She looked up at him, feeling her eyes rimmed with glitter, welling up ready to cascade down her face like a waterfall. She desperately tried to blink them back.
“I’m fine, I’m surviving – I always do”
He didn’t seem to buy it. She cursed herself silently for letting her mask slip, blinking back the tears again.
“But surviving isn’t living; they don’t mean the same thing.” He spoke with such certainty yet he didn’t understand, couldn’t understand that it wasn’t as easy as that, however true it may be.
“Maybe they’ve got to, because that’s all I’ve got – there’s nothing more I can do.”
He hesitated, preparing his response.
“Go for long walks, indulge in hot baths, question your assumptions, be kind to yourself, live for the moment, loosen up, scream, curse the world, count your blessings, just let go, just be.” It came out like one continuous sentence, like he was reading it off a list, one that he had plucked right out of her sub-conscious. “Life sucks kiddo, but I’m here every step of the way”
Her lips mouthed a careful ‘thank you’ as if she that’s all she could muster up, not quite ready to say anything out loud, afraid of the sound of her voice, afraid of what words might spill out without her control.
“Tell me about it?” He said this with slight caution, aware that he was now treading on dangerous territory. He held his breath unconsciously as he waited to be rejected of his request as he always is. She scrambled to her feet, her boots scuffing against the mix of deadened grass and dirt track which surrounded them. She took each step with care, eyes focused intently on where she placed her feet, as if walking for the first time as a baby. She reached her destination and then hopped onto the weathered bench with more confidence now, causing cracked flakes of sun-baked blue paint from the bench to fly into the air and catch the wind. He watched the paint flakes carried around wearily in the breeze, suddenly aware of the fact he was still holding his breath.
“…When my fingers touched his skin” She started slowly in a whisper, and he could tell this was taking a lot of courage to find her voice after such a long time. “I felt full of life, as if it was what I had been missing without him. We danced together and the whole room would fill with dancers in beautiful gowns. This life made me laugh and I tried to keep hold of it, hold tight to him so it would never end. But just as soon as it started, it disappeared. He went, taking the life inside me, and I was left in the dark with nothing. But I’ll never forget it. Never forget those nights, I imagine them but I can never quite reach in. I’m watching from a distance, looking through a window in at the dancers, but it’s not the same without him there to lead me in. I’ve lost my way…”
He sat back and watched her as she spoke, her dress flowing carelessly around her thighs as she glided in graceful circles on a bench seat, as if in her mind hopping from stepping stone to stepping stone across a babbling brook. The sun stood proudly in front of her, lighting her up like a piece of treasure, her tanned body golden to a crisp, her long brown hair battling in the sun’s glimmer against the breeze. It was what he could imagine angels would look like.
“…And they’d say: ‘Who’d have thought such a tragically beautiful girl on the outside could be so fucked up on the inside?’ Giving me pitying looks as if to imply they even began to understand the pain and suffering. They had no idea, and were frankly content with that fact. They are mere spectators at the zoo, walking around cooing and smiling at all the perfectly cute animals on show, but never in a million years would they trade their front row seats for mucking in backstage.
They sympathize in a way that would make adequate gossip later, but by no means do they give a damn deep down.”
She stopped turning then, as if all the energy inside her had suddenly left as the emotions flowed out of her. For a second she looked completely lost, the sparkle of the sun had gone in her eye and she looked weary, fighting a losing battle with life – she was beat.
“We’re the same you and me” He spoke up before she could fade away in front of him, “-desperate for something that we can’t quite reach. Again and again we try to stretch that little bit further but still remain with our faces in the gravel – when’s the time when you give up? How long do you carry on nursing a battered and bruised face at night? Just when you think it couldn’t possibly hurt anymore it surprises you by doing so twice as much. Maybe it’s not about giving up at that point, maybe it takes more courage to get up and walk away without turning back, to accept that you’ve stretched the farthest you could and it obviously wasn’t meant to be. It takes so much more courage to take that step out of everything you’ve ever known and find a new path, an undiscovered, exciting one full of endless possibilities ready to be trodden and followed.
Don’t let the comfort of the familiar keep you back, its not easy to let go and its ok sometimes to let it wander your mind for a little while but never lose your way – your future is out there waiting to be written by you, go ahead and do it, it’ll be the best thing you’ve ever done. I guarantee it.”
She stared at him then, as if seeing him truly for the first time. She noticed the way his nose wrinkled slightly when he was being serious, how his lips looked so delicately soft and tender, how had she not noticed this before? – How had she not taken all the little things that made him so unique and amazing and treasured them? Collected them up and put them in a box that she kept right next to her heart? And his words… It was as if he had reached right into her and taken out all she had been feeling and put it into words, such beautiful words.
Her heart seemed to then suddenly sink and yet simultaneously beat fuller than ever before and for the briefest moment she had no control over herself. Her eyes swelled up and she had no choice but to let it all go. All that he’d said had hit home, it was all so true and the relief washed over at that point and she wanted to shout finally! Finally someone understood her pain, understood the battle between her head and her heart, understood how her heart was guaranteed to win every time until it was so beaten and broken that it couldn’t fight any longer.
“Finally.” she whispered as she dropped down from the bench and collapsed into his arms and cried out her world into his tshirt. He could save her yet.
