Clean

“its over. Its all over : ( “ Zoe text Rita through her tears. Rita replied it seconds “i’m on my way”. Relief filled Zoe as she realised the kind of distraction she was about to have. She could ignore the pain that was tearing up her stomach and that had already mad her vomit once. Anxiety had made her stomach so vunerable to vomiting. She had just learnt to accept that she was always going to have a weak stomach, just like she was always going to have a heightened awareness of danger. Where had that awareness been last night?

Danger of being hurt was one of her biggest fears after cancer and earthquakes. These two things had always been her biggest fears and having suffered through both of them over the past eighteen months had definitely made life appear more dangerous. Being hurt sounds like a very braod catergory because it could range from breaking a bone to having a headache or losing someone. However for Zoe when she said ‘being hurt’ it simply meant ‘being let down’ or ‘being rejected’. Essentially any kind of hurt which could only be inflicted from another human being. This was because Zoe had very few coping mechanisms for this sort of thing, it was different every time and there had never been one person in her life whom hadn’t hurt her.  Well except for Rita, they may have lost contact for awhile there but the reality is Rita had never hurt or judged her.

Rita arrived as usual in a whirlwind of perfume and excited energy that immediately made Zoe feel relaxed and better when she opened the door. They sat for two hours and talked. Zoe explained everything that had happened, how horrible it had all been and how sick and used she felt now. The first thing Rita responded with was that she was disappointed in him and that she really felt like he was going to make a different decision, or at the very least he was a decent human being who knew how wrong it was to use someone else like that. Zoe actually agreed, she was disappointed and let down. How well she though she had known him seemed futile now. All the lies and deceit of the last two months was really beginning to hit her. He didn’t want her, he didn’t love her and yet everytime she had started to feel like she was making progress it was as if he knew and was able to pull her back in with his smile and his charm and his empty empty promises. He had never even entertained the thought of them being together again. He just wanted her hurt and crippled so that she couldn’t move on.

Rita agreed and reminded her of the two weeks of no contact right back at the start of the break-up. That had worked, that had allowed you to move on. Yeah that was true, but back then she had no feelings left for him and now he had bought them all back. Now it felt as if she was being dumped, and that was harder because it was no longer her decision. He had decided her future and the sense that she no longer had control was yet another trigger. He should have known all these things about her, she knew she had told him at least once but he had either not retained it or he just didn’t care about her condition. Rita talked for a bit longer about the boy she had met and gone home with on Saturday and Zoe became so envious of how easily the single life suited someone like Rita. She literally didn’t need anybody except herself and a wee bit of alcohol and drugs. Maybe that was what Zoe would be like in a few months, she would have the strength to say no if he ever come crawling back to her.

After Rita left, Zoe was alone in the empty house. She took off all her clothes and jumped in the shower and that was where she started crying, the kind of crying that feels like it is coming directly from your stomach. The kind of crying that is actually painful and makes your whole body shake with each wave of genuine pain. She watched as her tears mixed in with the shower water, it felt dramatic. She felt sick again and had to quickly dash out of the shower to vomit for the second time today, except there was no food in her stomach so it was just dry retching. She climbed slowly back into the shower and sat down against the wall letting the water run over her. The final few tears slipped out and somehow despite the aching pain in her stomach she felt clean.

Being an adult

The stress and the anxiety hit its absolute peak around three weeks after her birthday. She was panicking every single day, she was showering three times a day in fear of flesh eating bacteria and she was becoming obsessive with how many steps it took her to get to uni. It would be a bad day if it wasn’t 632 steps. She was so scared and so on edge. She sat down in her classes and refused to look or talk to anyone. She threw herself into her assignments to the point where she would be doing twelve hour days but still her grades didn’t improve. That was when the self doubt set in.

And all she kept doing was smiling and laughing and trying to pretend that their was no fear in her heart and no paranoia rattling around in her brain where in fact these two feelings had become daily companions, much like her shadow, they were something she couldn’t escape unless she was in complete darkness.

To her, fear and anxiety were the same. She was anxious about something so therefore she feared it. She feared something so therefore it made her anxious. The doctor had prescribed her pills however she fear taking them, she feared they would take over her mind and stop her from being herself. All he kept asking was ‘are you taking your pills?’. Maybe he should have asked ‘why don’t you want to take your pills?’.

Eventually she refused to leave bed. She spent four days lying in bed on her laptop watching pointless, shitty fox comedies that made her cringe but she loved getting wrapped into their beautiful world which seemed to lack danger. The real world had so much danger and so much stress and it all screamed so loudly at her. She just wanted to break through the static and find the truth. ‘The truth’ was her obsession. She craved it, all around her was lies and betrayal, and it was so easy to lie! How could you know if someone was lying! How did you know???? She lied to him, told him she was fine then she told him she was sick but with a tummy bug. He came around the day she told him she was sick and lay in bed and they watched shitty comedies together and he asked how her tummy was. Somehow this simple lie allowed her to leave bed the next day. It was just a tummy bug. That’s all she told people. They made sympathetic noises and gave her copies of their notes. How easy it was for her to hide the truth. Everyone must hide their truths. This is called being an ‘adult’.

Hide the fact that you are missing someone.

Hide the thoughts.

Hide the feelings.

Hide it all.

Hide who you are.

And then all she could think about was what kind of truths were people hiding? So she focussed, really focussed on others, she watched how they talked, how they walked, how they held their pens, how they did their hair. Nothing gave them away. That was until she started talking, opening up a little about her own truth. First she told the older girl that she had panic attacks. “Oh, my brother had that before he came out of the closet”. Second she told her work friend that she had lost her best friend in a car accident two years before. “My little sister passed away from meningitis when she was six” she replied.

The truth wasn’t so much needed in day to day life but rather it was more the truth of an identity, the truth behind why they talked that way, walked that way, held their pens that way and did their hair that way. All these past events could stay hidden away but would always be a personal truth, a defining feature, the one thing you held back until you trusted someone. She had to learn that, she had a few truths that she needed to learn to keep closer to her rather than broadcasting them. That was called being an adult.

Cafe du Noir

Beeeep. Jeremy’s alarm blared, abruptly awakening him from a deep sleep. He slammed his hand down hard on the clock and pulled himself out of bed. 7:30 as usual. By 7:50 he was out of the shower and by 8:00 he had left the house. The crisp morning air felt good in his lungs as he briskly headed towards his favourite coffee shop-Du Cafe Noir, a little shop which could really only fit three customers in at one time.

 He remembered discovering it last year on a dreary morning after Jenny had gone. He had been aimlessly wondering when it had started raining, Jeremy had simply needed shelter and ducked into the nearest doorway. A bell had dinged as he opened the door and was greeted by a smell of coffee and rich cakes and something else he couldn’t place his finger on. After ordering a black coffee and a sausage roll, Jeremy took the only seat near the only window.  He watched as people ran and walked quickly outside trying to avoid the rain... or maybe they were just busy, or looking for distractions. He was deep in thought when a girl, who must not have even been ten years old, placed a coffee in front of him. She smiled and thanked him then walked back into the kitchen. Jeremy stared after her unsure what to make of this bizarre waitress. Perhaps she was a dwarf?

 It wasn’t long before Jeremy’s visits became a weekly and then daily occurrence, he soon discovered that the young girl was one of Dave’s daughters. Dave owned the shop and his only staff was family, nobody seemed to mind this and Jeremy had grown to enjoy listening to the three girls stories about school and other things. Dave and his family had certainly pulled Jeremy out of his slump. Now over a year later, Jeremy felt as if he was family. Dave even began to ‘forget’ to charge him for his sausage roll however Jeremy felt guilty about this and insisted on paying. He would hate to be the reason as to why Dave went bankrupt; it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the shop was running on the bare minimum.

Jeremy walked through the shop door, feeling like he had come home. He headed over to his table only to stop dead in his tracks. There was someone else sitting there. He didn’t know what to do. It’s not like he had never seen another customer in here before but no customer had ever sat at that table before. He couldn’t very well walk up to this woman and ask her to give up her seat, so he settled for a table in the far corner. It was probably a onetime thing, after all this woman was dressed in a suit and on a fancy phone, she belonged in Starbucks.  Jeremy ate his sausage roll and drank his coffee as usual, though he felt slightly put off as he had no window to look through and he kept finding himself watching Starbucks Suit. He was fascinated with how busy she appeared to be, talking on the phone while focussing on something on her laptop. She didn’t even appreciate the window. What kind of horrible job could she have that she couldn’t even relax at this time on a Monday morning? Jeremy left a tenner on his empty plate, as he did at the start of every week and then left to go to work. As he passed the window he took another look at Starbucks Suit and he felt sorry for her. How unfulfilling her life must be.

By 3:00 that afternoon Jeremy strongly hated Starbucks Suit. How dare she take his table! He couldn’t believe he felt pity for her; she should have been banished from the shop. She probably didn’t even tip the family; she probably complained and forced Dave to make her coffee after coffee until it was up to her Starbuck standard. Jeremy left working firmly hoping to never see that horrible woman again. He was not that lucky. For two weeks Starbucks Suit was at his table, every morning, laptop out, phone on her ear and sipping on her coffee the entire time without giving a second glance to the window. Jeremy sat across the shop glaring every single morning, grinding his teeth and clenching his fists. He really did hate this woman.

The third week came around and Jeremy made a vow to put his foot down. This woman had disrupted his entire life, he lost sleep over it and his performance at work was less than satisfactory due to the fact he couldn’t concentrate. Starbucks Suit had become an obsession and it was getting unhealthy.

Beeeeeeep. 6:30. Jeremy’s body clock was not used to this slightly earlier hour however he forced himself out of bed. He had to beat her to the shop and get his seat back. Jeremy rushed through his morning routine and was out the door by 6:50. When he reached the shop, Jeremy was surprised to see it was closed, that thought hadn’t occurred to him. Jeremy suddenly felt like an immature kid, racing to be the first in class. It was just a table... But it was HIS table. Jeremy waited in the cold for about 15 minutes before Dave opened the door to him. The table by the window looked so welcoming and Jeremy felt the relief of normality overcome him. He watched the window and enjoyed every bite of his sausage roll and every sip of him coffee. It was a beautiful day.

It had been about ten minutes before Jeremy spotted her bowling around the corner towards the shop. Was her phone attached to her ear? Jeremy couldn’t help feeling smug as she walked in, but this feeling was deflated as Starbuck Suit didn’t even glance at the table. Jeremy wasn’t really sure what he had expected... a public fight? Starbucks Suit was too sophisticated for that he supposed, he still couldn’t help but wonder what she even did.... A slamming down on his table woke Jeremy from his daydream; he looked up to see Starbucks Suit sitting down across from him, as if he was invisible. His mouth fell open and for a very long time he gaped. Who did she think she was? Had nobody taught her manners? Jeremy eventually recovered from the initial shock and proceeded to awkwardly clear his throat. She glanced over the top of her glasses. And smiled. She smiled. Jeremy was so mad, he found himself kicking his chair backwards and storming out of the shop. It wasn’t until he was halfway down the street that he realised he forgot to leave his Monday tip. Damn that vile woman.

For the rest of the week Jeremy continued to beat her to the shop only to have her sit down as if nothing was unusual about the situation. Jeremy really didn’t know what to do anymore, every morning she sat there and smiled at him as she talked on her phone and typed on her laptop. He didn’t even know her name. Before he knew it, Jeremy began to notice things about this woman. He noticed how sad her eyes looked, even when she smiled at him, he noticed the frown that always seemed to be on her face, he noticed the dark bags under her eyes. He wondered when she last had a good sleep.

The following week Jeremy decided to sit in the table back over the other side of the room because in all honesty he was sick of this petty game. She could have the window table if it cheered her up, however it turned out not to be this simple. Starbucks Suit simply sat at the table away from the window. He couldn’t get rid of this woman!

Before he knew it another week had passed. This game had been going on for months, Jeremy was so tired.  So that Monday when she sat down he smiled first and for the first time since this ridiculous situation had began he swore he saw a light in her eyes, just for a second before her focussed switched back to the task at hand. That night Jeremy slept like a baby. Hatred was a heavy anchor to carry and it seemed that by smiling at this woman he had managed to lift it.

The following morning when the woman entered the shop, Jeremy had already ordered and as she sat down he stuck out his hand.

“Hi, I’m Jeremy, I don’t think we have met”.