One, two, three… Breathe. Just breathe.
The pain in my ribs is unbearable yet I push on, force myself to move. Another sharp intake of breath and the pain intensifies. I stop, holding the air in my lungs.
The sound of distant laughter echoes in my ears as I collapse onto my chest. The cold, wet concrete seeps through my shirt and onto my skin as I try to open my eyes.
One, two, three. Breathe. Just breathe through it. It’ll be over soon.
Another pain.
Another blow.
I’ve always been scared of death, it was a real phobia. I’d looked it up on the internet. Thanataphobia. I don’t suffer from the phobia, it doesn’t affect my daily life. But I do think about it daily. When will it happen? How will it happen? Will I know about it?
It looks like my time has come. The strange thing is, I’m not scared now. I want it to come quickly, so I don’t have to be scared of what they were going to do to me next.
I wake with a start. I’m upright. Short, sharp breaths cause a pain in my chest. I slow my breathing as my surroundings become familiar again. It was another nightmare. The same, recurring horror that I was subjected to in sleep. I can’t escape that night whether I am conscious or not.
I let out a sigh, a long and deep breath of frustration. I am sick of this. So sick of feeling trapped inside myself. Inside the flat. I can’t go out. I can’t stay in. I’m hardly sleeping these days either. Losing so much weight is the only good thing to come out of this. I was a size sixteen when it happened. Now, I’m lucky to fit into a size eight. I worried about excess skin but I don’t seem to have that problem.
‘Morning.’ A hand lies gently on my back and I smile, all of the worry and anxiety suddenly dispersing. ‘You okay?’
I turn to Marcus and he is smiling sleepily up at me. This is the first time I’ve woken up and he’s been next to me in weeks. He has been so busy at work, staying there for hours on end. Sometimes days. Looking after your own business is tough, he consistently reminds me when I mildly complain about his absence. However, I’m not complaining this morning. Not when he is the only person who can make me forget just by a glance. The light in his eyes makes the darkness go away.
‘Yes.’ As I lie down next to him, he props himself up on his elbow and stares down at me. ‘Don’t kiss me, I have morning mouth.’
He laughs as he nuzzles into my neck. His hands hold me close. Skin to skin. I can’t help but succumb to him. I’m his. He is mine.
‘Let’s go out today,’ he says. ‘We could go for lunch? A drink? Shopping?’
I want so badly to go. I do. My heart wants to say yes, to jump up and shower. To be able to walk out the front door without even thinking about it is something I long for. My mind holds me back.
‘Hello? Earth to Jade?’ Marcus’s hands squeeze at my skin a little and I let out a laugh.
‘Yes,’ I force the word out. ‘I’d like that.’
The look on his face is priceless. He’s proud of me for agreeing to leave the house for longer than an hour. Because lunch, a drink and shopping will take a lot longer than that. He pulls me closer, nuzzles into my neck again. I feel the muscles as my hands run over his back. I’m so fortunate to have found him. I feel a lot safer with him around. I love that he makes me feel this way.
I think about Paul then and wonder what he’s doing with himself these days. It’s a shame things got in the way of us. He was a nice guy but I had to end things between us. It just wasn’t going anywhere. He was into the relationship more than I was.
‘So, fancy cutting our time in half and sharing that shower?’ Marcus says, bringing me back to reality. The cheeky smile across his face makes me laugh.
‘You think we can both fit in that shower?’ I reply, cocking my head to the side.
‘If you wrap yourself around me enough, then yeah I think it’s achievable.’
Laughing again, he jumps up and lifts me off the bed before carrying me to the bathroom.
As much as I want this to become the norm for me, to be able to get up and get ready to go out and spend the day with my boyfriend, I know that it’s never going to be that easy this quickly.
As soon as I know we are away from the comfort of the flat, my rising panic will return. And Marcus will have to take me home. There is only so long that he will be able to put up with that before he will start to get annoyed by it. Things are going to get better. I will make sure of it. With Marcus’s help, I’ll get back on my feet and we’ll be able to act like a normal couple. That’s all I want.
I can’t live my life inside these walls. I won’t let what they did to me dictate how I live my life.
The sound of the water cascading around us in the shower drowns out the distant memory, the recurring nightmare that is my reality. As Marcus lifts me up, pulls me closer and my back rests against the cold tiles, I push the darkness inside me to the back of my head. As Marcus looks into my eyes, I know he can see past my trauma, can see me for who I am.