Cassandra in Reverse

by Holly Smale

It’s a lie, the first page of a book, because it masquerades as a beginning. A real beginning—the opening of something—when what you’re being offered is an arbitrary line in the sand. This story starts here. Pick a random event. Ignore whatever came before it or catch up later. Pretend the world stops when the book closes, or that a resolution isn’t simply another random moment on a curated timeline. But life isn’t like that, so books are dishonest. Maybe that’s why humans like them. And it’s saying that kind of shit that gets me thrown out of the Fentiman Road Book Club.

I rarely understand what another human is thinking, but I frequently feel it: a wave of emotion that pours out of them into me, like a teapot into a cup. While it fills me up, I have to work out what the hell it is, where it came from and what I’m supposed to do to stop it spilling everywhere.

People ask what’s “wrong” with me all the time, but now and then I wonder if I’m actually the problem.

I don’t understand it, but there’s just something in me that knows how to stand still when the earth shatters.

But, on another level, there’s a lot to be said for repetition, and I think I might actually understand what’s going on around me for the first time in my entire life. It’s not an entirely unpleasant sensation. Maybe this is how other people feel all the time; some of us just need a dress rehearsal first.

Because if things can be broken, then things can be changed; and if things can be changed, then it stands to good and logical reason that they can also be fixed.

Because if the first page of a book is a lie and all we have are lines drawn in the sand, then that makes time the wave that erases them all.

Apparently the trick is to write what you actually want to say and then go back in afterward and surround it with irrelevant niceties and emojis just to make it harder to find, the way you bury a sweet in a pile of flour and force children at birthday parties to sift for it with their faces.

Time is the invisible thread that weaves our stories together. And sixty seconds can change everything.

How many people have I repelled with the wrong word in the wrong tone at the wrong time, with a hostile or blank facial expression, an inability to make eye contact? How many people were supposed to be in my life before I accidentally sent them spiraling away?

I don’t think we talk enough, as a species, about how ridiculously difficult it is to make basic conversation. People act like it should be fun, but it isn’t.

Except on some level I’m watching for them, waiting for them, and it suddenly hits me that I’m allowing my life to fall back into exactly the same shape it was the first time round: gravitating toward familiarity and repetition, the way I always do. Encouraging the sameness, because even when it’s awful, I still like it more than change. Slipping back into time as if it’s an old pair of comfy slippers I refuse to throw away, even though they’re not even that comfortable anymore and my toes are sticking out and getting cold. And this wasn’t the point of what it is I’m trying to do. I’m supposed to be taking risks, making changes, and if I don’t—if I simply wrap myself in the comfort of a timeline I already know—I’ll just end up where I was at the beginning, and I’ll have wasted my time.

It doesn’t seem very logical, but people aren’t very logical, so how the hell am I supposed to know?

Not everyone is like me: that much is painfully clear.

The full truth is not easy or comfortable; it is often far safer to construct an alternative that keeps everyone happy instead. Especially when it’s the story we’re weaving for ourselves.

Maybe I’m not overthinking it. Maybe I’ve been told I’m overthinking it so often, by so many people, I’ve convinced myself it’s all I’m capable of. But what if they’re wrong? What if I’m thinking it exactly the right amount? What if everyone else is simply underthinking it, continuously, and the deficit is actually theirs? Because something tells me I’m not in the wrong here: my instincts are spot-on.

That’s the thing I’ve never really understood about emotions. We’re given unhelpful words for them—sad, happy, angry, scared, disgusted—but they’re not accurate and there never seems to be anywhere near enough of them. How could there be? Emotions aren’t binary or finite: they change, shift, run into each other like colored water. They are layered, three-dimensional and twisted; they don’t arrive in order, one by one, labeled neatly. They lie on top of each other, twisting like kaleidoscopes, like prisms, like spinning bird feathers lit with their own iridescence.

I fold up the color card and put it back on my bedside table: all the colors are contained and organized so neatly in straight lines. I wish my colors were too. I try so hard to make them.

“I didn’t quite...get you.” He gazes around my room again. “I think I was measuring you by me. I was assuming we’re the same, because that’s what humans do, isn’t it? Automatically. Without thinking. We see everyone through our own lens and assume it’s the only possible way of being.”

But I find being around people so hard. Any people. There’s all this noise and light and color and sensation, all the time, and I don’t know how to read tone or emotions or jokes or sarcasm or flirting. It’s like all the things that everyone else can do automatically, I have to do manually. And I get overwhelmed. Constantly. That’s the face you’re seeing, Will. It’s me, trying to process everything at once.” It’s true that I hate dirt and dog hair and lateness and mess and loud noises and crowds and being wet or muddy—and, truthfully, a lot of those things seem to come with Will—but it’s not a judgment. If I could choose, I’d roll around in mud and laugh easily and be covered in puppies and take the world in my stride, but I can’t—I have never been able to—and the judgment I feel about that has always been for me.

“But thank you for asking if everything is okay, because people say how are you and the scripted reply is I’m fine, thank you, and how are you, and they say I’m fine, thank you or not bad, what about this weather we’re having and you’re not allowed to be honest because it’s this weird social interaction that’s a token question, not a real one, but now you’ve asked, Barry, I am not sure I’m okay at all.”

Maybe that’s all Barry needed too: the whole truth, instead of tiny dribbles of it.

Time is strange: it moves so quickly and so quietly that sometimes it feels like it hasn’t moved at all.

There are infinite things you can do with time. You can save it, spend it, stitch it, kill it. You can beat it, steal it and watch it fly. You can do time and set it; you can waste it and keep it; it can be good or bad, on your side or against you. You can have a whale of it; be in the nick of it or behind it; you can have it on your hands. Memories are time travel, and so are regrets, hopes and daydreams. When we die, the people we love carry us forward into it.

Ideally, I’d be paid money to sit in a dimly lit room, reading and talking to nobody.

I feel it when I’m with people, and I feel it when I’m not. I feel loneliness inside me, all of the time, but I also like to be alone and I don’t really like other humans much either, so where the hell does that leave me?

And I suddenly realize that my life no longer feels paper-plate disposable; I can’t just throw it away or undo it. I don’t want to discard it because it’s not perfect, or because there are flaws in my tapestry. It’s not quite there yet—there’s still a long way to go—but I want my life to eventually become ceramic: one I can wash and keep, even when it chips.

I’m still trying to work out what changed between us. What exactly shifted the narrative? Was it the dress I gave her? Was it the chili Sal brought me? Was it a finger on her shoulder when she was crying, or the offered raw croissant I never ate? Was it sharing the truth with each other? Or did every tiny connection—every word, every gesture, every kindness—simply nudge us in a brand-new direction?

As if I have to hide who I am, all of the time. As if I have to pretend to be like everyone else, just so people will love me. As if I’m constantly being asked to share, to reveal myself, to open up, and when I do—when I finally show people who I truly am—it’s not what anyone wanted and they explode right in front of me. I am so fucking done with making myself smaller.

But isn’t this exactly how I’ve always felt? That I’m not quite made the same? That I’m some kind of alien, trying to learn how to be a human from scratch every day?

Where does a story end? It’s a lie, the last page of a book, because it masquerades as a conclusion. A real conclusion—the culmination of something—when what you’re being offered is an arbitrary line in the sand. This story ends here. Pick a random event. Ignore whatever comes after it, or write a sequel. Pretend the world stops when the book closes, or that a final chapter isn’t simply another random moment on a curated timeline. But life isn’t like that, so books are dishonest. Maybe that’s why humans like them.