The Suicide Diary (23 page)

“Um…” Yes he was attractive but I still raised my eyebrows at his ego.

“You can laugh but I’m serious, that crowd they’re all the same and it’s easy pickings but you…” He grinned at me with that same smile he aimed at me from across the room at that party. “You were different, ha you couldn’t get away fast enough. I was curious. And then your friends made a huge deal about how nice you were but it was the red head that swung it for me.” Melissa? “She said I wasn’t your type but her eyes were saying I wasn’t good enough for her friend. And well I like to prove people wrong and so here we are.” he said.

I didn’t know what to reply to that.

“Look I know you’re clearly not the type of girl who does this kind of thing, whatever your reasons were for coming back with me that first night or for even going on a date with me, I don’t want you to regret them. I like you, more than I expected to and I wanted to see you again. Right now, I’m exhausted so I’m going to go to sleep and I’d like you to stay if that’s okay.” He kissed my forehead and looked me in the eyes waiting for a response.

I just nodded and he smiled. “Here you can put this on.” he pulled a t-shirt from a drawer next to the bed and I changed my top for his t-shirt so I had something to wear in the morning that hadn’t been slept in. He put his arm out and I lay on top of it against his side.

Cam became the first name on my speed dial and before I knew it I was addicted to this distraction. They say love is blind, but that kind of lust can be pretty damn well blinding too. For in those hours I spent with him, I didn't think about my life, about the pain, about the mess I'd made of everything and that I knew I was still making.

After one particularly adventurous session, I lay quietly listening to his peaceful breathing. I tried to time my breaths with his; focusing on that so I didn’t have to think of anything else. But thoughts crept into the forefront of my mind like a fog.

I couldn’t sleep here again, it was becoming a habit I wasn’t comfortable with. Slowly, quietly, I slipped out of the bed, picking up my various items of clothes strewn across the room and made my way to the door. I quickly got dressed in the darkened hallway and tiptoed down the stairs only hours before we’d barely been able to control ourselves enough to climb up.

The next time I moved to get out of bed to leave again, but Cam stirred beside me and told me to stay.

“Cam I can’t sleep over, I have work tomorrow.” I said.

“It’s not just that Nina and you know it.” he replied.

He had already tried to talk to me earlier but I had silenced him with kisses and we had tumbled in to bed as had become our habit.

“Look Cam I don’t what you want from me…” I said.

He didn’t reply.

“I know I want you.” I kissed his upper lip and pushed myself against him.

“Do you, does it even matter that it’s me?” he asked.

“What kind of question is that?” I asked.

“Maybe this isn’t enough anymore.” he said.

Couldn’t he understand I didn’t want to be sensible? I thought. I didn’t want to talk about my feelings and ‘us’. Then I realised how utterly selfish that was even in my head. Didn’t I care about how he felt or wanted from this. I had made the assumption that just because he was a guy, he would be happy with arrangement, which honestly was the best word for it and suddenly I realised how awful that was.

“I’m sorry.” It was all I could say without rolling out all the reasons why I wasn’t good for him and I didn’t think he would want to listen. I kissed him as I always did and left knowing that this couldn’t last much longer.

I was awoken all of a sudden by a swift and none too quiet stomping sound of someone making their way up the stairs. I lay still, holding my breath on hearing the click of my door opening.

“That is it. I’ve had enough of this.” My Mother’s voice was muffled by the quilt over my head. Suddenly the cover was pulled from my semi-conscious body and I strained to see in the darkened room.

“Get up Nina, out of bed now. You are going to tidy this room and would it kill you to help around the house? Do you have any idea what time you stumbled in this morning?”

I ran my hand down my face as if trying to drag the sleep from it. I sat up but made no attempt to speak. It would have been pointless; being home is easy and hard at the same time. I would never try to justify my behaviour – that is a can of worms I will never open for my Mother’s viewing.

Crawling out of bed was a struggle as my cramped muscles screamed at me. Again I’d fallen asleep curled into a tight ball and hadn’t moved much all night. Well at least in the few hours between crawling into bed and my sudden wake up call. My Mother made to roll up my black out curtain. “No, please I’m getting up but leave the blind.” I begged.

“Ah the dreaded hangover, well it is entirely deserved in this case. Just make sure this room is spotless when I get back from lunch.” she replied.

Thankfully she said no more and left banging the door behind her. I winced at the noise and sank back down onto the bed savouring the darkness of the room. It took several minutes to convince my body to climb out of bed and when I finally stood upright, the real headache kicked in. I had got home about eleven o’clock but I couldn’t sleep so I’d poured a vodka and then another one, followed by another until I had blacked out. Thankfully at least the bottle was lying on the other side of my bed from the door so my Mother had assumed I had been out drinking socially like a normal person.

It took until early evening to tidy and clean my room. There were three bin bags of clutter to be thrown out and everything I was keeping was now its rightful place. I hadn’t taken everything with me to my flat so some of the stuff hadn’t been touched in over a year. I would have finished quicker if I hadn’t come across a box filled with envelopes of photographs. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen them before and in the back of my mind I knew they were around somewhere. Tucked away; out of sight, out of mind. The photos were a mix of old memories. Painful memories and a part of me wouldn’t or couldn’t let go of them.

My breath caught as I stared at Chris with his arm around Anthony’s shoulder and smiling at the camera. The next few were of my friends from university huddled together in various groups. Not one of the photos had me in them. Ironically that’s the way it was now, most of them carrying on with their lives without me in them.

Real photographs aren't like the ones on a computer, you can't just click and drag to the recycle bin and then hit empty and watch them neatly disappear. Actual photographs that you hold in your hand are harder to get rid of, you could hide them away somewhere out of view but then there's always the chance you come across them one day like I did today. Sure you could tear them up in a fit and toss them in the bin but the pieces still exist out there in the world - fragments of paper like shards of glass that cut you.

I wondered why the photos were shaking when I realised my hands were trembling. It had been years since I laid eyes on some of these. Any normal person might have cried looking through photos of ex’s but not one tear fell from my eyes. I looked through the pictures silently reflecting on what each relationship had given and taken from me.

Placing them back in the box, I considered throwing them out but like the residual marks on my right leg, they were reminders of the mistakes I’d made. I wasn’t ready to part with them.

Visit to the doctor today – also at my mother’s ‘request’. He took my blood pressure, asked a few vague questions and generally looked as if he had seen it all before. I left with advice to cut down on alcohol and get some exercise and fresh air. I wasn’t really expecting to be given some kind of tablet that would miraculously make everything better but somehow I felt let down.

What I had with Cam couldn’t last of course. Eventually everything came all too quickly tumbling back out of my too full proverbial box. Not too long after that last time he had tried to bring up the subject of ‘us’, he met someone that gave him more than just her body. So I erased his number from my phone and just before my twenty-second birthday I was single and alone again.

11.Nika

This birthday was actually one of my best and it was the start of a change. My Mother suggested having some friends over to the house, since I wasn’t really up for having a night out and I didn’t have enough friends or family to fill a hall for a party either. So on the Saturday night, I laid out food and drinks that my Mother had been kind enough to buy and she hung banners and a few balloons around the ground floor and out on the porch.

I’d invited Kara, Melissa and Lucy and they were bringing a few of their friends that I had met over the years.

My Mother was meeting her friends for a few drinks and my brothers had their own plans. I watched as Joshua took his time leaving and couldn’t help but notice the smile that appeared when Lucy arrived. My brother had his first serious girlfriend, and yet there was still a spark there.

The music played in the background and we munched our way through the table of delicious snacks and I made some of the cocktails I had learned to create while working in bars. The girls all had full time jobs and most of them were living in their own flats or with flat mates and some with boyfriends. Melissa was not likely to settle down any time soon but she was seeing a guy she liked. Lucy was single again but she never mentioned Joshua and I didn’t want to embarrass her by bringing him up in front of everyone.

I had been building up the courage to tell them that I was planning to leave in the near future and this was probably one of the last few times we would all be together for a while. My plans to work abroad had been playing on my mind and living at home had given me the chance to save up again.

“You’re doing what?” shouted Kara.

“Oh wow I’m so jealous.” said Melissa.

Then the questions started all at once. “You’re going to get such a good tan.” “Hey maybe we could even come visit.” “How long are you going for?”

I tried to respond to their questions - the truth was I didn’t really know the answers because it wasn’t so much a plan as it was packing my bags, heading off in to the sunset and hoping for the best.

Just over three months later, my bags were packed and I was on a flight to Italy. I'd managed to get a job in a club bar, yet again convincing the manager I had a confident, bubbly personality. I had planned to try to find a job once I got out there, but Melissa knew someone, who knew someone and did most of the convincing thankfully. Saying goodbye to my family and friends was easier than I expected as anything which involved emotion was easy - I just sidestepped it. I felt dead inside and so no feeling ever really got close to my heart.

I loved flying and it went smoothly; the heat hitting me the second I stepped outside the plane. I put on my sunglasses, shook out my hair and walked inside to collect my luggage. Italy was the perfect place to lose my old self and maybe find a little of who I was supposed to be. This was a new life and I could be anyone I wanted. I had a job in a popular tourist bar since most of my Italian was long forgotten and I was renting a room nearby.

The first night I unpacked, hanging my clothes in the wardrobe and placing my few belongings on the shelves. It looked pretty bare but the walls of my new bedroom were a soft peach colour and the floors were light grey stone – it had a nice, welcoming feel about it. Shame the same couldn’t be said about me. I really needed to practice smiling more and the sun would give my skin some colour and hopefully replace the grey tone it had taken on recently. Taking a deep sigh in to my lungs, I tried to imagine letting go of everything – focusing on the things I had to be grateful for and not the reasons why I had left them behind.

My first shift in the bar I met Amy who was like no one I had ever met before. She was a force of nature, so full of energy and made an eight hour shift on our feet seem like a fun game. Amy didn’t ask questions about my life back home or where I’d come from, she was very much a ‘live in the present’ kind of person and I appreciated that about her. I got the hang of working behind a different bar and soon we were working in tandem serving the array of customers who came through the door.

I think that was probably the best summer I’d had up to that point in my life, I wasn’t exactly happy but I was living in a little bubble where nothing back home could hurt me. The twelve weeks of high season flew in quickly and as summer came to an end and the bar quieted, more of the locals ventured in so I tried to learn a little more Italian. It had been so many years since I remember my Father teaching me his first language and I struggled at first.

Joshua had flown out for a week to see me over the summer and our Mother had come to visit me in late September. She smiled the whole time she was there but I thought it seemed a little close to the smile I wore when I was trying to pretend I was happy. I could see in her eyes that she was seeing Italy as she had in years gone by with my Father and I think she was happy only when the time came for her to leave. So when Christmas was nearly upon us I booked a return trip to go home for a week and it was good to see my family and few friends again.

And then in early spring just before my twenty-third birthday, well that's when my story got a little more complicated, because this is when I met Nika. There was a spark but I didn't realise what was happening at first.

Because you see Nika is a girl. I'd kissed a few girls before, always alcohol induced, usually for a dare or a game but never like this. I had never wanted to kiss a girl like this before, it was frightening and intense and completely consuming.