Silver linings
Life had been bumbling along for a while. The pandemic had settled like a heavy blanket on our already insular lives, snatching any rare moments of spontaneity, dampening the wick of creativity, freezing off the tender shoots of joy. Life had become a relentless routine - work, grocery shops, food, TV and video games. There were no alternatives to the choices - we were mandated by the government to stay inside - on pain of a large fine.
I'm not sure when the numbness started to creep in, but I think it predated even the pandemic. I started crying in the shower. And when I took long walks on my own. I teared up in the moments in between, when I didn't think anyone was looking. I shied away from the screaming pain and buried it beneath more cheerful thoughts. Perhaps that's when the numbness started.
Two years into the pandemic I was a woman sleep-walking through her life. One mask for the outside world to prevent the spread of the virus, another for at home, to prevent another argument that I didn't have the energy to fight. I pretended everything was OK, I did it so much, that sometimes I even believed it.
But I was lonely. Lonely at home with my partner, lonely in the room full of people at work, lonely on the bus and in the shower. I felt like a startled turtle, who had retreated into it's shell after a shock. As hid the pain away, my ability to feel joy winked out. My smile disappeared, not just behind my mask, but from my eyes too. I walked the heavy tread of the condemned.
The first slap came from work. The place I was the happiest, if I was happy at all. That was where I had meaning, where I had the ability to impact the world in some positive way. I poured myself into that job as if I were a bottomless jug of water, slaking the thirst of a group of camel riders who had crossed the desert and become lost.
Only to discover I was worth less to my company than a younger male colleague who did exactly the same job as me. My sanctuary, my safe place, held the first dagger. They twisted the knife when they refused to give me equal pay, driving home just how unvalued I was. Oh how it stung. But if they had treated me just a little better I might have stayed.
The second slap was the implosion of my relationship. I thought I'd found my person, that I was done with the indignity of dating. But something had broken long before and as the years drifted by, I felt more and more at sea. I tried everything to make it work. I had been taught as a child never to give up on a difficult man. I had bent and bent until I broke and still it wasn't enough. Everything was my fault and my responsibility. I was asking for too much. If he been a little kinder, I'd probably still be with him.
The final straw that shattered the illusion completely, came from my landlords. Greedy as they were, they raised the rent by 31% in one hit - far beyond what I could afford. If they had been a little fairer - I'd still be living there.
I thank them for their callousness and cruelty - for I thought so little of myself back then, that I needed that level of contempt, to finally realise I wanted more for myself than the scraps. My life fell apart in a spectacular way - but that was the first steps to it falling into place.