Iridescence

Holiday

TRIGGER WARNING - SELF HARM

I woke up to a pool of blood.

It was scary. Tasting my own blood. I remembered a time when I used to cut my skin regularly. These memories rushing back into my head were memories I forgot I had.

I called up my doctor. He said it was just the weather and it was probably seasonal nosebleeds. I was relieved but I still had an uncomfortable sensation.

I decided to let it slide. It was probably nothing. But the blood brought back too many traumatic memories.

I always felt the need to have a source to trace my pain back to. It's a very wrong thing to do, but when I was younger, nothing felt right.

I headed out. I needed a different atmosphere. For the first time in a long time, I was craving a change. This was especially weird for me.

Quite a few weeks passed. Jewel has regained her motor abilities and quite a bit of her memories back and was returning to normal life. I was happy to see her like this. It brought me joy.

She called me up one day asking if we could meet for lunch. We used to have lunch together often.

At lunch, she said to me

"I wanna run away."

I was dumbstruck.

"What?"

"I wanna run away."

"What do you mean?"

"I want a break. I wanna leave all this behind and disappear for some time. My memories are returning but I need to find some things out before I can fully accept who I am. And I don't think I can do that in the situation I'm in right now. Anyways I'm gonna go on a long vacation."

"Umm okay. Mind if I join?"

She didn't look like she expected me to say that. Pleasantly surprised was what I read from her face though.

"Sure. The question is, where do we go though?"

She paused, waiting for me to answer.

"Wherever you want to."

"Well, when should I book the tickets?"

I chuckled.

"You'll find out that we won't really need to book tickets. Name the destination and we're there."

"How about the Paris? Next week? Gosh I must be crazy."

This was so out of the blue. I couldn't believe this was happening.

"Paris it is then. Pack your bags. We're going on a vacation. Make sure to grab a sweater."

I spent the rest of the day canceling meetings, postponing events that could be postponed, basically excusing myself from all obligations.

The beauty of an unplanned holiday is the spontaneity of it all. How quickly everything falls in place and how much falls apart.

I was walking down the street when I felt the impulse to buy something. And just like that, I dropped a very large sum of money on something that probably would never see the light of day again,