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@jargonbyjulia
What I’d do for another you that wasn’t you.
“Mummy, what does it feel like when you die?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“Where do you go?”
“You go back to the clouds you came from.”
“Do you get to touch the clouds?”
“Yes.”
“And are you dead forever?”
“Yes, but maybe you come back as something else, like an animal.”
“Like a dinosaur?”
“No, darling, dinosaurs are extinct.”
“What about a butterfly?”
“Yes, you could come back as a butterfly.”
“Would I remember being me?”
“I don’t think so, sweetheart.”
“Then how would I know it was me?”
“That’s a very good question. Maybe you wouldn’t know, but you’d still be something beautiful in the world.“
“You look like a zebra.”
That’s what he said when he walked in this evening. I was wearing a top with stripes.
“Mum said I looked glamorous,” I replied.
Her words felt like sunlight.
I’ve been living in this house for a long time now. Long enough that I’ve started to forget what it feels like to walk into a room without bracing myself. Long enough that compliments sound foreign, like a language I used to speak but can no longer quite remember.
The hardest part isn’t even about me anymore. It’s watching my daughters’ faces when words land wrong. Seeing them hurt by someone who should be their safe place.
They deserve to grow up knowing that love is gentle. Just like I did. I deserve to remember what that feels like too.
Mum was right, though. I did look glamorous.
I didn’t know I had cut my finger tonight. I didn’t know because the Christmas carols were loud, and the joy was louder. We blasted carols while hanging the washing, dancing and singing, and then I started to make dinner. I thought he’d come home warm and fuzzy walking in to the sound of Christmas and happiness in the air. It didn’t go like that, like often things don’t in life.
He walked in and went straight to the bedroom to change, barely registering the music or me swaying with the girls. When he came back out, his face had that particular flatness that comes from being peopled-out.
“I’ve been in a loud restaurant all day,” he said, opening the fridge and staring into it like it might contain answers.
I nodded, my whole body wilting. Later, in the one-second toilet break I allowed myself between stirring and serving, I saw it - my thumb, a clean line of red across the pad. I wrapped toilet paper around it and went back out.
He would never notice.
He did ask some questions about the day after that, strained, distracted. How was your afternoon? How was your mum? The words were there but he wasn’t, not really. His eyes drifted to his phone between my answers. Irritated, distant.
I kept the cut to myself, like the cut on my heart.
Both would heal, probably. Both would leave the faintest mark that only I would know to look for. And tomorrow I’d put the carols back on, because what else do you do? You keep hanging the washing. You keep making dinner. You keep swaying with your girls. You keep the magic alive. You keep building the warm and fuzzy for everyone else, and hope that one day, someone remembers to build it for you too.
Always was, always is, always will be, you. Just so you know.
It might just be my most favourite memory; watching you in the dark, while you watched me.
What I am aches in me.