Chapter Ten #2
We speak over each other, locking eyes before looking away quickly.
“Uh huh.” Ewan rolls his own eyes. “Just wait until I’m not stuck between you next time, alright?”
I duck my head. I’m not flirting with Angus. I can’t be. I’m mid-break up, mid-walk, mid-one of the most physically painful experiences of my life. So I can’t be flirting. Can I?
I try to focus on something else, anything to distract myself from the pile of muscle on the other side of Ewan, whose limp is growing more pronounced with every mile.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking, but your ankle still seems painful. Shouldn’t you be resting it, instead of carrying on?” I tuck his arm tighter around my shoulder to try to help him keep the weight off. “I’m sure there’s a bus near here, or we can find someone to take you back to Glasgow.”
He shakes his head, limping on another few steps. “I can’t.”
“No offence, lad, but you’re injured. If you keep walking on it, you could really damage yourself,” Angus agrees with me.
“No. I’m fine. It’s only another couple of days. I can do this.”
I empathise. I do. I feel it too: the need to get through this. That this is something I have to do, something I have to prove, even though every second of it feels like being dragged over hot, screaming coals. But Ewan is injured. A holiday doesn’t seem worth the agony he’s causing himself.
“I’m sorry,” I try, “but it really doesn’t seem sensible—”
“Shut up.” Ewan says it quietly, but there is steel in his voice, a low, rumbling anger. He keeps going, the volume rising, until he’s practically spitting the words at me. “Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up, SHUT UP!”
The silence is thick and heavy.
I drop his arm. A hot flush runs through me, shimmering tension lancing into my skin.
I hate being shouted at. Hate the prickling shame of having done something wrong.
I can’t help the physical feeling of fear that shoots through me: he might be injured, he might be young, but Ewan is still a man, and my body, like every other woman’s, knows exactly what it means when a man turns his rage on you.
“I—”
I can’t get the words out.
I turn away, putting as much distance between myself and the two men as I can. Angus doesn’t say a word.
That pisses me of. How dare he not stand up for me? Defend me? Ewan is in the wrong: all I’m trying to do is help, and he’s there shouting at me. What have I done to deserve that?
A few minutes later I pause, out of breath, and realise I’ve left the group far behind. A dense mist has descended, and whatever direction I look, I can barely see a few metres from my face.
I’m alone.
I take another couple of painful, tottering steps.
The ground is flatter than yesterday, the walking easier, with fewer roots and drops and uneven stones.
But in the mist, I can hardly see any of the landscape I’m passing, as if I’ve stumbled into a cloud without a compass.
Am I even going the right way? It’s impossible to tell.
Why am I doing this? What seemed like a good idea tucked into the warmest of pubs with Marnie, crying, yes, but doing it with my best friend, as she patted my back and stroked my hair and told me what a brave and beautiful person I was, now feels like a nightmare.
Yesterday morning, I wanted to be alone, craved the solitude of my own thoughts, but now I feel trapped inside them, locked in by the silence, and the fog, and the bone-deep fatigue and the agony I feel in every part of me.
I can’t do this.
I don’t want to do this.
But I’m miles from a road, even if I knew where to find one, and I can’t bear to go back and admit my weakness. Especially after Ewan’s outburst.
There is no way out.
A tear slips down my cheek, and then another.
How could Ethan do this to me? How can I have failed, again? Even the safe option doesn’t want me enough to stay faithful to me. Even the lowest risk path has still seen me hurt.
Nothing I do is enough.
I’m not enough.
Not thin enough. Not disciplined enough. Not fun enough. Not adventurous enough. Not rich enough. Not clever enough. Not ambitious enough.
And now I’m alone. No degree. No plans. No flat. Stuck in a job I don’t like, that there’s no development in, where I will never get promoted and which takes pains to make it clear how little it values me.
All the dreams, the spark, the passion I had when I was young, gone.
And I can’t even finish one fucking hike.
The clouds I fear so badly aren’t hovering at the edges now, they’ve well and truly taken over. I know what I’m doing: I know these are intrusive thoughts, that they don’t reflect the entirety of me, that I’m catastrophising, that I’m ruminating, that I’m spiralling.
But still, I can’t stop them, can’t close the floodgates now they’re open.
Useless. Waste of space. Pointless. Failure.
Every thought a jab at my heart, a weight in my chest, another stone slowing my steps.
I know, I know, I know that I’m doing this to myself.
Need to think positively. Need to try harder. Need to wear a brighter T-shirt, put on a bigger smile.
I can hear my mother’s voice, the echoes of her pleas from when I returned post-university, post-collapse, tail between my legs.
She didn’t understand. No one did. Why can’t you try, Rowan?
We love you. Everyone loves you. Why don’t you get up?
Why don’t you finish the degree? I know it’s hard, but you’re a smart girl.
And you’ve always been such a hard worker.
Come on, love. Give it a go. Why don’t you try?
I couldn’t then. And I can’t now. I’ve run for so long, made my life so easy, hidden from the world in TV and wine and fluffy dressing gowns, tried to do everything perfectly so that the thoughts wouldn’t have anything to latch onto, wouldn’t have a place to land, wouldn’t catch me, but here they were anyway. Ready to ruin my life. Again.
I can’t go back to that place, where there is no light, no colour, no joy. I can’t be that person again.
But one thought creeps in, the one that scares me most of all. Have I ever really left that person behind? Or is she still in me, every day, my shadow self? Is she the real me, and everything else a facade?
Am I destined to collapse, again and again?
Will I ever, really, be enough?
The tears are coming hot and fast as I stagger on, bowed by the weight of my pack and my feelings. I want to stop. Want to drop my bag and simply give up.
But what would that get me? An even wetter bum, and the embarrassment of being found, crying my eyes out on the side of the trail. I think of the glint of approval in Angus’ eyes last night, and the way he spoke about fighting for things that mattered.
I’m a quitter. A failure. I know that about myself.
But maybe, right now, I don’t have to be.
So I duck my head and let the tears flow, and make myself march on, into the mist and the rain and the pain.
Taking it one step at a time.