The Winter Project

5. Isabel

Isabel believed that Cleo's diagnosis of her was correct; she clearly displayed signs that were conclusive of some kind of anxiety disorder, possibly agoraphobia or Generalised anxiety disorder. She refused to receive a formal diagnosis for this, because she was going to live in denial and just push through the things that she struggled with most, such as socialising or leaving the house.

She did not have a car and so she relied on public transport to get her around, and the consistent exposure of this was enough to keep her out of the house and trapped in enclosed spaces squashed up against total strangers. She believed that as long as she kept going with this, she would be just fine. Only if she allowed herself to succumb to her natural instincts, which was to stay home and never go outside, would she ever need to be concerned about her mental health issues.

One night she had been determined to visit one of her last remaining friends on the other side of the city, and she had spent an evening having a nice time, eating food together as she lied about how happy she was with work and how everything in her life was going just fine. She had become accustomed to lying about her happiness, because people did not want to hear her complain and she did not want to listen to herself complaining when she felt that there were people in the world in much worse situations than her. She often forced the conversations with others to be one-sided, always asking questions about their lives and commenting on how happy she was for them or giving them advice where she felt it was needed. Her friend Lara had been her friend since they were in school together at the age of fifteen and she made a special effort to visit her every now and then to catch up. Lara was engaged to be married and so it was easy to keep the conversation around her and her upcoming wedding.

It took two buses and a train to take Isabel back home, and it was nearing one in the morning as the train she was on approached her station. She had her headphones wedged tightly in her ears, a coping mechanism she had developed to drown out the sounds of her surroundings and stop her from feeling anxious. The trains were often so busy and full of so many conversations that she would often feel overwhelmed and short of breath, but if she played music loudly enough and closed her eyes, she could pretend that she was sat in her bedroom, completely at peace. As the train slowed down to a halt and the doors opened, she was relieved to climb off and have her face hit with the cold night air. She breathed a sigh of relief, proud of her ability to travel independently despite her anxieties, and made her way to the exit. The station was so small that it only had two platforms, one for trains arriving and one for those departing. A single dull orange lamppost lit each platform, just enough for her to see the other side and know that she had to cross the tracks. Absent-mindedly, she walked along the platform to the edge, down the small ramp and crossed the train lines to get to the exit of the station.

As she crossed the tracks, she heard a deafening sound that was so loud it cut through the music blasting through her ears and scared her straight. She needed to turn her head only slightly to see the lights of a freight train plummeting towards her, growing immensely larger every second. She wasn't sure if she jumped, ran or simply stepped out of the way, but she could feel the wind soaring over her as the train narrowly passed her by only an inch or two.

Any other person who had exited the train with her was nowhere to be seen, and she realised that they were still waiting on the other platform for a safe time to cross. She felt bewildered by what had just happened, but her best guess was that she had not even looked to see if any trains were coming before crossing, and the music blocking out her surroundings was no longer a coping mechanism but a dangerous blocker of her senses that were vital for survival.

She was so stunned that she did not know what to do or think. As the train disappeared back into the dark, she saw the other people from the train staring at her from the other side in disbelief, and then watched them all cross the tracks one by one, cautiously peering to each side before they walked. None of them spoke to her or asked her if she was okay, they simply stared at her as if she was a lunatic, an idiot or a drunk. She did not think much of what happened next, she simply stood frozen to the floor until another train came soaring through the station and brought her back down to earth. Only then did she understand the reality of what had just happened, and she immediately burst into tears. She had nobody to call. She had no mother or father, no grandparents. No boyfriend. She had Cleo, but Cleo had gone out for the night and usually stayed out until the early hours of the morning. She pushed her feet hard into the pavement to try and give herself a feeling of being grounded, something she often did when she felt frightened, but it wasn't working this time. She began to walk home, but the floor looked as if it were spinning from side to side as she tried to focus on it to keep her balance. Desperate to get home as fast as possible, she broke into a sprint and ran as fast as her legs would let her until she was back at her apartment. She walked into Cleo's room, climbed under the duvet and curled herself into a tight little ball, using the scent of her close friend on the sheets to try and soothe her and make her feel less alone. She thought of her mother's face and tried to comfort herself with memories of her infectious smile, but all she could remember was her irritated face as Isabel refused to eat gelato, and the memory of her cold lifeless hand.