Changing

Just when you think you know yourself, life has other plans.

Photo by DaYsO on Unsplash

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It used to be tulips.

She sits, utterly alone, completely surrounded. It was that particular kind of mid-morning slump in the steamy coffee shop: the air was dense with the damp scent of sweet pastry, the windows foggy, drips of condensation meandering their way down to pool on the grubby, crumb-scattered sill, as she gazed onto the busy street outside. So much busyness. So many things to do.

I need to clean the house.

The early risers had drifted to offices, homes, real lives. Only the mid-morning stragglers remained: a few harried, exhausted mothers, bouncing mewling babies in crooks of arms, waiting for the caffeine elixir to hit their veins like a drug; some creative types, laptops open, typing. Thinking. Typing.

I should be working.

She idly picks her bottom lip, the same spot she always reaches for when remembering. I must stop doing that. She knows she’s leaving a mark. An indelible, permanent imprint of a fragile state of mind, indiscernible to most, glaringly obvious to some.

How is it that one can be so completely changed, irrevocably altered and yet at once more themselves than ever? It was as if the last two years had turned her in a complete and inevitable circle, back to where she would have, should have been.

There were times, especially at the beginning, when she doubted there was a way out. The feeling of being trapped, stuck, out of control was overwhelming. It had engulfed her in its absolution: this was her life, this was it. She felt it viscerally, literally, in the closing up of her throat, the constriction in her chest, the physical manifestation of being contained, controlled.

Until.

It started small. A slight, almost imperceptible but certain shift. From the outside, no one would have even noticed. But she noticed it. At first, a simple refusal to bend her will. Not an outright violation - he would never have allowed that - but a slow realisation that her mind, at least, was still free.

And for a long time, that was all it took to settle her. It soothed her, and cossetted her, even on the hardest of days, her ability to turn within herself, to another, safer place. As the blows fell, her mind strengthened, steeled against him.

And that was what saved her. Once her mind was hers again, that was the beginning of the end.

Now here she was, in real life, drinking coffee while she idly twisted the rings on her finger. I should take them off.

A sudden crash, a clatter of dishes and she started, heart racing, palms sweating, shaking. Breathe in, breathe out. There’s nothing to fear. Not here, not anymore.

I’m OK.

An enormous lorry started to reverse, beeping, warning, in the corner of her vision. She turned her head as it blocked her view of the florist next door. An aproned young woman paused to pull back her dark hair before bending and returning to her work, tending, watering, arranging stems in the pewter pots ready for frazzled commuters to grab, before rushing home for their evening.

It was the florist that had unexpectedly started her cascade of memories. Funny how the smallest thing could cause her mind to hitch, to stumble and falter in its newness, tumbling down, down, down. The tulips. The sight of them made bile rise in her throat and the flashbacks started. It was always tulips.

But not anymore.