Remember that feeling when you were taken out of school early for a dentist’s appointment? Or decided to miss a lecture at university? If you’ve ever taken a day off sick from work – when you definitely weren’t ill, but just up for a bit of phone acting – then you will know what I mean. That illicit feeling of seeing a world that you aren’t really meant to. The novelty of it, the rebelliousness of it; even if you were with your mum, or actually in the same old pub, or just at home. That disconnect from the life you were supposed to lead that day. Now, imagine that feeling every day. How does that work?

The disconnect sneaks up on me. The disconnect haunts my city life. It feeds on my neuroses of what I should be doing (working! Having a career! Rush! Busy! Ambition!) and taunts me with what might have been. It’s well dressed, expensive and tidily coiffured. The disconnect is guilt and envy and relief and freedom. The disconnect is my life.

I bet you’ve had a hard day. An early start, a brain suck of a commute, desk lunch desk, drink (if feeling sociable), then etummoc and home. And it’s hard. You relish your lunch, the websites you get to look at, the park you get to sit in, or the restaurant you frequent. Weekends are obviously super fun packed, or that’s what your Instagram and Twitter and Facebook would tell us. Did you see us? The ones who are disconnected from all of that? Perhaps you heard the shout or giggle of a child as you strode along with your coffee cup, or spotted the sandals amongst the office footwear as you shuffled to the till with your sushi. But like an aberration in the matrix, you discarded it and kept on trucking. Or if you noticed us, you probably thought ‘tourists’, if you thought anything at all. Perhaps you thought how we didn’t fit – the clothes too casual, the ordering of our menu items too hesitant and thoughtful between the usual requests snapped out day after day. Perhaps you were a little envious?

The worlds of working and not-working rarely collide, and that is how I keep my disconnect at bay. I stay in expat-land, or parent-land, seeing only people like me. We know our rules – the best parking bays, the best benches, the best toilets – just like the working people know the same for their workplaces. I wear my casual clothes and cross body bag and my flat shoes, dressing like all the others in my place of mother-work. And then, for whatever reason, we stray, and cross the border into the other place.

I know a stranger in my sphere when I see one. A father (unfortunately, it’s usually a father) too loud and jocular with a child, going the long way (which is the wrong way) to the playground, his shoes blatantly really bought for dress down Friday, not dress down everyday. Some tourists, who may look the part in dress, but the attitude is too appreciative to be doing it every day. I see you, and I shrug you off.

And then I go to your world. A world which seems dead on the streets until the plain grey buildings release their workers. You come out wearing either sober dark suits or vintage hipster clothing, seemingly dependent only on whether your company has decided to capitalise its name or not. And then the streets thrum and throb to meetings and encounters and lunches and snacks and hurried assignations and secret shopping. And I am lost in it because I am so totally disconnected from it. My shoes are too comfortable and brightly coloured. My hair isn’t sleek. My bag is practical and leaves my hands free. I walk about 1.5km an hour slower than you do and can’t seem to speed up. This is the world I left behind, and the feeling of disconnection is so huge that I am dissolved in it, unnoticed by the scurrying crowds because I am not one of them, cannot be one of them, with these clothes and this bag and – most tellingly – this child, who likes to jump and count and imagine bears and lions lurking below rather than be rushed along with the working world.

Sometimes I cross over because I have a meeting, or a lunch date. Sometimes I cross over because I want to do something in that part of a city. Sometimes I am a tourist. But each time I see women who are what I was, or women who are what I could have been, and I wonder. And the disconnect comes, and I find myself hesitating as I order, wishing I’d brought a different bag or worn a different outfit so I’d feel like I’d fit again. Again.

Because I used to be that woman, striding along. Black skirt, black shoes, red lips. Meetings to attend and people to see, phone calls to make and emails to ignore. I loved the glamour of it, the buzz, the construct. I’d look at people who dared to enter my world and tut and scowl as they’d slow me down by negligible microseconds I’d convenient forget later when procrastinating at work. Why would they come to this part of the city? Don’t they know we only have such a little time to get things done? It’s just selfish! I was connected. And oh god, I was in pain. Pain from the shoes, poor from the debt of living that role, a debt to my soul and my bank account. Giving the impression was everything, and for a while, it was everything to me.

It’s a hard habit to break, this life of talking and walking fast, but it can be undone. I now hesitate when in a busy working world cafe, lingering over choices that others can make in a split second. Do I hesitate because I’m so out of this world of deadlines? Maybe a little, but also because I take a great delight in irritating you for thinking less of me because I’m not wearing your uniform anymore. Do I walk slowly because I’m overawed by the big big city? Maybe a little, but also because I am looking at the buildings, the sculptures, the shops and appreciating them all. Maybe I’d like to be wearing a different outfit and be carrying a different bag, but perhaps that’s due to the weather. Maybe I’m also listening to my daughter and the rules of her complicated pavement line walking game. I remember walking these streets when I worked – the streets are the same wherever you work, really – and thinking of how important I was. And I amble down these streets now knowing that other than to a few people I am completely unimportant, and I actually always was despite the impression I gave, and was given, and it’s a wonderful feeling. I know how I really connect.

My disconnect, the feeling of what could have been, is always going to be there. But I can appreciate the joy of it, the separation that I have, because I’ve been on the other side. And on this side, I have a hand to hold, pain free feet, and the only deadlines are my own. I can always dress the part and hide among you – even get a proper job again – if I wish. Can you do the same?

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