The Places I've Cried in Public

by Holly Bourne

“You’re so manipulative.”

  I cried a tear for every name Reese called me. Everything that he believed about me that I believed too. In that moment, I felt nothing but sadness for him, for having to put up with me. Poor, poor Reese for having to deal with crazy, nutso, insecure, boring me – when he could be with girls like Eden. Girls who made him shine.

  Plop, plop, plop, plop. My exercise book was a swimming pool. You could teach children to swim on it, and they’d definitely need armbands. A boy next to me, Michael, kept glancing over whenever I sniffed. He saw the tears landing onto our desk. I couldn’t take it any more. I collected up my things and stuffed them into my bag.

  “Mrs Clarke? I have to go. I don’t feel well.”

  “Are you okay, Amelie?” she asked, noticing my rivers of crying, but unable to do much about it as she was mid-lesson.

  I was out of the room before I could even reply. I flung myself into the girls’ toilets and – oh, yes, you’ve guessed it – I cried.

  I pull up your message again. And, for the first time ever, the unimaginable happens. I feel a bit sorry for Eden.

  Sympathy, rather than jealousy.

  For so long she’s been my nemesis. She’s been my albatross. She’s been the focus of my insecurity and self-hatred. I’ve obsessed over her almost as much as I’ve obsessed over you. Why couldn’t I be more like her? Why was I so, terribly, like myself? Why couldn’t I be cool and calm and chill and funky and all the things she could give you but I clearly could not? I hated her for being so much better than me in every conceivable way.

  I was so crazy. Or so you said…

  “There’s nothing in it,” you said. “Stop being so paranoid,” you said. “Why are you so insecure?” you said. “I can be just friends with a girl,” you said.

  And I wonder, Reese. I wonder.

  Is she worrying about me now? Is she asking you the same questions? Have I become her albatross?

  My gut says: Perhaps.

  Perhaps, now you have her, you miss parts of me. Perhaps you’re asking her why she can’t be quieter, or more this, or more that, or more anything that isn’t like her, so she – abracadabra – suddenly feels insecure and like she’s going mad. Because I bet you’re telling her there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to your crazy ex-girlfriend. Whereas, from this message on my phone, there is a lot for her to worry about after all.

  I know all this. I know you’re bad news. I know my gut is right. I know that Joan is probably going to have pretty severe opinions about this message. And I hate myself for thinking this, and I hate myself for being so weak but, Reese, oh my god… How much I want to meet you after school and dissolve back into what we were.

  I don’t know how to stop me.

  Please, someone, stop me.

  “He said he loves me,” I tell Joan. “He says that it was all a mistake with her. He says he wants me back.”

  I’m smiling because saying it out loud does make me very happy indeed. I’m expecting her to go nuts. To tell me it’s a terrible idea. To ban me from seeing him again. To grab my hands and scream, “Noooo!” I prepare to get defensive. Joan’s face remains totally neutral however.

  “I see,” she replies. “And how does that make you feel?”

  I tilt my head, slightly annoyed by her lack of response.

  “Confused,” I answer honestly. “I know he did some bad things…” I’ve told her about Sheffield. I’ve told her and I’ve screamed and I’ve cried. She’s been giving me techniques on what to do when the memory surfaces, like a train hitting me out of nowhere. “I know he’s not perfect,” I stammer on. “But maybe he just needed this time, this space, to realize what we had? And now it will be amazing? Like it was in the beginning?”

  She’s quiet again, and yet I can fill the silence with what I know she’s saying in her head. Because there’s a little voice in my head too that’s yelling, This is ridiculous! Love doesn’t work like that! You were miserable with him! You’ve been broken since you met him! That’s not love, that’s not love, that’s not love! But I don’t want to listen to this voice, because this voice means I won’t get to kiss you again. I won’t get the thrill of you looking into my eyes like I’m the only one who will ever matter. I’ll miss out on the potent surge of love I get whenever you finally come back to me, and how it tastes so much sweeter when I’ve had to work for it so very hard.

  “Do you really think things will be different?” she asks. “If you’re really honest with yourself, Amelie, do you think this boy won’t hurt you again?”

  I can feel how carefully she’s picked every word, like she’s chosen each one from a line-up and then assembled them into that question, using a pair of tweezers.

  I’m about to open my mouth to defy her, to defend you – then my stomach twists.

  It has something to say.

  My gut.

  My gut says… No.

  I close my mouth, not wanting to admit it. Because admitting it means this is the end of us. The end of the good and the thrill and the mess but, oh, how amazing it could be. I’m not sure I’m ready to let go of that. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to let go of that.

  Joan talks again. She uncrosses and recrosses her ankles. She doesn’t look directly at me, rather to the side of my face, her eyes skimming over the box of tissues that sit on a table between us.

  “Sometimes,” she says, “when someone doesn’t treat us well and attacks the essence of who we are, that causes a trauma. It’s natural to want to be loved – it’s the most natural thing in the world. So, when we love someone and they hurt us, our brain doesn’t like it. Our brain doesn’t like trauma, it doesn’t like feeling unsafe, and sometimes it comes up with unhealthy shortcuts in order to trick us into feeling safe.”

  She’s speaking so matter-of-factly, so calmly, that I can’t help but listen.

  “One of the things the brain does to feel safe, is it creates an intense bond with the person who hurts us. It’s the ego’s way of protecting itself. You may have heard of Stockholm syndrome?”

  I nod. I remember it from some old James Bond film where the girl falls in love with her kidnapper.

  “Well that’s an example of a trauma bond – falling in love with your captor makes it a hell of a lot easier to handle the fact you’ve been kidnapped.” She pauses, still not looking at me or forcing the issue, just quietly urging me to listen. “Another thing to consider, Amelie, is that if someone is inconsistent with how they treat us…our body can get addicted to being in a nervous state. Waiting for it to get better, feeling sick and depressed and terrible when it doesn’t – but then we get a flood of happy hormones when this person is finally nice to us again. It’s a bit like being on drugs. You’re never sure when you’ll get your next ‘hit’ of niceness.

  “Now if you combine a trauma bond with this constant state of emotional and anxious arousal, well…it’s very powerful. Your pull to this person is incredibly strong. Your feelings for them are incredibly strong…”

  Here. Here is when she looks at me. Joan sits up and stares me right in the eye.

  “But it isn’t love, Amelie,” she says. “Those feelings are not love.”

  She doesn’t tell me to never see you again. She doesn’t tell me what to do next. She quietly presses about whether, one day, I want to tell my parents everything. As always, I shake my head.

  It isn’t love, Amelie.

  When I come out of counselling there’s another message.

  Reese: I need to see you. Please. BoJangles. I love you xxxxxxx

  It isn’t love, Amelie.

  What is love? I wonder, as I step out into the warm day and look at the leaves fanning out from the tree branches. I’m alone, as usual. Is love never having to say you’re sorry? Is it grand, romantic gestures? Is it fireworks and can’t-get-you-out-of-my-head and I’ve-never-felt-this-way-before? Is it constantly checking your phone and feeling sick when you’ve not heard from them but then pure euphoria when you have? Is it hidin
g the bits of yourself they don’t like, but it’s okay as long as they’re really good looking? Is it butterflies? But not, like, always nice ones, but nervous ones every time you see them – not just because you’re excited, but also because you’re scared you’ll get it wrong? Is it knowing you can’t live without them? That you need them so much and so utterly that you’re willing to give up everything else just in exchange for how it feels on those rare good days? Love hurts. That’s what they always say, isn’t it? Is it real if it’s not hurting? Can you trust it’s love if it doesn’t punch you in the face?

  I start walking towards town, reading and rereading your message. I picture our reunion and how amazing it will feel to fall back into your arms. I can see the evening spread out in front of me. You’ll tell me everything that was wrong with Eden and I’ll be able to release all my insecurity and jealousy. You’ll promise to make it up to me, and I trust that, initially, you really will. I will be adored, and nothing will be too much. I can picture the presents and the dates and the grovelling apologies. You’ll probably write me a song, even. Tonight we can go to yours and have sex, and I know it won’t be like Sheffield. It will be loving and tender and amazing, like it was in the start. If you rub out all the bad stuff, all the stuff that has almost destroyed me, and focus on what you and me could be like in the upcoming weeks – man, could we make the world jealous. We burn and we soar and we make each other feel alive and so many pathetic people will never get a taste of what love can be, and what life can be like if you have a love like ours.

  That’s not love, Amelie.

  A mother bashes into me with her double buggy and doesn’t apologize. I shake my head, trying to rouse myself from this daze. I know where you’ll be waiting for me. You’ll be on the sofas. You always managed to get the best table anywhere. I know the moment I walk in you’ll scoop me up and kiss me in front of everyone. You’ll whisper you knew I’d come, that you are so sorry. Everyone will look on jealously. Word will get around college. You’ve always loved a stage.

  That’s not love, Amelie.

  Can I walk away from all that? Isn’t it madness to walk away from all that? Who would sacrifice the chance at that kind of love? Even though my gut is saying something. And the something my gut is saying is: It won’t last. I know it won’t. You will not be able to sustain it. I will mess up again somehow. Someone shiny and new will come along, because I am never shiny enough for long enough.

  Yet – despite this – I’m walking towards BoJangles. I’m walking towards you.

  What is love?

  Maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s not what we’ve been told it is. Maybe it’s boring words like security and safety, warmth and growth. Maybe it’s the comfort of knowing someone really well and them knowing you back. Maybe it’s kisses where you sometimes bump noses but you can laugh it off? Maybe it’s never getting butterflies because you always know where you stand? Maybe it’s not passion, but caution? Shouldn’t you be cautious? If you’re going to go through the emotional stripping necessary to give your heart to another? To let them hold it beating in the palms of their hands, both of you knowing they can close their fingers at any time and squash it to mush? Shouldn’t you feel safe with that person, rather than delirious with passion or insecurity or…a trauma bond? Maybe love – real love – is mellow. A slow-cooking stew only just simmering on the hob, but if you leave it long enough the flavour deepens and deepens. Maybe it’s your favourite song being played on a really low volume, but it doesn’t matter because you know the words and melody so well you can sing it in your head.

  I’ve had one love and I’ve had another type of love. I’ve experienced both and one made me warm and safe, and the other has led me to therapy and isolation…

  Yet, Reese? I don’t care. I’m coming for you! I’m coming. I’m so sorry I doubted us, baby.

  I pick up into a run. What if you’re not there? What if you’ve changed your mind? The nerves kick-start, the butterflies flap their wings and start a storm across the sea. I can’t walk away from us. The thought makes me burst into tears. I can’t walk away from you. I’m so sorry I even thought about it.

  I love you, Reese. I love you, I love you, I love you! I’m coming for you. For us. I’m on my way. I’m running. I love you, I lo—

  “Amelie?”

  I’m being grabbed and stopped. Someone’s taken my arm and jolted me to a halt. I whiplash backwards and look up to see who’s dared stop me from my sprint back towards you.

  “Hannah?”

  She’s holding my arm, worry engraved all over her face.

  “Amelie? What’s wrong?”

  Why is she delaying me? I have to go! I have to find you! And be with you, and probably destroy myself in the process, but I’m kind of certain it will all be worth it…

  “I have to go.” I pull away from her. “I’m late for something.”

  She doesn’t let me go though. She steps in front of me, blocking my path, staring, horrified, at my crying face. “Amelie. It can wait. What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

  “Please, let me go. Please, I’m late for a…”

  She shakes her head. “Whatever you’re late for, Amelie, it isn’t worth it.” She, ever so gently, puts her hand on my shoulder. “I know we’ve not spoken in quite a while, but why don’t we go for a walk or something? Talk?”

  I’m at war with myself, every part of my body caught up with these two conflicting urges. The urge to see you and feel that release – but oh, the cost, the cost, the cost… And the urge to stay and fight and know that Joan is right – what you and I have isn’t love. It was never love. It was an illusion – one that eroded me from the inside out and robbed me of myself and everything I ever loved, leaving me a husk that’s only just begun to try and put herself back together. The urge to self-destruct at the hands of a boy, or the urge to try and restore myself at the hands of a girl, a friend, who is asking me if I’m okay.

  I blink and gasp and start crying harder. I must look crazy. People try to get past on the pavement, and tut and grumble, but Hannah doesn’t care. She’s not taking her hand off my shoulder. She’s not repulsed by my crying. If anything, she looks deeply upset that I’m crying at all. Even though I was such a twat to her.

  “Amelie. You’re scaring me. Please? Come on. We can get a coffee in the park. My treat.”

  I don’t want to lose you, Reese. I don’t want to walk away from us. But I can’t pretend none of it happened. That none of the bad stuff and the awful stuff and the truly horrifying stuff didn’t happen.

  That’s not love, Amelie.

  And, I…

  I…

  I let go of you.

  I sigh, and release the toxic idea of us into the bright-blue sky.

  The grief hits harder than I ever thought possible. I disintegrate into such spectacular hysterics that Hannah leads me to a bench, sits me down, and tells me to breathe, but I cannot I cannot I cannot. It’s over. It has to be over. And even though you’ve hurt me so much – in ways I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from – it hurts so much to let you go. Hannah’s hand doesn’t stop rubbing my back, she doesn’t stop whispering reassurances. She stays with me until the tears reach their natural stopping point, as they’re always able to do, no matter how hard you’re crying.

  “Amelie?” she asks, when my river of tears has temporarily been dammed. “What’s going on?”

  I look up through my red-raw eyes. I snuffle up my snot. I wipe the grief from my face. And I have one last realization.

  This is the first time I’ve cried in public and someone has noticed and has truly cared.

  The first person who has seen me and has thought to stop and ask if I’m okay – because, whenever someone cries in full view of the public, they’re clearly not okay.

  I open my mouth.

  And I start to tell her.

  People around me wilt in the heat.

  The sun bounces off the railway tracks and passengers fight for the tiny patches
of shade as they wait for their trains to arrive with welcome air-conditioning. I’m sat here, slurping on a plastic cup of iced coffee, in my new dress covered in sunflowers. Even I will admit that it’s too hot for a cardigan today.

  This is the last place, Reese. The final spot on my memory map, before I send it off to the museum. You may’ve noticed there’s been quite a gap between this final call and my previous spots. Winter took off its jumper to reveal spring, and spring dropped off its blossom to let summer have a turn, and here we are. In the baking heat, with nobody’s deodorant quite strong enough. I’m going to bid you adieu to the sweet tang of a stranger’s BO.

  Fitting, really.

  I don’t really want to go into why I was last here and last crying, and how very awful it was. At the time, it was one of the worst nights of my life. You and Eden got offered a gig, just the two of you, at the Underdog, and you were both all the more insufferable because the gig was, like, totally in London. Yes, in London? Didn’t I tell you it was in London? Clapham, as you’re asking. Nobody really asked you, but it didn’t stop either of you from telling us all about it all the time. And, I mean, of course, I wasn’t welcome to come, being your girlfriend and all.

  “You’d be too distracting,” you’d told me – not even bothering to look at me or say sorry or even touch me that day. “The other gig went really well and I think it’s because I was much more relaxed. And I know you’re all psycho about me and Eden getting off with each other. That’s not fair on either of us, to have to deal with you on our big day.”

  Because you were a right twat-end, weren’t you, Reese? Total fucking ball-ache of a human being. I mean, what a crazy psycho I was, thinking you were going to leave me for her, when all you did was go and LEAVE ME FOR HER! OH I WAS SO FREAKING CRAZY, WASN’T I? FOR ACCURATELY GUESSING WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON THE WHOLE DAMN TIME? CRAZY, CRAZY AMELIE, WITH HER TOTALLY NORMAL GRIP ON REALITY!!!

  Whoops. Sorry.

  Joan says the grieving process does include all the clichéd stages that we think of – denial, bargaining, anger, etc. I think we can both agree I may be lurking in anger at the moment.