The Show Must Go On

Chapter Thirty-Three: life you lead

Chapter Thirty-Three Soundtrack: life you lead by Niceboy Ed

The sun rises slowly and softly. I watch it with a cup of coffee, my sheets tucked around my knees, and slowly and softly I breathe.

I can take the whole day to watch it arc across the sky, illuminating the millions of lives beneath the shadows of the skyscrapers; I can watch a cabaret, or a street performer, or a concert; I can learn yoga or fencing; I can stay in bed, in this moment, and let that simply be enough. I have all of these choices because I am alive.

I cried myself to sleep last night. The rejection stung: no, the rejection stabbed, threatening to knock down each brick in the walls I protect myself with. But eventually, I slept, and this morning I woke up.

I am alive. For years, that's felt like a betrayal, but in fact, it's a miracle. I get to be alive.

Nas could only reject me yesterday because I let him. I could only let him because, for the first time, I let myself want someone. It was foolish to want that man, yes, but it wasn't foolish to want.

And one day, I will wake up in this bed and watch the sunrise with someone else, and I will feel just as safe as I do now.

I think this is healing. It isn't easy, and it isn't quick, but it's peaceful.

It's rare that in life, we get second chances. Even when we begin anew, we bring ourselves with us. Or, in my case, we're ripped away from who we were, and we scramble to remain the same while everything else changes.

I've left myself behind for years. But maybe I don't have to. No one is coming for the old Ellie, and she isn't looking after me anymore. Maybe I need to find a new person to be, and while I'm sitting alone in my bed, I am lonely but I am free. No one else can choose me. I don't have to choose anyone except for myself.

I take another minute to watch the trees slowly encased in gold until the brilliant flash of sunrise fades to muted pinks and I hear the bus grumble down the road beneath me.

Then, I reach for my phone.

'Hi, Mum.'

Phone to my ear, I let her words wash over me. I sip my coffee. She's furious that I ignored her call earlier this week, she still wants me to apologise for leaving the wedding, when will I move closer to her, did I hear about her neighbour's son's new baby, why have I not accepted her Instagram request?

I let her speak until she runs out of steam. Finally, she asks, 'So you're just ignoring me now, are you?'

'I'm calling to tell you that I'm not moving out of London.'

'So my feelings aren't important to you anymore?' Her voice immediately rises to outrage. She loves this, I suspect. Nothing excites her more than a chance to argue with me. If I moved closer to her, like she begged, I'd visit too often, or too infrequently; I'd be too independent, or not independent enough; and I'd always be too fat.

I won't let her win this argument today, because I don't want to have this argument at all.

'Your feelings are important,' I tell her, 'but they aren't more important than my own.'

She doesn't respond and anxiety scratches again at the back of my throat. I breathe. I sip my coffee. I watch the pink and gold sunrise. Then I say, 'I love you, and I know you love me, but you're unkind to me.'

'Unkind?!' she screeches. For an awful moment, I picture her heart giving out from the shock. Have I ever spoken back to her before?

'You won't be happier if I move closer, because I don't make you happy right now.'

'Of course you do! You're my daughter, for God's sake.'

'Then you need to show that. You can't just criticise me every time we talk. That's why I can't always answer.'

'I—' I can feel the war within her: she wants to criticise how I'm speaking to her, but she can't bear to prove me right.

I take the opportunity. 'I've been grieving for a long time. I've hated myself for a long time. And I sometimes feel like you hate me too.'

Her voice is soft now. I can hear a sob threatening to break through, but I steel myself so that I can't be weakened. She says, 'I have never hated you.'

'Then you need to be kind to me right now.'

'I just want you to be better, honey. I want you to be the best you can be.'

'I don't want that. I only want to be enough,' I tell her. Now the tears are coming for me: sharp and thick in the back of my throat, and I hate that I've let her win this, but also, why shouldn't she hear it? Why shouldn't I cry to her when I usually cry over her?

'I know grief too, you know,' she moans. 'I lost my brother, and your father is never home, and... You're all I have, Ellie. And now you hate me too.'

I never knew that she'd lost a brother. I never knew that my father was distant. I wish she had told me this before: but then again, I know better than anyone how hard it is to be honest with the people we love most.

'I don't hate you.'

'The young always think no one has ever loved before. We did, you know. I know what it's like to love and lose.'

I'm weeping now. The tears fall in huge droplets onto my bedding. This is the woman who plaited my hair and taught me to count and baked my birthday cakes. This is the first time I've ever shown her these parts of me, and even now, she's so trapped in herself that she can't really listen. It's another kind of bereavement: the loss of someone who was never really there.

But she stops herself. 'I'm sorry, Ellie. We were talking about you.'

She stopped herself. I take a moment to experience this shock, and this happiness. A small step, yes, but a step.

'We were,' I sniffle.

'I'm going to go to pilates now, and I need to wash my face, and I have to think about what you've said. Okay? You'll call me later?' Then she pauses. 'Only if you want.'

'Okay,' I whisper.

This is how she loves me. But it isn't enough anymore. She will have to learn a new way to love me, and I will have to learn how to ask for it.