by Emma Browne
Present
Miranda
A couple weeks later, our fling was a thing of the past and we had established a new routine. Jack would come over most nights after work to hang out as friends would, whilst Julia and I sewed little bags for the period cups (as we didn’t have money to pay for packaging).
Julia had moved in after her breakup with Nick. She kept apologising and told me she was looking for somewhere else to live, but I was happy she was there. It made it easier not to have any conversations with Jack about the past. Instead, we could focus on talking about Project Cup, and on helping Julia keep her mind off Nick.
One Friday night in late November, Julia and I were sewing the last bags, and Sophia sat with her laptop updating the Project Cup website and social media.
The following week, we would be selling period cups at the Edinburgh Christmas Market, where we would time-share a market stall with another company as an experiment. Our period cups didn’t exactly scream Christmas, but we wanted to see what the market was like, and we would try to sell as many cups as we could. We hoped they would fund a Kenyan high school’s project to give period cups to all the girls at the school after Christmas.
Jack sat at the piano, fiddling with the keys and pulling silly tunes out of it. It reminded me of how Dad would play jazz or Beatles songs on the piano when he used to live with us. Neither of them had taken lessons, but they both had an ear for it, and though I couldn’t play – or sing for that matter – listening to Jack play piano made sewing bags for the period cups a little less tedious.
I finished pulling a drawstring through the top of a bag and stood up to stretch. Hunching over like this for hours made me thankful I had a yoga class I could go to tomorrow. ‘Does anyone want a cup of tea?’ I asked.
‘I’ll make them.’ Jack stood up and took orders.
When he came back, I was working on another bag, so he set the tea down on the table next to me. ‘I meant to ask: your dad was over when I came home from work today. How’s he doing?’ he asked.
I hadn’t seen Dad since the morning of the family dinner at the Reids’, which wasn’t a good sign. When he was sober, I saw him often, but when he was drinking, I could go months without seeing him. And as he didn’t have a phone, it was hard to get in touch with him. I worried about him, but there was nothing I could do to make him stop drinking.
I frowned. ‘Was he drunk?’
Jack hesitated, clearing his throat before he answered. ‘I wouldn’t say he was drunk drunk.’
Julia looked up. ‘When did he start drinking again?’
‘Oh, he’s been at it for a few months now.’
‘I’m sorry Mir. That sucks.’ Julia reached out to stroke my arm.
I shrugged. ‘It’s good he went to see John. I should talk to him about seeing if we can get Dad some help again.’
As much as I appreciated her caring about me, I never knew how to respond to people’s caring. Dad had been this way for as long as I could remember, and whilst I found his alcoholism difficult to deal with, sometimes it felt as though all other people saw in Dad was his alcoholism. And, largely, they tended to think he was an alcoholic because he chose to be one.
I didn’t think so. Not anymore. For me, the alcoholism didn’t seem to have much to do with choice. Instead, I saw it as an illness. Did Dad have free will, and could he stop drinking?
Yes.
For months at a time, he was able to stay away from the bottle, and during those times he was an incredible person. He was kind and had a way of bringing peace to all kinds of situations.
But then something would happen, and he would have a drink. And when other people would stop drinking, he couldn’t. Instead of stopping, he kept drinking for months, unable to get away from the clutches of the alcohol. There was no reasoning with him to get him to stop. And instead of coming round to play the piano and talk about War and Peace or whatever other literature he was reading, shame would keep him away. For months.
To me, my dad’s alcoholism meant he was unreliable. And whilst I would always love him, I knew I couldn’t trust him. Not because he didn’t want to be trustworthy, but because he was ill.
The conversation around me turned to something different, and I nodded along though I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what we talked about. Instead, I thought about Dad. I wondered how he was doing and what it would take to get him help this time. Tiredness seeped into my bones and I yawned.
Julia must have seen me, or maybe she was tired, too, because it wasn’t long before she started putting things away and told Jack and Sophia it was time to call it a night.
Thankful not to have to kick people out, I sent her a tired smile as Sophia packed up her laptop and she and Jack left.
Exhausted, I went to bed, hoping I would feel better in the morning.
I woke up when I heard the front door close, and realised Julia had left. I turned over onto my other side and tried to go back to sleep, but, though I was tired enough, sleep wouldn’t come. Instead I just lay there feeling all the feelings.
All the miserable feelings.
Triggered by the thoughts of my Dad the previous evening, deep sadness had wrapped itself around me like a cloud, and I was thankful it was a Saturday and I had nothing pressing on my schedule that day.
During the year when Jack broke up with me, I had the miscarriage, and then my Mum died from cancer, I spent a good few months in a fog of grief. As time passed and life went on, the fog had slowly lifted, and now it had been a while since it had last descended over me. But today, there was no escaping its clutches.
Jack breaking off our engagement had broken my heart. He was it for me, and the prospect of facing life without him was… hard. Still, I put on a good face to his family, and only cried in the shower or when I went for runs in the rain on the beach.
Then, when I miscarried, nobody apart from Mum knew about the pregnancy. Telling Julia or John and Karen then would have only made them tell Jack, and I saw no point in him knowing at that stage. There was nothing he could do about it and telling him would just cause him grief. Instead, I pushed my grief to the side and did my best to distract myself with caring for Mum. Still, once in a while, I would have one of those black dog days – days where nothing felt right, and all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep my feelings away.
And this day was one of those days. This day, there was nothing I would rather do than hide from the world. I didn’t want to see anyone or do anything. I didn’t want to have to stand up. Wrapped up in the fog of sadness, all I could cope with was the idea of lying underneath my duvet.
So, when Jack opened my front door and called out for me, I stayed where I was.
Undeterred by the lack of reply, he came in the house. ‘Miranda? You here?’ When he came to my bedroom door, he knocked. ‘Are you decent?’
I sighed. ‘Uh-huh.’
He pushed the door open, gave me a once-over, and came in. ‘Oh, Mir…’ He sat down at the foot of my bed.
Unsure of what he was doing, I looked at him. If I had ever shown him any signs of not being happy back in the days when we were dating, he had tended to respond by ignoring the feelings or just disappearing for a few hours, until I was back to being my usual self again. Expecting him to do the same now, I was surprised when he instead reached out to stroke my feet over the duvet.
He sat there, just stroking my feet for twenty minutes before lying down on top of the blankets next to me. Making a space for me to lie on his arm, he motioned for me to snuggle in, and though our level of relationship no longer technically allowed for physical contact like that, I couldn’t help myself. Still under the duvet, I snuggled up to him and he wrapped his arm around me. I breathed in his familiar scent, and felt his heart beat steadily as I lay there quietly with my head on his chest.
Thinking of my dad the previous evening had brought back all the reasons for why I never wanted to be married to Jack. When he broke off our engagement all those years ago, h
e told me he couldn’t cope with being in a relationship right then, and that we both needed time to grow up before either of us was ready for marriage. He had been right: we were young, and life was crazy. But I had been ready to get married. All I wanted was to be Jack’s wife, because I knew he would never leave me like Dad had.
Only, I had been wrong.
Jack had left me at the point where things in my life were the hardest they had ever been, just like my dad had done over and over again. And when Jack left me, it wasn’t because he had an illness like alcoholism. No, Jack left me because he chose to. And, though I knew Jack loved me, I would never again be able to trust that he wouldn’t turn around one day and leave me.
If there was one thing Dad had taught me, it was that love isn’t enough to keep a relationship going. There also needs to be consistency and trust. And when you love somebody but can’t trust them, the hurt you experience over and over again when they are unable to live up to what they have promised soon becomes too much.
It was one thing to have a dad like that – I had no choice or power there. But I wasn’t going to have the same kind of relationship with a husband. And, though I had known that in my head for many years, it was only now, lying as I was on his arm, that I finally let myself feel the pain of it. Overwhelmed with grief, I couldn’t keep my tears in, and though I tried to do the silent cry, it wasn’t long before I was sobbing.
He hugged me closer and let me cry.
When I was finally out of tears, he said, ‘Do you want to tell me what’s going on?’
How could I tell him I was grieving the end of our relationship?
I couldn’t.
I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry.’ Wiping my face on my sleeves, I sat up and saw the wet stain on his shirt. ‘I’m sorry about your shirt.’
His eyes were steady as he lifted his head and met mine. ‘Don’t be sorry about your feelings around me ever again.’ Laying his head back on the pillow, he sighed. ‘Do you know why I broke up with you back then?’
Startled, I froze. How did he know I had been thinking about our breakup?
‘No?’ I hesitated. ‘I think your email said something about not being ready to get married?’
He rubbed his face and sat up, leaning against the headboard. ‘Yeah, I wasn’t ready. But do you know how I knew I wasn’t ready?’
I shook my head.
‘I knew because if I’d been ready, I wouldn’t have gone to the other side of the world just so I wouldn’t have to watch you face the pain of your mum dying.’
Chapter 21
Jack
When I was eleven, my sister Josie died in a traffic accident during a family holiday in the Trossachs, on the West Coast of Scotland.
Josie was four, and though she was much younger than me, she was my little Josie Posie. She lit up the room and seemed to have an endless supply of energy – until it was suddenly gone, and she would curl up wherever she was and have a nap. She could fall asleep anywhere, and despite her short life, we had lots of pictures of her asleep over her dinner, or on the floor, or in someone’s arms.
When awake, she would follow Julia and me around, and we often got her to do things like steal food from the kitchen cupboards for us. Mum knew what was happening, but she hardly ever got us into trouble for it.
Then Josie died, and the grief was all-consuming. For a long time, her absence was felt as strongly as her presence used to be. And, as time went on, her absence changed us all.
Julia went from being full of life to pretending to be full of life. It was as though she thought she somehow had to make up for Josie being dead.
Mum fell apart for a few months, and then she found Jesus. She had always been a Christian, but now things went to another level, and she got involved with everything at church.
Dad withdrew inside himself for a long time, and he too threw himself on God, although his style was less evangelical and more contemplative.
Mum took comfort in how Josie’s death, whilst shocking to us, wasn’t a surprise to God. But for me, knowing God had known Josie would die – possibly even orchestrating her death – was no comfort.
As I grew older, this concept bothered me more and more, and I spent many hours talking to Miranda about it. She too had found it increasingly difficult to deal with the thought that God predestined people to go through awful experiences.
If God was so loving and he had the power to stop the suffering in the world, why wouldn’t he? Why would he instead predestine people to go through pain and hardships?
The more we thought about it, the clearer our conclusion became: God was not loving at all. And neither of us wanted anything to do with him or his kind of love.
Losing Josie was the worst thing I had ever experienced, and just as bad was seeing how we as a family coped with the pain. As I watched Mum and Dad and Julia go through their grief, I saw how it changed them, and I would have given anything to be able to take away their pain.
Their despair emphasised how helpless I was and, in order to cope with feeling so utterly powerless, I started resenting their pain. The more they hurt, the more frustrated and powerless I would feel, and as a result I became less and less able to handle other people’s pain.
Even other people’s physical pain became too much for me. I found it so hard to deal with other people’s suffering that I would start an argument or make insensitive comments instead of showing compassion. I might tell someone they needed to toughen up or ask why they didn’t fix their problems instead of crying about them. And I would mock people that were struggling, calling them weak for letting things get to them.
So, when Miranda’s mum, Lisa, was diagnosed with cancer again, I didn’t handle it well. I realised Miranda needed somebody to lean on, but it couldn’t be me. I tried to help her with practical things, and I would remind her to keep positive, but I knew that wasn’t what she really needed.
I just couldn’t give her more.
Knowing I couldn’t take Lisa’s illness away was physically painful to me, and I chose to focus on anything other than that.
I threw myself into uni – getting the best grades I ever had – and got a part time job in order that I would have less time to spend with Miranda. I told her I got the job so we could pay for our wedding, but I already knew the wedding wasn’t going to happen. And when we decided to postpone the wedding, I told her we would put the money toward our Hong Kong adventure, even as I knew she wouldn’t be coming to Hong Kong with me – though she didn’t know that yet.
When she, understandably, decided to stay home and care for Lisa, my choice was to either stay in Edinburgh with Miranda or go to Hong Kong and be free.
I picked Hong Kong.
Not because I didn’t want to be with Miranda, but because I couldn’t. The pain of not being able to take her pain away was killing me. Every time I saw her, I spent the time trying to make sure she had a good time, but I knew it was like trying to repair a torn-off limb with a band-aid.
‘And that’s why I broke up with you.’
‘Oh, Jacky…’ The tears were back in her eyes, and I mentally kicked myself for putting them back there when she had just finished crying.
‘When I was in Hong Kong though, I decided it was time I sorted myself out. I couldn’t keep running from pain like that, you know?’
She nodded, wiping at her cheeks with her sleeves.
‘I started seeing a psychologist out there. And, though it was a long process, I started making some progress.’
‘How long were you in therapy?’
I took a deep breath. ‘A long time.’ I shrugged. ‘That’s why I stayed out there so long. I didn’t want to come back until I knew I’d be able to handle my emotions.’
She sighed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘What would I have said? I didn’t even know what my problem was until I started counselling.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yeah.’ I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry I was a jerk. I r
ealise I broke up with you when you probably most needed somebody to lean on.’
The tears kept filling her eyes, and they were in mine, too, now. She leaned forward and reached for my face, where she wiped at my tears.
‘It’s ok, Jack.’ She nodded. ‘It’s ok.’
Chapter 22
Past
Miranda
Despite the awkwardness of Jack breaking up with me, I still hung out with Julia. She and Sophia were sharing Jack’s former flat in town. They were both busy with university, so we didn’t hang out as much as we used to, but we still had Sunday lunch at the Reids’ and an active thread on Messenger. With Julia being Jack’s sister, I couldn’t tell her about the miscarriage. Instead, everyone thought I was sad because of the breakup and Mum’s illness.
Both Julia and Sophia tried to get me to come out with them on weekends, but mostly I didn’t feel up to it. Besides, I wanted to spend most of my free time with Mum, taking advantage of the time I still had with her. Julia, Sophia and I went up Arthur’s Seat at the end of September, though.
When we got to the top, I found myself overwhelmed by how beautiful the sun rising over the sea was. How could there be such beauty in the world when I had just lost my baby, been broken up with, Mum was dying, and Dad was wasted somewhere?
It didn’t seem right or fair.
‘Men, eh.’ Sophia looked out toward the sea with a sigh.
I smiled through the tears. ‘Ugh.’
‘No kidding.’ Julia slumped against the ground. She glanced at me. ‘I’m still stunned you and Jack broke up.’
I gave a dry laugh. ‘As am I.’
‘So, it came entirely out of the blue? No warning at all?’
I shook my head. ‘Well, I didn’t see any signs of it coming. And honestly, after seven years of dating, and almost marrying the guy, I didn’t expect him to break up with me via email.’
‘What?!’ Julia’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of her head. ‘He broke up with you via email?’
I nodded. ‘Uh-huh.’
Julia lay back down on the ground. ‘He’s such an absolute pillock.’