The Places I've Cried in Public

by Holly Bourne

  What am I grieving for? you ask. For the break-up? No, Reese, breaking up with you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Although that’s somewhat counterbalanced by the fact meeting you was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. So, am I grieving for you? No. Not really. Maybe, for a while, I had to grieve for the idea of you. I had to accept that the good bits in you weren’t real, not really. They were only ever a trap. A spider’s web, to lure me in and get me entangled, so you could bind me and then suck me dry, before you moved on to your next fly. So, you ask again: Who are you grieving for, Amelie?

  And, I’ll tell you, Reese.

  I’m grieving for me.

  I’m grieving for the me I was before I met you. The me who trusted people. The me who trusted that love was a good thing. The me who had friends and a life, and was respected for being true to herself. That girl is gone. You killed her. I’m starting to grow her back, of course, but she will never be the same.

  “That’s one of the things that’s going to be the hardest to accept,” Joan said. “That you can’t turn back the clock. What happened with this boy happened. It’s part of who you are now. I know it’s unfair and I know it’s hard, but what’s important now is you know what to look out for, so that it never happens again.”

  I’m grieving for the girl I was before you mesmerized me and idolized me and made us both feel like our love would move mountains. I’m mourning the girl I was before you started grinding me down and making me believe everything I was was wrong. I’m mourning the girl who had friends that you gradually, carefully – ever so subtly, so I can never really prove you did it at all – forced me to get rid of. I’m grieving the girl you manipulated into sex and then brutally raped while she was crying. The girl who still has nightmares, and got referred to specialist trauma recovery therapy to try and help come to terms with what you did to my body. I’m grieving for my parents, who still can’t believe such a thing could happen to their own girl, not when they’d tried so very hard to protect me from boys like you. I’m grieving the loss of all of our innocence. None of us will be the same again after you. Not me, or Mum, or Dad, or Alfie.

  Let’s finish this story then, shall we?

  I wasn’t allowed to come to the gig but, like the maniac Reese had made me, I decided to follow him. I knew, if he or his friends caught me, I’d never be able to deny I wasn’t crazy. Not when I was full-on stalking my own boyfriend, who’d promised me he could be trusted. I dressed all in black because, if you’re going to be a loon who actually starts stalking people, you may as well go the whole hog. I tied my hair back. I looked up what time his gig was and calculated what time they’d be getting there to set up, to ensure we didn’t accidentally end up on the same train.

  “Off out somewhere?” Mum asked, hope in her voice when she saw me tie the belt on my coat.

  “Yes, just going to a gig.” I tucked my ponytail into my scarf.

  She sagged in relief. “That’s great! You’ve not played in a while. Your dad’s delighted you’re not keeping us up all night, but it’s good you’ve got a gig tonight.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not my gig, it’s Reese’s. In London.”

  I tried to ignore how her face changed when I brought up his name. “Oh. Reese’s. Well, have fun.”

  I shook uncontrollably on the train up. My hands could hardly hold my phone. I felt like everyone on the carriage could sense what I was doing and they were watching me suspiciously.

  You are crazy, I told myself. Look how totally crazy you are. Look at what the hell you are doing, Amelie. No wonder Reese is going off you. You are completely nuts.

  Yet my gut told me to stay on the train, and my gut told me to get off at Clapham Junction and navigate my way up St John’s Road, dodging all the clumps of smokers spilling out of pubs, onto the pavement. I arrived too early. Their set didn’t start for another forty minutes and I couldn’t risk anyone seeing me. So I found a little alleyway and just stood in it, taking out my phone every thirty seconds to see how much time had passed. Telling myself, you are crazy, you are so crazy, you are going to go in there and see it’s perfectly innocent and then you will probably kill yourself because you will have proven how totally insane you are.

  Eventually, by the time my lips were actually blue from the cold, it was almost time for their slot. He’d be backstage, getting ready with her, and it was safe to stake out my best crazy-stalker-psycho-girlfriend stalking spot at the back, in case his old band had come.

  I quietly pushed my way through the throngs of smokers outside, ordered a lime and soda water, just so I’d have something to do with my shaking hands, and then wedged myself near the back. The crowd around me were chatty and disinterested, hardly taking any notice of the stage. It was very different from how he’d described the venue when he’d been boasting about it and telling me I wasn’t welcome and that I wasn’t allowed to have an emotional response to that fact. “It’s such an incredible venue. The crowd is so focused, really into their music, you know?”

  But, from what I could tell, this wasn’t the case. The group of blokes next to me were egging each other on to down Jägerbombs and telling their mate Mikey to “stop being a pussy”. A group of girls to the other side of me appeared to be lost in a shouted discussion about the emotional availability of one of their boyfriends. “I just FEEL like he’s into it, even though, he, like, doesn’t ACT like he’s into it? Do you know what I mean?” one yelled, while the others all nodded and sipped through their straws and glanced over at Mikey the Pussy and then pretended they hadn’t. I started to feel worried for Reese. You can sense within the first ten seconds of a gig if the crowd is going to be on your side. From out here, things weren’t looking too great. And even though I was hurt and humiliated at the not being invited, I still loved Reese and wanted the best for him.

  It went dark. Nobody whooped or cheered as he and Eden walked onstage. In fact, one of the girls just grumbled about the lights going out. There was a smattering of minor applause as I watched the brim of his hat move across the stage to stand at the mike. I watched Eden in the darkness and a stab of wet, hot hatred bubbled up. The lights blasted on again. Reese took the mike in his hand. “Hey, everyone, thanks for having us. We’re Dimmer Switch.”

  They launched into their first song, both of them harmonizing perfectly. I could feel the sizzle of their chemistry from way back where I was standing. I felt like, if they were to reach out and touch one another, you’d see an actual electric spark flicker between their fingers. He stared at her during each song, exactly how he used to stare at me. I felt like I was watching a re-enactment of our night at the Cube. Eden stared right back. In fact, it was clear to all involved that the two of them were in their own little bubble – the audience needn’t even be there. Which was just as well, because they weren’t exactly riveted to the stage. Mikey was still being called a pussy, and one of Mikey’s friends approached one of the girls and asked their opinion on Mikey’s pussiness. No one seemed to give a flying damn about Reese and Eden, the little singing duo, and their songs, and the fact it was clear they’d fallen in love with one another.

  No one apart from me.

  Me, who, at this point, held on to the wall like it had handlebars. I tried to regulate my breathing and told myself I was just being crazy and paranoid, yet again, like he said. But song after song, their chemistry increased (though the quality of their set really did not). I wasn’t crying. Not yet. I was in too much shock. Too sick. Actually physically sick. The searing jealousy was like being injected with high-strength nausea directly into my heart. “GET AWAY FROM HIM!” I wanted to scream at Eden. “GET AWAY GET AWAY GET AWAY!” But instead I just stood and watched, and felt my insides collapse into insecurity and terribleness and grief.

  You’re just imagining it, you’re just imagining it, you’re just imagining it, I muttered to myself, begging it to be true, so keen to believe him. I wanted his lies about me to be true. It was less painful to accept I was a nutj
ob than that Reese loved someone else.

  The set was drawing to a close, and I knew I should leave. I was risking my last scrap of dignity by staying and maybe being spotted, but my feet felt superglued to the floor. I couldn’t not stay and see this played out in its entirety. Reese strummed the last chord and the crowd clapped politely. He nodded and said, “Thank you, thank you. You’ve been amazing – thank you,” like he was at Wembley or something…

  Then it happened.

  Time slowed, as it tends to do in the precise moment that hearts are broken. He looked at Eden and smiled, and Eden looked back and smiled, and then…then, they both leaned forward on stage, and they…they…

  They…

  …

  …

  …

  kissed each other.

  I can’t remember much else, to be honest. If you ask me what happened between that kiss – the sort of kiss where it’s obvious they’ve kissed many times before – and getting to this platform at Clapham Junction, I can’t tell you. There’s a blank. At least half an hour is missing from my life. I don’t remember leaving, or walking back, or even getting through the station turnstiles. I just remember coming around here, on platform thirteen, just as the next train was cancelled.

  “Southern Rail are sorry for the delay this will cause to your journey.”

  There was a forty-minute wait till the next train, and nothing else for me to do but huddle into a ball on an uncomfortable chair in the shitty waiting room and fall apart completely. I’ve never cried harder – I shook the chair from my sobbing. It was like I’d fallen into a vortex of grief. Every part of my body hurt, like each of my muscles had been twisted into a ball and then punched multiple times. I could hardly breathe. I was hiccupping and making strange gasps and, of course, nobody came over to ask if I was okay. Why would they, when it was so much more convenient to ignore the hysterical girl sobbing in the corner?

  I close my eyes here, on the same platform, and feel the sun on my eyelids. When I was last here, I was a mess. I thought I was broken beyond repair. I thought my world had collapsed. When the train eventually did pull in, I could hardly walk as I staggered onto it. I, of course, messaged you, dignity full-blown out the window, and told you I knew. That I’d seen you. I called you names. I called Eden worse names. Because we always make the girls the villains rather than the victims. You told me I was crazy. You told me you’d never loved me, not really.

  You told everyone at college what a stalking psycho I was. I mean, I did go a bit crazy after that. I turned up outside your house, screaming and crying and wailing and asking what I’d done, and why you’d done this to me, and please please please take me back, and apologizing for all the things I’d done wrong just by being myself and trying to love you enough. You’d stared at me in cold disgust and told me I was pathetic, and no wonder you had fallen for Eden.

  That isn’t love.

  What we had wasn’t love, Reese.

  That’s what I’ve learned. By retracing these steps, by listening to my gut again, by following the trail of my tears, by admitting I needed help.

  It wasn’t love in the slightest.

  It was abuse.

  Abuse.

  “But he never hit me,” I said to Joan, when she got that big word out of its box and made it into a necklace for me to wear. “He never once hit me, or strangled me, or threatened me in any way.”

  For so long I felt I couldn’t put that necklace on, I couldn’t own that word. Abuse is when they kick you and hold you against the wall by your throat. Abuse is when you cower in the corner, waiting for them to strike you. Abuse is broken ribs and black eyes and pretending to your friends that you’ve fallen down the stairs. Abuse isn’t what you did to me, Reese, surely?

  And Joan smiled warmly and pulled out her trusty box of tissues and said a few things that took a while to dissolve in.

  Abuse is also when your personality is attacked, not just your body. Abuse is feeling like you constantly have to walk on eggshells around the person you’re supposed to love. Abuse is being cut off from your friends, even if you could never prove it was their idea you did it. Abuse is being made to feel you’re going crazy. Abuse is being lured in with grand promises and wild declarations of love that can never be sustained. Abuse is being pushed into doing sexual things you’re not comfortable with. That is also called rape, another word that has taken me some time to feel belongs to me. Abuse is intentionally humiliating you. Abuse is constantly blaming you for everything, and never them.

  “The trauma it causes is just the same as if he had hit you,” Joan told me, pulling out another tissue. “Trauma is trauma. Your brain and body don’t differentiate between physical and emotional abuse. They only respond to attack. Attack that you didn’t deserve, Amelie. Nobody deserves to be treated the way this boy treated you.”

  It’s taken me months of counselling to accept that you abused me and I am traumatized because of it. It’s taken hours upon hours of specialist therapy, hundreds of miles, and bucketloads upon bucketloads of tears.

  You abused me and it left me traumatized.

  There is something wrong with you, not me.

  I was just unlucky. As is every girl who stumbles into your net.

  But I’ve managed to break away and break free, and grow myself back.

  It really is a hot day. The pavement almost crackles, ice melts into my syrupy coffee within moments, everyone’s fanning their faces with whatever makeshift equipment they can. Nobody’s sitting on my sunny bench on this platform. I can feel my nose prickle with the itch of sunburn. I should get into the shade, but not yet. There are still two things I need to do.

  The specialist trauma lady I was referred to, Sandy, taught me a technique. One to distance my feelings towards you and towards it and the whole mess that was meeting you. We did it in her office. She’d put me into a deep relaxation and repeat the same technique over and over until I didn’t shake and clam up and start sobbing uncontrollably whenever I thought of what you’ve done to me.

  “Imagine you’re in a cinema,” Sandy said. “You’ve got the whole cinema to yourself. It’s dark and warm and safe.”

  I close my eyes, here, on the bench, on the platform where I cried. The stifling heat fades away, the sun dims. I see myself sat in an empty cinema, the screen blank. I’m in the dark, waiting for the film to start. I’m a million miles away from London.

  “Now, think of a time, before the trauma started, where you felt safe. Truly safe,” Sandy would say next. “That is where the film will start.”

  Reese, I’m sitting here with my eyes closed, and I’m thinking I felt a whole lot safer before I met you. So this film is going to start with Sheffield. With my arms around Alfie, and with friends who love me, on the north side of the chimneys that bellow smoke out into the sky. I let the feeling of safety engulf me before I move on to the next step.

  “Now, a black-and-white film is about to start of your traumatic experience. But, before we press play, I want you to float out of your body and up into the tiny projectionist’s room, right at the back and at the top of the cinema,” Sandy prompted.

  Reese, I’m floating up. I can see two versions of myself now. In my head, I can see Amelie on the screen, safe and smiling in Sheffield. And I can see Amelie sat in the cinema, waiting for the film about to start.

  “Now, this is the hard bit. The film starts to play. Watch you watching yourself…”

  And the film starts. I watch me watch the film of you and me.

  It’s still hard, Reese. Not as hard as it was, but it’s still very damn difficult. I still want to reach inside the screen and yank myself out and drag myself away from it, but I can’t. I watch my first day of college and I watch myself crying on the bench because I miss Alfie. I watch myself cry onstage in the college refectory, and meet you, and be so, so dazzled by the charming boy in the hat. I watch you walk me home and take me on incredible dates, where life felt like I was living a fairy tale. I watch myself cry at
the bus stop, when I realize my love for you means I’ll break Alfie’s heart. I watch us through all the good places and the dazzlement of being under your spell, and how I fell so, so hard – despite all the warnings and red flags. I watch you hijack my first massive gig and make it all about you and I watch myself think it was the most romantic thing ever. I watch you start to strain away when I couldn’t live up to the huge hype you put on me and watch the poison creep in. I watch myself be humiliated and ignored at your house. I watch myself sob on your street. I watch myself lose my friends and lose myself and make my entire life about trying to make you happy, at the expense of my everything. I watch us walk around London and how I’m nervous and stressed and constantly trying to make you okay, us okay, it okay because where did it go? I watch you make me feel bad about being myself on the bridge, and I watch myself cry tears that melt off my face and drop down into the polluted water of the Thames. I watch myself get the train to Sheffield…and here…here is where I still struggle.

  I gulp and lose where I am for a moment. Wanting so much to pull myself back into this hot sunny day where I am safe… But I dig my fingernails into the palm of my hands and I watch you turn up at the gig, and I watch Alfie’s heart disintegrate, and I watch myself chasing you to the station and begging for forgiveness. Then I watch what happened in the hotel room. The thing that can never be undone. The thing I can never forgive you for. I watch the me who tried to blank that out, who was addicted to checking her phone, addicted to trying to be who you wanted me to be, but always getting it wrong. I watch you introduce me to Eden and use her to further make me feel wrong about myself, and I watch myself weep in the music room. And then I come here in the film. I come up to Clapham and see something I’d been told I was mental for even imagining, and I watch myself cry in the waiting room of the station, with nothing left but apparently more tears. I’ve always been able to find tears when it comes to you.