The Glass Door
That week in Cyprus was like temporarily living in someone else’s dreams where only the bits they cared about were well imagined.
The picturesque ornate orthodox chapel on the hill – check.
The wedding service and late night reception meal – check.
The twilight cruise and stunning sunset photographs – check.
But I resided somewhere on the periphery of all this. Still inside the dream but closer to the edges where the details get a little fuzzy, or sometimes disappear altogether. Picture a T.V show or movie set; when the camera pans too far past the hotel and you realise the beach is man made, artificial, dropping off into concrete and rubble, not rock pools and pebbles. The shops too in the hotel apartment village are facades only. And the much anticipated Greek food replaced by bland English substitutes.
I spent my days in the sun feeling a combination of lonely and out numbered. A fish out of water, a family holiday had never been my idea of fun. And doing it with some one else’s family didn’t make it any less painful. Every nerve in my body was telling me I didn’t want to be there. I took valium to subdue the anxiety, but it made little impact. So I relied on alcohol to calm me instead. It didn’t, I just felt more out of control and out of my depth. The drink lead to minor rows in public and unfettered arguments in private. In all this high drama I was turning into someone that I didn’t like. I had yet to realise that I was so weakened by insecurity and an insidious self loathing that I’d forgotten all about self respect. In a freak incidence of life imitating art my choice of holiday reading, a biography of Philip K Dick, did nothing to settle my paranoia or my growing sense of unreality.
A week out of life to observe someone else’s dreams come true, too dumb still to realise my own were ending. A black swan, it should be obvious but its not. Like the glass door I walked into face first at the reception’s restaurant. A perfect a living metaphor for my own romantic humiliation. A blow to the head to prompt a slow dawning realisation. My own marriage into this family would never come. I’d hit my glass door literally, and with a public audience.
The morning after the wedding I woke up alone on the apartment couch with a bruised forehead and an empty wine glass on the table beside me. Paracetamol pills were spilled on the floor. Angry snores could be heard in the bedroom next door. We had fallen out again, judging by the evidence, but I couldn’t remember the argument. This should have been the ending really, but somehow extenuating circumstances meant it wasn’t. No, the real ending would come ten days later, and it would still come as a terrible surprise.
Carson Rose and Associates
Nice venture i hope you had fun it is really a lovely story
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Rivka Jacobs
One of your best, Bridgeen. Your use of imagery is excellent. The analogy of the glass door is perfect. And you caught the essence of the photograph.
Another deeply felt story about a transitional moment in a relationship, and again I very much sympathize with the narrator, and what is happening to her.
The last paragraph is exceptionally well written, and that last line is familiar to me: “…the real ending would come ten days later, and it would still come as a terrible surprise.” You capture that experience with great skill. When one knows something is over (a relationship, a job, anything we care about is finished) but when it actually explodes in ones face it still is a shock.
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