Joy | HS

1

WARNING:

This story is rated 'Mature' due to its language and some of the themes—read at your own risk.

Also, this is a complete work of fiction, and other than some names and places, all of it is made up by me!

Hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it,

Love, Belle x

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As a writer—or at least someone who aggressively aspires to be one—the first guideline I had set for myself was:
Avoid clichés at all costs.

Not because they were untrue or non-comforting in a way, but because one of your biggest goals when being a writer—or a human being in general—is to be one of a kind.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary:
"Cliché-
a saying or remark that is very often made and is therefore not original and not interesting."

And although my life was not precisely a saying or a remark, "not original" and "not interesting" were possibly the only two ways to describe it.

Let's assume my life was a book;
In that case, the Prologue would consist of a cheesy, yet unsettling quote by Haruki Murakami, in order to supply a background of what kind of person I was.

The rest of the pages would tell the story of an average man—so that the readers could relate—who wanted to write a book so terribly but was actually terrible at that, considering he hadn't had in his heart any story to tell.

The average man came from a small, average town in the country of England, yet, just like many other average people, had moved to the city of New York—that was not average whatsoever—with the sole purpose of fulfilling his dream.

He shared an average flat with a roommate that was just a little bit above average and worked a job that was slightly below it, and all that to break out of the circle of average life.

Most critiques of this novel would consist of the words "dull", "unexciting" and "overdone", repeatedly.

Since I have been living in this cliché for a little over twenty-five years, when I woke up on that ordinary Thursday morning and started the day with the usual cup of tea and my laptop, sitting in the hall so that I could avoid hearing my flat-mate Caleb, and his haphazard companion for the night, executing their superficial attraction in a room that was, matter-of-factly, too close to mine—I could have never possibly surmise that this habitual day would scar my memory for years and years to come.

You would think that the blame was on the e-mail informing me of another literary agent who had decided to rebuff my manuscript, but it wasn't the case this time—it was actually all due to the odd brunette girl with the red beanie on top of her head, that in a very cliché way shook my world, and ironically, the floor as well, as the three heavy cartoon boxes in her hands dropped.

It was common courtesy and my mum's education that pushed me from the stair I was sitting on, to help her.

"Boy and girl meet when the girl drops something and the boy helps her pick it up."- cliché alert!!!

I could clearly lie to you and say that we met when she was hitting me with her car, or perhaps saving me from literally drowning, but the truth is, we're all living a cliché.

"Fuck!" She hollered, her dainty hands covering her small face. "Why did I think I could take all of the boxes to the second floor by myself? Bad advanced planning is what this is. How do you expect to make it in fucking New York?" She was openly speaking to herself.