Chapter 20 #2
Fran and I saw each other that Boxing Day.
He called over early in the morning, before my parents had woken up.
I was lying in bed, trying to devour the shame that had woken up next to me like a warm body, after my run-in with Elsie.
His knock at the window caught me by surprise, and it took me a moment to process, to wave for him to come inside.
‘Morning,’ he said, opening the door quietly so as not to disturb the peace.
He could not have known how little peace there was to be found for me in that house, at that time.
I had been reminded of how wrong and bad I was, at a fundamental level, and now there was an energetic penalty to pay.
It felt as though the version of me whose belly button he had kissed only two days prior, was not real, had never been real.
I had tricked him into believing she existed, which only made me worse.
‘Hey, how are you? Did you have a good day?’ I sat up, trying to be right.
‘It was fine, low-key. Ate too much ham. How was yours?’
The question was simple, but finding a reasonable response was beyond my capability. I stared blankly as he came to sit beside me on the bed.
‘Rah? Hey, you okay?’
‘Yeah, sorry, bad sleep. I’m a bit zonked.’
My body tensed as he moved closer, and I suppose he may have sensed some kind of hesitation in my voice.
I was not really present or in control of either.
My thoughts were a skirmish, the desire to neutralise my badness much stronger than any small voice calling for connection with Fran.
Us sleeping together had ruined my family Christmas, and this was not his fault, it was mine.
I had to refocus my energy on being good; I had to allocate more of myself to that cause, which left so little of me for anything or anyone else.
Shutting everything else down was the only way to be cleansed of the mistakes I continued to make, the only way to stay alive.
Refresh, blank slate, nothing to see here.
And the tension this caused made me feel as though I was not a human in a body at all.
There was some relief in the absence of feeling.
To be numb was to rest. And I needed to rest.
‘Do you want me to let you rest? Sorry it’s so early – I thought I’d call around because you’re usually up, but I forgot Christmas can be hectic. You probably need some downtime.’
Fran was speaking fast, panicking, and I struggled to follow along, wishing not for the first time that real life came with subtitles.
I did not want him to feel all of that. I wanted for him to be numb; he deserved a rest, too.
But my mind could not convert those thoughts to words, and so I nodded, letting him remove himself because that was the easier option, because I could not do the work required for anything more.
‘I’ll call you later,’ I said, hazy, as he watched me slide back under my blankets from the door, cosying back up to the shame that needed its host.
That is all I can recall of that day, so I suppose I did not call him.
I suppose I stayed under those covers for the rest of the day, and the rest of the week.
On New Year’s Eve, it dawned on me that I should probably reach out, and so I tried again.
That night is another fragment, sharp and jagged.
‘Hey, what are you doing tonight? Would love to see you, sorry I’ve been boring this week. Exhausted!’ I text him.
‘No probs. Going to the street party to party with the oldies. Want to come?’ he replied.
‘Fun! Will meet you there, not sure I’ll be able to stay up for the countdown though. Maybe we could do one at 9 p.m. like when we were younger? Haha.’
‘We can do one at 7 p.m. if you like! I’ll bring the sparklers.’
I was scared to tell Mum I would be joining them at the party, so I chickened out and told Dad instead.
He was thrilled at the prospect of his teenage daughter choosing to ring in the new year with her parents rather than going off to get wasted at a party or the pub with her friends.
I did not want to deflate his enthusiasm by telling him I was going to see a friend, or that Fran was now my only friend, or that my only other option was staying home alone.
Dad must have briefed Elsie, because she knocked on my bedroom door when it was time to go, as though this had always been the plan.
‘Coming,’ I called, and took a quick look at myself in my wardrobe mirror.
My reflection felt like a visit from the ghost of Christmas future; I looked haggard and worn, aged fifteen years by the stress of wrangling so many menacing thoughts.
I was wearing a sparkly black net dress that Olivia had left behind when she moved away, now mine thanks to squatters’ rights.
My hair was a mess, and I had applied too much eyeliner.
A girl wearing that much eyeliner was usually going through it; best to stay out of her way.
‘Olivia’s dress,’ Mum commented, as I met her and Dad on the front lawn.
‘Yep,’ I replied.
‘You both look lovely,’ Dad said.
I must have walked to the end of the cul-de-sac with my parents, I must have been given a drink, I must have found Fran, we must have spent the evening together, making small talk at the party surrounded by people who had watched us grow up.
I do not recall. By the end of the night, I must have been quite drunk, because I sense I was acting out of character, acting out full stop.
It is ugly to think about, and uglier to imagine how it must have felt for Fran.
‘This party is boring,’ I announced, probably quite loudly, without regard for who around might have heard, including the hosts.
‘We can go if you like,’ Fran replied.
‘I’m going to go, you should stay. This is exactly the kind of thing you love. Chit-chat with people who are obsessed with telling you how much you’ve grown. Like, obviously – that is how time works.’
‘Right. We don’t have to hang out, but I’ll walk you home. You seem a little wobbly,’ he said.
If I had considered what I wanted, it would have been clear I wanted Fran to walk me home, to come into my room, to watch a movie, to have sex again, to fall asleep together and welcome the new year lying side by side.
But a feeling can exist like a diamond at the bottom of a well, easily lost when the fireworks of dysregulation are thrown down there too.
Thoughts about myself, and how to right the wrongs, how to clean my house, instead played on a loop, taking up all the airtime, making me think about how I felt about myself, rather than feeling anything.
To say how I felt would have meant being vulnerable, and perhaps my neurons had remembered how close vulnerability was to shame.
That is how I understand it now: that feeling nothing was safer than feeling too much, but in the moment, flight simply felt like safety.
It was a bird finding shelter in a tree during a storm.
I do not remember how I left things that night, whether I said something cutting or mean.
I am sure I did, to give him comfort in his decision to let me go alone.
To be the black in our black and white dynamic.
Or maybe I leaned a little too hard again on tired.
Tired covered so much. Tired was my umbrella, my costume, my shortcut, my vice.
I only remember walking away. No, that is a lie.
I also remember turning around from halfway up the street, watching from the comfort of the night as Fran stood alone in the light of the party, hesitating as he looked for a new conversation to join.
He eventually approached Mrs Kingston, turning his back to lean in and say something to her, a packet of sparklers sticking out of his jeans pocket.
All I was aware of at the time was that it brought me peace to go home alone to bed.
People have a tendency to assume that those of us making poor decisions do so after careful consideration, as though we weigh up all of our options and make a definitive call on what might be the worst possible choice we can make in any given moment.
These are the kinds of assumptions made by people with nervous systems and brains and families and bodies that function as they are intended to; they know as much on the topic as I know about cryptocurrency, which is to say: nothing.
Let me explain the reality, not on behalf of all poor decision-makers, but as an example of how one of us might come to be.
It is both tedious and exhausting to struggle most of the time.
It is also predictable in its unpredictability: something happens, and I react.
That is how I move through the seconds, and the minutes, and the hours, and the days.
The reaction is the part that is unknown, usually even to myself until after the fact.
There are fewer folks who grasp it than don’t: we are not all operating from the same reality.
If capacity were a vessel, and emotions the weather, I am trying to collect a monsoon in a bottle cap.
Choices are often not that at all, more a reaction to what is not wanted – in desperation to avoid the difficult thing, I might, for example, sprint in the opposite direction, still looking back.
And this is of course how to succeed at running head-first into a brick wall, literal or otherwise.
Or, I might do nothing at all, decisions coming to pass only when every other option has expired.
Room for one at the last resort. What I am trying to say, really, is that if I could cope with and analyse my feelings in the moment, I would not be in the mess I am in.
I was not thinking about what my life might look like down the track, or how to steer it in the right direction.
I would love to get to the point where I am the kind of person who has plans for the future – wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Maybe then I will have space to think about this.
That is why a Dr Montague is needed, to help me learn some healthy coping mechanisms, to help me understand myself more.
The first step cannot be admitting there is a problem, because understanding the problem, and even further back, what might be causing it, what precedes it, has to come before.
So that is where I am at now – the step before step one.
I did not choose to hurt Fran that New Year’s Eve, not consciously, though I realise the impact is the same regardless of intent.
None of this is an excuse. I have never, not once, explained my shortcomings as though they somehow absolve me.
It is the opposite; I am offering my own brief of evidence to the jury, urging them to do the right thing and find me guilty.
See, you twelve kind people, this is how my mind works!
These are the confusing and unique ways I have thought and acted and felt that led me to make that particular mistake.
We are on the same side, me and those in judgement of me.
And I feel confident that other all-star poor decision-makers, the world’s greatest, are operating in a similar way, generating their own uniquely terrible situations and outcomes as byproducts of the turmoil within them, rather than causing chaos for chaos’ sake.
Whatever was going on inside my head at the time, the reality is I ghosted Fran.
Poof; gone. I left. Right when I was on the cusp of having everything I dreamed of with him, I placed it on the ground and walked away, as though it meant nothing at all.
I know, I know. See how she runs. With how I felt about myself, losing him seemed inevitable, so I chose instead to tourniquet him like a damaged limb, cutting the blood flow entirely.
I was on burnout autopilot – floating, all doing, no feeling.
The current was strong, and I let myself be taken out to sea.
I would be lying if I said I spent any time thinking about the pros and cons of this decision before making it.
That is not how it works, remember. I was in the monsoon; I was running towards the brick wall.
And I never thought about what that might have felt like for him, not once.
Until now. So, of course revisiting these memories takes an energetic toll; they have accrued interest over time.