"Student Union" - SJ Bottomley (best fiction books of all time .txt) 📗

this reason, the reason that I missed her so much and especially at this particular time, I was rather wishing that the little cameo appearance by Kathryn that I had been witness to eight days before the big one was something that would have had a bigger impression on me than it did, in the end. My expectation had been that on seeing Kathryn again, as unexpected as it had most definitely been, it would allow my head to be filled and therefore, push out all the stuff that was in there at the time about Georgina. This, I’m afraid to say, wasn’t how it was. I wouldn’t say that she disappeared entirely, because she didn’t. Just as I sincerely hope that she never will. However, she didn’t by any means have the impact on me and my way of thinking that I had been desiring.
We are now in a new year and Christmas is nothing more than a memory now, getting ever more distant by the day. On my return from holiday, I chose this piece of work above all of the others that I have open and unfinished at the moment, as the one that I wanted to complete first of all. Having made the conscious decision not to do anything to any of them while I was away. The reason why I have decided to do this and not any of the other ones is because, I think, right now, it seems the one that is most relevant to me. Even though I know that Kathryn is herself, like Christmas, now a memory and nothing else, she is still something, someone that has a bearing on my life. As you might imagine, throwing myself back into this essay has done what I had been wanting to do at Christmas. That is to say, get rid of Georgina from my mind and replace her with Kathryn. Oh, if only I had had my laptop with me in France. With a goal of completing this as quickly as possible, whist still, of course, making sure that I describe events and thoughts as accurately and detailed as I can; by setting this objective, it has been so easy for me to sharpen my focus and concentration on to that one, singular thing. Kathryn. Once this is complete, though, and hopefully, very soon it will be; once it is done and I move on to whichever one it will be that I do next, I pray that finally, then, that will be it. It’s time for me to move on now, I feel. I am thinking about her a lot at the present time because I have to. If I wasn’t doing then I wouldn’t be able to finish this. I have to concentrate hard on her now but after this...That’s it. It’s time to let her go, once and for all. Not only are we two very different people, as we have always been. On top of this, we are also now, in two very different places and doing very different things. It was fantastic, magical, during the time when our two paths crossed but eventually, all good things must come to an end. Unless something out of the ordinary happens at some point in the future, something as yet unknown and unforeseen, then these will be the very last words that I ever write about Kathryn McKenna. There is an undoubted sadness that is attached with this. In a perfect world, I would have loved to have continued doing this kind of thing forever. But, as I say, the time seems right now for me to draw a line underneath the whole idea of Kathryn and finally say to myself, “Hey, enough is enough. Just leave things as they are..”. I once saw a video of Avril Lavigne on YouTube and at the end of it she said, “If you don’t like me for who I am, then you don’t like me for who I am. But all I’m gonna be...is who I am!”. My one, final thought about Kathryn is that while this is something that pretty much summed her up perfectly during the time that I knew her. I hope that in years to come, this is something that she doesn’t change about herself. Forget the fact that she was gorgeous, forget the fact that she was clever, funny, good to talk to and all the rest of it. The one thing that I think will be most enduring about Kathryn McKenna was that she was so very, very Kathryn McKenna. No one else could possibly stand there, letting someone talk to them and look as though they were understanding it all and taking it all in and then once the person had finished talking to them, open their mouth and say, “What?” as if they hadn’t heard a single word that had been said and still manage to get away with it, without being thought a total nutcase. Brilliant. I’m telling you, the girl was a genius.

S.J.Bottomley
Started- Monday, 17 September, 2007
Completed- Wednesday, 30 January, 2008


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Publication Date: 11-16-2009

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