From heaven to hell

Average days

Waking up in the morning is cruel.

You must leave the warm fluffy bed, only to face the gruelling tasks ahead of you, while dreading everything that will come against you. However, you force yourself out, knowing that one must face these labours in order to climb the ladder known as life, to walk the road to our ultimate dreams. While thinking this, my body is filled with determination, and I stand up straight, proud and confident before remembering that this not always the case and that being the textbook definition of the perfect person is nearly impossible to achieve in life and with that depressing thought, my back hunches, and my eyes grow weary to match my soul, and I once again fall asleep on whatever vehicle I am on.

Such is the start of my day.

They call the building "school".

They say that it is a place for us to nurture.

A structure built for us to learn.

I scoff at them.

"School" is not a place for us to nurture. If it were, then the hundreds, maybe millions of people around wouldn't be traumatised by the many things that happen here. "School" is not a place for us to learn. If it were, then perhaps the hundreds, maybe millions of people wouldn't journey home at the end of the day, forgetting everything along the way. "School", is a cruel, unforgiving workplace. "Student" is what the profession is called, perhaps it would be more accurate to call it an internship instead of a profession. Our work consists of carefully listening to our superiors, the "teachers" and making sure that we know everything that they say so that we may put them down on paper. If the teacher likes it, they give us "grades", our recognition. If they don't like it, we get punished or scolded. The Patient ones will just give a light punishment, "extra homework" the pay deduction in hopes that it will help in improving our work. Foolish. This only works on a minuscule amount of workers. The normal worker would just ask the minuscule amount to do it for them. The more impatient ones will give hard cruel punishments. For example, overtime, or "detention". Perhaps maybe even suspending them from work if things get to serious. In the worst case scenario, workers just get fired, "expelled" so to say.

When I get to school, the first thing I do is head for the office. Luckily for me, I am a secretary to my superior, a trusted advisor. Of course, I don't know this to be true, these are only assumptions I can make from what he says and does. I am sure, however, that we are colleagues in work. Before my superior arrives, I wait at the door of my office, and while I wait, I apply or remove my mask. I don't know. I do not believe that I would wear a mask in front of my colleagues, nor do I believe that it is something that I should put into practice. However, I may not even understand myself, and therefore cannot conclude whether or not a mask is wore in front of my colleagues. All that I know is that my hunched back is not straight again and my before weary eyes are shining with excitement.

Once my colleagues open the door to the office, I grab the materials needed for the next few meetings, and dash out of the office to the conference room, my "classroom". Dashing inside, I see our teams superior at the head counting the number of workers at work. After apologising for being barely late, I sit down, and the day truly starts at this moment. I sit through 6 hours of meetings, doing my work properly, sometimes not understanding my superiors, sometimes missing what they say. This is still acceptable, since I do not fail in hiding this.  There are, of course, short breaks every two hours but they aren't much by themselves. There is nothing of note in those two breaks. After the meetings, I head over to my workplace, finish my notes, and receive work from my other colleagues. To me, this time of the day is bliss. I sweep the floor, as music plays in the background. It is always so quiet, so calm. There is nothing bothering me, nor will there be anything that requires me at this hour.  Once this hour ends, however, the world is reverted to how it used to be: a hectic, ruthless workplace.

I work and I work some more, I do not stop. There are no breaks for the next few hours of work. But I do not mind.  This may not be the bliss that I experience in that hour of cleaning, but it is still work that I am passionate about, that I truly enjoy. And that work is to serve. Though I do feel indebted to my colleagues and to my superior of this team, this is not the only reason why I serve them. I serve them because they still find me useful, because they don't discard me. When I fail or when I mess up, they only know how to teach me, to get me to do it right. They are not like my previous superior, who would not say a word no matter what I did. And because of this, I will continue to serve them with all my heart, and use up whatever expenses and materials I have to serve. While I am only a small figure in this entire team, I will do my utmost to serve. And I swear, that I will do all this until they find me useless, and discard me as they should.

I think of all this while I work, and that just drives me to work on their tasks even harder as to not disappoint their expectations. Before I know it, the sun has set outside and it is time to leave. To me, the office is just like another home to me, and therefore I always cant stand it when it's time to leave the room for the day. I know myself that I'll be back the next day but leaving the room for just a few minutes already saddens me to the state I was in the morning. I walk the streets to the train station, and take the train back home. The process is all automatic. I just repeat what I've done for the past year. Once reaching home, I see the smiles of my mother, and the laughs of my brother. But that's all I see. I can't see anything else. To me, I am looking at a couple of beautifully decorated masks. This sickens me, even though I don't have the right to say that. Unable to bear the disgust any longer, I shut the door of my room, and just sleep. Thus, the long day ends and as I lie in bed, a final thought crosses my mind.

Just exactly how much of this was a lie?

(This was supposed to be my homework but I haven't posted anything in quite a while and my other works are at most 1/4 done. So just gonna post this here for now)