirety of my time down there I expect to proudly retrieve it, because I am the new Jessica, the Jessica who does not lose things as important as my return ticket home…… And it isn’t there. Nope, gone, not even a trace of it. And I have no money left over to get home, certainly not the stupid amount for a ticket home. So we turn the house upside down, check her fathers car where it may have fallen out and it isn’t there. So with nothing else to do as without a ticket or money to get one I would be stranded there *not something I would lose sleep over apart from the fact I have to go back to college* I rang my parents. I really did not want to, things are not exactly great between us at the minute but I really had no other choice. Ringing my mother as she is the one I would say I am closest to and not as prone as the others to give me the whole “God” speech every two minutes about my life. Telling her what has happened I can hear my brother and father laughing in the background about my situation and telling me I am stuck there now. My mother too scared to say anything with them there says I have got nothing else to do and must ask my GF for the money or sell some of my stuff. Horrified when I start reading a list of my stuff my mother can sell for me my GF jumps in and offers to lend me the money upset that my family would let me sell my stuff rather than lend me money.

So the next day we go to the city center and get the money, then head on over to the coach station. Only to find the damn thing shut! Feeling a little despondent, me especially after walking round shops and seeing all the nice things I cannot buy, we move through crowds of shoppers in post-Christmas madness scrambling to get as much in the sales as they can, pretty much all useless stuff they will give to family members next Christmas that they despise. Well it seems in the fray something must have happened because when we get to the bus station my GF asks me to show her the money to make sure its still there and to my horror its gone! Everything else in the pockets of my Victorian frock coat are still there, I mean these are not small pockets I can reach down almost up to my elbows, just the money is gone.

The next day I get more money *that yes I will pay back* from my GF and I head off to town myself to get the ticket. I was sure this time I would get a ticket, everything would go smoothly, it had to as today I checked beforehand that the bus station was open. Unfortunately life cannot resist kicking me down as when I was standing waiting for my bus in to town and lovely and oh so literate man feels the need to lean out of his van window and shout a horribly disgusting transphobic slur at me. Beautiful, just simply beautiful, his argument was so concise and spot on as to why I should throw myself under a bus because of what I am….

Moving on past that ugly scene I get to the coach station and the woman behind the counter tells me its 60p more than I have on me! Its at that point that most people I feel would break down, cry, and climb the nearest bell tower and start picking people off. But hey, ive got no time for that, I have exams coming up and I am sure you will see me on the news for some similar rampage due to exam stress. My wonderful GF *I mean the fact she puts up with all of this really shows how wonderful she is* tells me she will head in to town to bring me 60 GODDAMN PENCE! While I am waiting a rain storm starts so I’m stood in my lovely designer coat huddled in to a corner trying to stay warm for over 40min and possibly looking like I’m about to run out and steal someone’s kid.

But thankfully we got the ticket that time and I don’t even want to think of how much I owe my GF and not to mention that when she makes me listen to her music I cannot make one joke for at least the next ten years. Such fun.