Shattered

I am shattered, all wabit and done in and peely wally and using a language that is not my own and which I cannot pronounce and tired and wishing for a large drink of whisky and thinking to myself that I will instead drink orange juice this evening and go to bed early and not think and not think and not think.

Or maybe, maybe I am shuttered. Shuttered up and closed up and packaged up and stowed away far from the prying eyes of my mind. Hidden, so I cannot see me.

It is sometimes easier not to see me, easier to hide little echoes of myself, away where I am blank and ignorant and lost for the emotions that might stir my soul, might make me feel, might make me realise that being shattered is just the start of it.

My girlfriend read the desperate e.mails of my ex wife this weekend.

I asked her to.

To check.

To check that the shuttered part wasn’t all that I felt it to be.

As I read through the long lists and the long pages, the pages and pages of blame, my heart both shattered and shuttered itself. Tied itself in the biggest tightest knot imaginable. A knot that you would break fingernails on, a knot oozing sea water.

As I read, I went dark in my inside. I went dark and I could not speak and I thought; How could she say what she says? How could she mean such things? and I thought Maybe it is true. Maybe all these words that clamber over me; that make me tremble are real. Maybe I really was as terrible as she says I was.

As I sat with my stomach and my throat clenched tight and my eyes bare of moisture my partner, my love, spoke and the words glanced off me, rocketed away and I could not hear.

Until, until, somehow I started speaking, and that shattered memory pieced together; that boulder softened and I heard myself and I heard my love and in small part I realised, with that ache in my soul that these words that I read were not as true and as brutal as the truth can be. These were the words that are meant to wound and destroy and control.

And that is what they do. Now, now that the words have been read and said, I remain shattered. But I am less shuttered.

When my love phones me to tell me she still feels sick at what she read, I do not let those words or those feelings escape me. I listen slightly more closely.

I listen and realise that badness is not all I need to believe in. That there is forgiveness and there is a way of finding peace; that there is a way of relaxing and breathing softly.