Last week Monday I started my first day of paid work, EVER! I had spent the six months prior to that day preparing and persevering for a job in London, and in the last month, the universe as we so elaborately like to announce it, had switched into top gear for me. Things were moving quickly in a positive manner, but the more success I had in getting closer to that ever elusive job, the more things were also becoming negative; however, such is the unexpected nature of habitual persistence, that in the space of 48 hours, I went from a man doggedly enduring the struggles of life, to someone who got the job he clearly deserves, and in the most perfectly metropolitan built area he always dreamed of, but most of all, with the opportunity to work hard, and earn hard.

In the professional world of work, I am now known as a Sales Executive for a company whose aim is to sell international events to the Director’s of medium to large businesses worldwide. And a possibly pleasant perk of the job, is that from time to time, I will get to travel to these events.

I must admit, I initially felt inclined to refuse the job for what it is – sales, MONEY, and a life least forgotten in the potential depths of working after hours for many a night. My only comfort in such a life – if indeed that’s what my life becomes – is the knowledge that I’d be as committed to any other job I’d be fortunate to deserve. So I accept my newfound destiny in life. Or so I thought.

Come the end of the first week, my heart had become rotten with the much expected traits of being a salesperson. I tried to believe it isn’t a place where you have to leave your heart outside before entering the building, but the truth of the matter is you do. That aside, each day I manage to sneak my heart past security at the front desk, but what an environment I leave it exposed to. Lies, money, more lies, and more money; admittedly there’s a rare moment of kindness from some of the Director’s you have to speak to, but quite frankly, the majority are pretentious, corporate sharks with love for one thing and one thing alone; greed.

Greed doesn’t stop to contemplate the needs of others. No, it merely says, I don’t have the time for anything except myself. I am not myself and I will not do business with those who care for only themselves. In taking this job, I’ve become the very person I wanted to live for, but for all the wrong reasons. I have become lonely and the benefit of the job – money – is all for me. I am sickened by such a thought of doing something that benefits me. It’s not at all courageous, not at all honest, nor just. Especially as I have little that I need money for, for instance a family, or girlfriend. Withstanding the necessities such as food and drink and a roof over my head, there’s truly no other reason for me to need money, or more so money of the calibre that this job seems to suggest I will earn, and with luck and hard work probably would. But I’m not money motivated. I don’t want it.

Sometimes I get confused by whether I want things easy, whether I am indeed so lazy, or instead, that such is the fight in my heart for what I want, I’ll go to the edges of extreme measure to make sure I achieve them. My heart is stubborn, but why not? Why conform to what is said can’t be done? Don’t ever tell me something can’t be done. The only thing that stops me in this instance from letting my heart breathe again is the distraction – attraction even – of another heart.

I met a woman on my first day of work; when on the train. We actually knew one another online before meeting, but as we both work in London we get the train together on occasion, most usually in the evenings. It didn’t take me long to spill my heart’s desire for her and to my surprise the feeling was mutual, but such is my luck, her heart already belongs to that of another. That didn’t stop us getting very close in these last two weeks, almost so close that we pushed the boundaries of infidelity. Before such dared to happen however, our hearts’ understood that such is not the just way to earn what either of us might eventually deserve. Hopefully each other.

I admit that it hurts to be wanted by the heart of another, but to know I might have to wait to the point where waiting turns into never. And instead, this hope of love becomes yet another tease of what I may never have. A reminder perhaps of what I shouldn’t become – of what I mustn’t become. Or am I just so stubborn that I will never learn to repress already learnt ways? The hardest part of being strong enough to know that love isn’t for you, is in knowing that you have to hold back how much of your heart you show to people for fear that they’ll want you and can’t have you. They will never understand as they weren’t raised to know the same needs as yours.

I want to believe I don’t have to be so strong that I forget those new in my life. But I don’t want to become what I can’t be; not without there being a just reason. Not without there being someone for me to love.

Otherwise I’m just a lonely man in a world I’ll never understand.