At first I cannot run far so I stop every few hundred yards, bent forwards and gasping for breath. Maude waits patiently, her amber eyes watching, willing me on. I have never liked running, but running with a collie is different. We move together, to our own rhythm. Every day I stretch myself a few breaths further, marking distance not by minutes, but by a target – the next bush or a far gate. Each breath hurts, but I am grateful for its sharpness. The pain in my heart eases as my limbs lighten.
One morning, I go out later than usual and pass a small group of women on the road. They are out on a walk together, sharp-eyed and gossiping. When they see me running towards them, they fall silent. Coolly, our eyes meet and then glance away. It is awkward but afterwards I am glad of this brief contact. It is one small step forwards. When I get home, I wonder if asking if I could join them on a walk might help to bridge the divide between us. The next day, I send one of them a message making this tentative suggestion. About a week later, the word comes through that I can. I am nervous but hopeful. It offers the chance of a fresh start and an end to a weary stalemate.
The first day we walk together, we are guarded. Smiles are worn like shields; eyes are hard and bright. Gradually, as I begin to walk with them regularly, our eyes start to meet each other more freely. One day a ripple of laughter falls like birdsong and at last I feel that we have turned a corner. I relax. I tell myself that friendship grows from small beginnings.
Then one of the women offers a kindness. ‘You’ve had it tough.’ She looks at me. ‘When your husband left, I felt sorry for you.’ I try to smile. I bite my lip as my mouth quivers and then I look away, mortified and embarrassed, as I feel myself start to cry. Sometimes there is nothing you can do to stop it. When you are trying to stay strong, it is often compassion, not hostility, that pierces your defences, especially when it is in short supply. Loneliness is dangerous: when you have been too long alone, any small intimacy can lure you into mistakenly feeling warm, safe and supported. ‘I am struggling,’ I whisper, fiercely rubbing my face. ‘It is hard trying to cope alone.’
I know I should not talk of missing Cristall, of graffiti on walls, of hard eyes and cold shoulders, but I cannot help it. I cannot stop those hot tears from falling or those words from sobbing out of my mouth. Sometimes things so long held in flow out of their accord. I did not want it to happen this way.
Mouths tighten. Jaws clench and shoulders stiffen. We are only a foot apart from one another, yet the distance feels as wide as a yawning canyon. ‘I am sorry,’ I stammer, turning away, ashamed.
‘You can’t say that,’ one of the women tells me. ‘You cannot accuse your neighbours.’
Other eyes skewer me silently.
I say nothing, because she is glaring at me with such anger it makes me feel like something you would scrape off your shoe. I have made myself weaker. I wish I had not spoken. By showing my vulnerability, I have implicitly insulted them. I have dared to criticise the island dream and I will be punished for this. And yet I feel a flicker of anger and injustice. I have lived my own truth for years, regardless of what others deny, or try to silence or shut down. I am sick of tribes and allegiances. I am staring into the softer, unknowing face of entrenched misogyny. I will never make this mistake again.
Afterwards, backs turn and I have no one to walk with. I go back to running alone. ‘I can cope,’ I tell myself as the weeks go by. ‘It will pass.’ Only it doesn’t. Ostracisation makes you doubt your very existence. It is a new level of silence, more difficult to cope with than the aggression of before. I have no armour to deal with this. Its wound is deeper, more subtle, inaccessible. At first I fight it. I write in a notebook lists of people I love. I make a friendship tree of their names.
At the ferry, I join a straggling line of passengers with familiar faces. I dread that sullen queue yet I am thankful for it, for the slim opportunity it provides to break the impasse. I try to remain hopeful that it will force an adult response from myself and others. An acknowledgement that we all breathe the same air and cohabit on this precipitous rock face. That, even if our views differ, or we do not choose each other’s company, a humanity binds us.
‘Hello,’ I say.
No one answers.
Even a rock face is worn down by a steady cold drip of water. Over time, I feel myself being eroded. You accept it. You get used to existing as if you don’t exist. You start believing that you are nothing. Sometimes I even wonder if I am imagining it. Yet every time I try harder, the harder I am knocked back. One day, as the skipper helps me lift a heavy bag, he says quietly, ‘It’s hellish, seeing this going on.’ And I am grateful for those few words.
Everyone has times when they have no one to talk to or people turn and look the other way. It is one of those cruelties that we inflict on each other, a playground game carried forward into adult life. All it takes is one or two dominant individuals in a group to lead the way and the rest follow blindly. Society builds and dismantles its own power structures using such tactics. It targets the lonely, the unwanted, the vulnerable or the marginalised. I have watched this happening to others from under-represented families or groups. But I am alone, which makes my isolation and vulnerability more acute.
I do not go up my track where I might encounter passers-by. I keep out of sight. I stay close to the hills. And I miss Cristall more than ever. I miss her smile, her laugh, her unwavering friendship, her kinship and trust. As I have no one to talk to, I stop talking. Then I stop coping. I make myself invisible. It is easier to do this alone.
I am losing touch with words. I go to the woods because they offer a quiet sentience that is softer, kinder than anything I know. I press my cheek against the cool bark, rest my head wearily against a solid trunk. I make a rough shelter and bring thick blankets. As darkness falls, I light a fire and stare into its flames. The damp wood hisses and spits, but it provides a warmth and comfort. Maude’s eyes are bright lit, glowing in the flames. I am safe amongst the trees. I can feel what is wild and broken inside breathing. I am ready to let go of the world I know, like a leaf curling up and fading before winter. When morning comes, I do not want to leave. And so I stay.
It is peaceful living in the woods with the birds. Some days run anxious and quicksilver fast, while others drag, heavy, sodden and weary.
I sit for hours observing and inviting a closeness with other wild lives around me. Hare shelter in the long grasses as dark wings of owl and falcon drift. In the early dawn and late gloaming, grazing deer flare their nostrils and peel back their lips, scenting the wind warily. The birch trees rattle their limbs, cold branches singing pale as winter bones. Crouched quiet, I sit with other taut hearts, sifting shadows, listening in the hushed undergrowth. Later, I harvest wood for kindling and fuel. I remember how, a few years ago, these woods kept me fed and nourished my spirit. With hindsight, those times of foraging for food now feel easy. Scavenging is different from foraging. It brings a sharper edge to daily life.
Cristall once told me I would recognise my own kindred spirits when they came. One day I notice a tiny, olive-coloured bird. Its fiery crest is golden with a dark-edged crown. It eyes me with a curiosity that is infectious. It opens its mouth to sing, a quick cadence of rising and falling notes that suddenly brings her to mind. In that birdsong and the whispering trees, she is breathtakingly close.
I think about how all organisms are influenced by the behaviour of their friends and neighbours. I recall how, in Cristall’s garden, a raw stump shorn back to its bare roots was encouraged to grow new shoots by the empathy of others in its immediate environs. She explained to me that trees either instinctively nourish and sustain others, or incline away from their need or suffering. It brings tears to my eyes, remembering her words. And I realise that true friendship is given freely. It does not have to be reached for, expected or sought.
When I think of the island women, I see how we have each played out the roles demanded by the political imperatives of these simple rules of dominance and submission. How th
e interest of any society or community in ensuring that it prospers is almost its sole purpose. The families bound together on this island are fundamentally no different from the trees: rooted in a tiny patch of soil attached to a small tidal rock.
I do not belong. And it is clear to me now that, in trying so hard to fit in, it is sometimes easy to lose sight of, or even disown, our own needs. It is time to forge my own kinships. Even on a tiny island, the sky is wide and the sea is deep.
Listening to the tiny goldcrest, I am in awe of its beauty and brave resilience. Barely the weight of a twenty-pence coin, it has flown alone across a wasteland, and an ocean, from the wilds of Russia and Scandinavia, relying on nothing but its own instinct. I know I must find a different compass. As darkness falls, sitting quietly by my fire and shelter, I wrap my arms about myself and whisper, ‘I am myself, just as I am.’
8
Raw Element
It is almost daylight. My feet stumble on to the ragged shoreline as a sullen glow rises in the east. I have pushed myself until I can go no further. The island is at my back; ahead of me is dark, shifting water. The waves are breaking hard on to the glistening shingle and the wind is whining through skeletal trees. I know this place, and it knows me. It draws me irresistibly to it, always when I feel most alone. I watch as the sea rushes in and sucks itself back, fiercely caressing the hissing, wet stones. It is a fleeting time of year when the sun and moon glow low in the sky together. It makes me wonder at the beauty and strangeness of life, and I almost falter as my heart whispers, if it doesn’t break you, it might heal you. But I cast off all distractions and force myself to strip.
Cold slows you down, but it makes numbing thoughts feel weightless inside. As stuttering fingers clumsily unpick buttons, I wonder if it will ever be possible to pinpoint all those moments that can shunt you to a crisis point of despair.
Alone in the early hours, my inner voice was raw and wretched, mired with questions, hopes and uncertainties that I dared not express to anyone, least of all myself. All the while, the voice inside was keening, ‘Will daylight never come?’ I call this time the dark watch. It knows my face intimately and all that lies inside a heart. I long to hear another voice say, ‘You are not alone. There is nothing to fear,’ and to gently touch my hand. I close my eyes then. Those days and Cristall are gone, and time runs ragged on, different from anything I have known before.
The temperature has dropped below freezing, and the wind chill is searing at a bitter minus eight degrees. Standing half dressed, lifting arms and bending knees, baring my skin leaves me exposed. Sometimes our physical situation can exactly mirror our deeper feelings and emotions. I welcome the cold’s sharp edges. I am tired of hiding from my own thoughts; wherever I turn, they come seeking me out. I used to hide, too, from a voice that whispered, ‘How dark would it be if a light were to burn itself out, or extinguish itself?’, tried to push that soft whispering away. But always, it is there in the shadows, at the jagged lines around my eyes.
I do not know how or when daylight becomes too bright, darkness too absolute and the things you see in silence too frightening to speak of. Loneliness can be hard to express or see. I feel it in my body, and lick my fingers along its points as close as I dare. Isolation is far worse. It is searing, blinding.
As I remove my clothes, I fold them and place them neatly into my torn rucksack. Carefully, I take off my wellington boots and tuck my socks into them. I am not usually so tidy, but today it feels important to do things right.
Routines crumble when you lose hope. The bedraggled framework that holds our daily existence in place loses its cleanliness, its order. Life’s small clutter matts together in a pile of unkempt tasks. Even small rituals – eating, washing dishes, brushing teeth or hair – can feel insurmountably difficult. Each day I make myself go through these motions. I wonder, what will happen if I stop? I stare at that thought in the mirror. It scares me to look at its face. Its dark eyes are wide and empty.
Naked now, I gaze at the sea and open my shivering arms to the wind. Inside, a voice whispers, ‘Turn back – it is dangerous. There is another way.’ But I do not turn back. My heart is frozen, numb, yet it needs to beat. I open my arms to the cold embrace of the wilds that heal the ache of this beautiful world. Only they offer the close kinship which for years I have been lacking.
In the end, it is simple. Everyone needs to be held and to hear their name whispered with love. I look out at the sea rising and falling. I think of how peaceful it will be to dive under those waves. I breathe fast as I walk towards the water. I try not to look at the sky. ‘There is no going back,’ I tell myself softly. I have not come here to go swimming. I have come to the sea to be held.
It is chilling to look at yourself, your frailties, in all your raw nakedness. To truly understand that life is only a single, fierce, trembling breath.
It frightens me that I have reached this point. I know my life is different from others. I have learned to live each day with less and less. Now I live with so little it is hard to know what is missing.
There comes a point when you know something is not working. That time has come and gone for me, only I have kept on, tiring but struggling. It is like treading water, with the current growing a little stronger every day and slowly, irresistibly, dragging me down. I have just been going through the motions, because we all adhere to one simple rule: you never stop trying. No one is allowed to give up. You can stop, but you can never pass your hand. Each day I have lowered my expectations. It is like a controlled hunger strike. When you starve yourself, you learn to detach from your hunger. Your own body helps you. It is a basic survival mechanism. But ultimately, a stomach is different from a heart. A heart needs the warmth of love and kinship to beat and thrive.
One day my legs started running. It was not like the running I used to know. I trusted a single glimmer of instinct to keep me safe. I opened the door and I let my legs take me wherever they needed to go. I was lucky. They didn’t stop running when I reached the water. I kept on, running off the rocks and into the waves, and afterwards, I felt stronger. If not for days, then at least for a few short hours. Once you have been in icy-cold water, anything and everything feels possible. It makes you laugh or cry, sometimes both at once. You feel like a child who is given a promise. The sea is true. It will never break, snap, shatter, die or end.
As soon as I am bare on the stones, I move instinctively, and with a grace that I struggle to find when landlocked. Water flows by the path of least resistance. In the water, I lose all my doubt. Doubt is dangerous. It makes you cautious, so you question. Questions give rise to uncertainty and fear. Fear makes you hesitate, or draw back from what is calling you to it. Sometimes it can stop you from doing the very things you need to. Drawing back from life keeps you trapped inside your own wave, forever pinned to its trajectory, over which you have little or no control. Having no control is the other side of fear: it silences your voice and keeps you a willing victim, locked inside your own restraints. The sea unpicks that lock. It releases everything that is held silent or bound inside. In the fast-running tides, you are free of it all. In the sea you are simply breath. In the sea, there is no place for fear.
We all have our moments of crisis. It is too easy to put on a brave face when really we are well beyond an acceptable level of coping, when the daily struggle goes on behind closed doors. Sometimes even the strongest of us can falter. Ultimately, giving up on life can feel like the only sensible resolution to a grind that has become untenable. I just never thought it would happen to me.
I have come here to take my own life. Today it feels like the only option I have left. As I lay awake in the early hours of the morning, stiff, cold and silent, I felt as if all the air had been crushed out of me, as if I were gagged and tightly bound inside a metal box. It was terrifying. I lay there for some time, unable to move, barely breathing. The bravest thing I ever did was to force myself to get up. There was no thought or reason. I just knew that whatever this was, it cou
ld not go on. It was not a decision. And yet I have been building up to it, planning for it. The shadow that has been rising behind me, following me everywhere, is now falling in slow motion over my head, engulfing me.
For all your planning, you cannot know how you will react when that shadow falls. I have thought often enough about pressing a sharp blade to my wrist, dreamed about it, played with it over all those hard years after Rab left. But in the final analysis, it was a step too far. You think of your loved ones first. I may not have children, but I have four-legged dependents. I felt guilty, not only for seriously contemplating finishing my life, but for leaving my dogs to find me.
You try to work it out as best you can. If it’s going to have to be like this, you think, it is kinder to be together. I hooked up the car exhaust to run through its interior and we sat in a row together, Maude and Isla and me, in the front seats, looking out through the glass, as if we were going for a drive. The only difference was that the windows were jammed shut, the handbrake on and the engine chugging through a hose. It took me only a few minutes to know it was a mistake. The sky becomes exquisitely blue when smoke clouds inside a windscreen. I switched off the ignition, pushed open the doors, threw the keys into the grass so I wouldn’t find them for a while and walked away, retching. And again, I felt anguish, and a terrible guilt. Not over my own life, but for presuming to take others with me without their consent.
I Am an Island Page 19