The Places I've Cried in Public

by Holly Bourne

There are so many memories, Reese, lurking in all the spaces of everywhere. They lie trapped like frozen ghosts, existing only when someone who knows of that memory thinks about that particular time and place and their mind reactivates it. We walk through these ghosts all the time, not knowing we tread the footprints of another person’s story.

We leave behind echoes of our lives everywhere we go, trapping them into the fabric of the world around us.

The giant waves of his charm kept crashing over my head, dragging me under before I’d had a chance to draw breath. “You’re so gorgeous,” he’d say, out of the blue, while we finished the wine. “I don’t think you realize how stunning you are.” I would just about recover from one compliment, and then another one would land. “I can’t stop looking at you,” he admitted.

My memory map is the most underwhelming collection of compass points ever. But, I guess, isn’t that always the way with dramatic moments? They don’t play out like in the films, with stunning backdrops that reflect the drama of your life. Your heart can break at a regular bus stop, or on a grotty train, or on some crap patch of grass near your house. You don’t need dramatic settings to experience dramatic emotions.

I wonder how many times in a given second girls are told that their guts are wrong? Told that our tummies are misfiring, like wayward fireworks. No, no, no, dear, it’s not like that at all. Where did you get that from? I promise you that’s not the case. You are overreacting. You are crazy. You are insecure. You are being a silly little thing. And, then, days or weeks or even years later, we look back on The Bad Thing that happened to us because we ignored all the signs, and we say to ourselves I wish I had listened to my gut.

I’m starting to think that some boys make girls cry, and then act like they’re crazy for crying.

Crying is a very obvious sign that something isn’t going right in your life. You should not ignore tears.

Guts and hearts aren’t always the most compatible – I’m starting to learn that. They pull in different directions, ignoring one another when they really shouldn’t. I think I need help working out which one I’m supposed to listen to.

Quite frankly, it had been terrible – like standing on a rug that someone kept tugging and tugging so you never really had your balance. And yet, what made it worse was, Reese continued to pretend he wasn’t tugging the rug.

“Well,” I started, sinking into the good memories like they were my cosiest pair of pyjamas. “At the beginning, he was the most amazing boyfriend ever…” And I told her about our fairy-tale first date, how you always walked me home, how I never doubted that you loved me because you told me all the goddamned time. “What about after the beginning?” Joan pressed. “Then what did he do to make you love him?”

“You can’t help feelings in life, even if you think the reasons for them are silly. Suffering is suffering.

“Sometimes,” Joan said, “people we love can behave in very confusing ways. And if someone is treating us inconsistently it can have a confusing, almost drug-like effect on us.”

Kindness isn’t a reward for good behaviour, Amelie. It should be a given.

As I squelch in my Converse, I think about the word consistent. It’s not the sexiest of words, or the most romantic. When you close your eyes and imagine your ideal person, it’s not the word that arrives right away. You tend to go for words that, you, Reese, comfortably inhabit. Words like charming and exciting. I cannot think of anything Alfie ever did that was exciting. That’s not what our love was. I never felt like I was on the top of a roller coaster about to drop. I never felt anxious butterflies in my stomach while I waited for his messages, because I never had to wait for his messages. I didn’t get that sick feeling before seeing him, wondering what kind of Alfie I’d get that day – a loved-up Alfie, or a sulky, I’m-going-to-act-like-I-hate-you-but-deny-it Alfie. He was just always…Alfie.

I’m starting to realize something. I’m starting to realize that craziness may not always come from within. I’m starting to think lows aren’t worth highs – not in love. Not in something where the most important thing is to feel safe. Consistency is underrated.

I sometimes think maybe all the tears we cry are due to this huge gap between the how-we-think-things-should-go and what-life-actually-gives-you.

It’s such a simple torture – the silent treatment. As basic as tripping someone over or pulling their chair out before they sit down. And yet it’s so very effective. When someone has the willpower to pretend you’re not there, it nullifies you. How do you fight against that humiliation?

His total lack of emotion only made me more emotional. I knew the harder I cried and the crazier I got, the more repulsive I was becoming, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to break through. I had to, I had to.

Sometimes that’s all you can do in life, when it comes to pain – try and understand it. We all carry scars and scorch marks around with us. We cuddle up each night with ghosts of damaging memories – we let them swirl around our heads, never able to settle or heal because we can’t make sense of this terrible thing that happened to us, and why we’re finding it so impossible to get over. You can’t force pain to leave until it’s ready to. Like the most annoying party guest, it only leaves in its own sweet goddamned time. Meanwhile there’s nothing you can do but carry it until it’s ready to be released. But understanding the pain – why it’s there, why it’s not leaving – it makes that burden much easier to bear.

You always had that psychic sense, you could always tell when you’d pushed me too far, been too distant for too long, made me start getting angry and fed up and thinking I deserved better. Then BAM – back came Reese, the boy I thought I loved, rather than the cold, unfeeling silence I’d been dealing with for weeks.

I flinched and smiled through it. This was one of his special attacks. One that – when I go over it afterwards, trying to prove that Reese WAS angry and he WAS attacking me and I WASN’T imagining it – makes me feel like I’m trying to pin down a butterfly. Because he didn’t technically actually say anything bad.

“Sometimes,” she says, “when someone doesn’t treat us well and attacks the essence of who we are, that causes a trauma. It’s natural to want to be loved – it’s the most natural thing in the world. So, when we love someone and they hurt us, our brain doesn’t like it. Our brain doesn’t like trauma, it doesn’t like feeling unsafe, and sometimes it comes up with unhealthy shortcuts in order to trick us into feeling safe.”

“One of the things the brain does to feel safe, is it creates an intense bond with the person who hurts us. It’s the ego’s way of protecting itself.

Maybe it’s never getting butterflies because you always know where you stand? Maybe it’s not passion, but caution? Shouldn’t you be cautious? If you’re going to go through the emotional stripping necessary to give your heart to another? To let them hold it beating in the palms of their hands, both of you knowing they can close their fingers at any time and squash it to mush? Shouldn’t you feel safe with that person, rather than delirious with passion or insecurity or…a trauma bond? Maybe love – real love – is mellow.

It’s over. It has to be over. And even though you’ve hurt me so much – in ways I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from – it hurts so much to let you go.

“I am brave,” I whisper to myself. And I am. I am so, so brave. As is every girl who manages to escape someone like you with even a shred of herself left. I may have lost a lot of tears. I may’ve lost my trust and my dignity and my friends and my hope, but I didn’t lose me. Not entirely. I was brave enough to leave just a sliver of myself that can regenerate and regrow. So many girls don’t. Always, always be the girl who does.