Once It Seemed...

    Once it seemed that the pain would never leave me, I gave up my life. I just gave up.
    I stopped turning up to work.
    I stopped eating.
    But no matter how much I was being torn apart inside, my heart kept on beating.
    I would spend hours, so many hours, sitting, staring, looking but not seeing. The world passed me by, my life passed me by.
    Sitting on a bench somewhere, in a park somewhere, I needed to cry. I needed to scream and wail and sob and... well you get the idea. But nothing came. Nothing could. I couldn't even feel. I was just numb. I couldn't determine if it was warm or cold, if it was windy or still, if I was hungry or not, sad or not... Nothing.
    I thought the pain I had felt was bad enough, but this nothingness that crept over me... like my very soul had been slowly and painfully sucked into a black hole until... well until there was nothing left.
   
    I spent five weeks living on paracetemol. I would buy two packs a day from every shop that stocked them, then repeat this every two days. I had a cupboard full ready and welcoming. Well, ok. Paracetemol and bread. Plain bread. I do not even know if it was white or brown.
    The paracetemol became my only friend, but even they, my dearests, they betrayed me. But I felt no anger. No disappointment. Nothing.
    The cuts on my arm, increasing daily, account for no recollection. They may have been drawn on. Twenty thin red lines. Thirty. Fifty, thicker now, deeper. Sixty. Seventy.
    The paracetemol made me dizzy. They made me so dizzy I took more to help the dizziness. Then I fell asleep. And thus was my life for those five long weeks.

    That man in the shop.
    That damn man.
    How I love him...

    "Excuse me, but I couldn't help noticing you've been buying... a lot... of paracetemol recently."
    My red puffy eyes met his younger, fresh, yet startling stare. I didn't recognize it at the time... but there was pity.
    "Only two," was all I could mumble, holding up the two boxes.
    "No I mean, recently. I've noticed you in here buying them. Nearly every day."
    An awkward silence. I felt twice my age, and I felt nausea sweep over me.
    "I'm being intrusive, sorry." he continued.
    That was it. The nausea was the first thing I had felt in... Well I don't know. The nausea rushed into a flash of panic, and I threw myself at the shop assistant. I was trembling, I was shaking. my fist clenched around the paracetemol boxes, crushing them. The man staggered backwards slightly, disturbing the rows of deodorant he was stacking, but they shook, rocked, and settled back in place.
    This man, this stranger, he put his arms around me. He embraced me, and held me so close. Closer even than...
The tears were flowing now. They were warm, oh so warm against my cheeks. I could feel their journey down my skin until they came to a halt against this man's neck.
    The cuts on my arm, I was suddenly aware of the bursts of minute pain that shot through my arm as it squeezed against his back.
    This man, he took my hand. He took my hand, looking around the shop before peering into my glistening eyes, and he smiled.
    No one ever smiled at me.
    Once it seemed that the world may as well have stopped turning. But this man proved me wrong. This one man, he turned my life back around, the right way up, and set it going again.
    And I've never looked back.


Word Count: 618