Paradise Lost

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Abuse, violence, mental health issues.

There used to be doves in the sky. Gliding, white-feathered, across blue expanses. They swirled in the air below billowing clouds. I could only follow with my eyes but follow I did, soaring alongside them. They lifted me, raising my spirits with each swift wing beat. I found inspiration in every soft coo. I fed them on the balcony of my lake house in the summer, offering seeds and scraps. I breathed in the freedom they represented, hoping it would energise me.

My heaven was a quiet weekend by the lake with friends. Sunsets that filled the horizon with golden streamers fanning out above the world. Fanciful yellow and red and every colour between, lit our evening hours. The ancient broadleaf woodland was the perfect backdrop for my paradise.

He didn’t like the lake, with its muddy banks, midges, gnats, and isolation. He saw no beauty in the trees; they didn’t move him. Not much did. We spent more and more time at his city apartment. He invited me to keep some stuff there. Just a toothbrush first, then clothes and shoes and books, and over the weeks, I drifted into his life full time. Fresh woodland air became traffic fumes that irritated my lungs. Majestic green oaks became sad concrete high rises that shielded the horizon from view. Gentle white doves became dirty grey pigeons with missing toes and bad attitudes. And in London you are never more than six feet from a rat.

He was right though – we were living together now and almost never went to the lake anymore. It was an expense we didn’t need, a liability. The city was more practical for work, and you can’t have both. I sold up and handed the keys over in December, so that I wouldn’t be leaving it in its full summer glory – that might have broken my heart.

I wanted to take my favourite old armchair to London, the hand made one with the pale green upholstery and sweet little bun feet. There was a space in the living room corner where I imagined myself writing and chatting to friends on the phone. But he preferred to buy a new one from Ikea and well, you can’t have both.

To help me settle in and feel at home in the city, he’d bring me roses on a Sunday and tell me they were my favourite. I like lilies. But I couldn’t have both and he pointed out that roses smell better. I don’t have much of a sense of smell since the infection, though he did bring me fruit in the hospital every day. I’d have killed for a bag of cherries, but grapes are more traditional, and you can’t have both.

I lived for small pleasures. The fresh cinnamon rolls from the local bakery were divine. The organic café on the corner served an all-day breakfast with nitrate free bacon and sausages that were 100% pork. The coffee wasn’t great there, but down the road there was an independent coffee shop with fifteen different flavoured syrups. I worked my way through all the latte options before settling on black cherry. Once or twice a week I had a luxury black forest hot chocolate with all the trimmings instead. I found my heaven through my stomach and my stomach started to show that fact.

He noticed my chubby face first, and the marks my jeans had started to leave on my waist. Then he made me weigh myself in front of him every Monday morning. After a month he banned me from eating out at all except for one black americano a week – no sugar. He wanted to preserve my lithe figure, and you can’t have both. How could he ever propose if he wasn’t sure the ring would fit me three months later? He was right, of course. I needed to look after my health.

He bought me cookbooks with low sugar, low carbs, low fat, low appeal. I cooked for us both every day so that I learned a range of healthy recipes. It wasn’t too often that he grabbed a burger on the way home and his dinner went in the bin. I tried not to cry. He didn’t find tears attractive.

I only worked mornings at the estate agents. I enjoyed it but was keen to keep some time for myself and, when he was home, he took up all of my attention. I suggested we get a cleaner so that I could join a local volunteering centre and meet new people when I wasn’t at work, and he wasn’t at home. He gave me that look. Within a few weeks I’d quit my job and stopped harping on about a home help. The apartment had to be redecorated - and kept spick and span at all times, and there were plenty of errands he needed me run, so there was no time for volunteering – you can’t have both.

Since I no longer had a job, I didn’t need a separate bank account. He kindly came with me to close mine, so he could make sure I didn’t get fleeced on whatever interest was owing. We opened a joint one so I could have a debit card, and we put my savings in with his – it was more economical that way. He had a good financial set up, mine had clearly been inferior, and as a couple you can’t have both. It did make sense.

He took down my £200 blue velvet curtains, the last remaining link I had to the luxuries of my lake house. In their place came wooden slatted blinds. He’d bought them cheap in a homeware closing down sale. Well, you can’t have both, and the blinds would be easier for me to clean. I saw my curtains in a charity shop window on the high street two weeks later. I knew they were mine, I’d initialled the care labels. I’d have bought them back, but he counted every penny I spent since I wasn’t bringing anything in – it was only fair.

Unsure what was wrong, I cried on the phone to my remaining friends from further south. Most of them had kids now and little time for my nonsense. He would remind me of that when he came home early and found me surrounded by tissues in the precious Ikea armchair he never sat in.

He accidentally took my phone to work with him one day and answered all my calls as a courtesy. I didn’t see it again. We had a landline. The itemised bills would let him keep on top of who I was bothering, and you can’t have both, anyway.

I enjoyed my one sanctioned coffee a week at the coffee shop down the road and got friendly with the waitress who worked there on Fridays. She started coming over when her shift finished at 3pm and we’d chat and giggle together at the kitchen table. After a few weeks of this he came home early one day while we were still nattering. He was very polite as he explained that she needed to head home now so that we could have some quality time together. And then I found out what I could have both of. His right hurt me more than his left, but they were each strong enough to bruise his knuckles, and for that I was very apologetic.

To make up for me spending so much time on my own, he bought me a top-of-the-range coffee machine and set it up on the worktop. We had some fun trying out how to make all the different drinks. I felt like I had something truly in common with my barista friend from the coffee shop. But of course, because we had the machine now - and were paying for the pods and filters, I didn’t need to go there anymore. You can’t have both.

Loneliness snapped at my ankles for a while until one day it caught me and swallowed me whole. I shook on the sofa, tears tracking down my face and onto the carpet. They didn’t comfort me. Maybe he would? He came home to the breakfast dishes still piled by the sink, the oven cold and no coffee brewed. Was I so ungrateful? Why did I make him hurt me?

I fell blindly from kitchen scourer and bathroom bleach to cooking tasteless vegetable stew to ironing, ironing, ironing. I had conversations with the hoover, and maybe it began to talk back to me. It had a better attitude than the washing machine or kettle. I became convinced that the other household appliances were at least partially conscious. After all, if they weren’t, how could I be?

I tried to hide my mental decline, but he saw the truth – that I was weak and ill-equipped to deal with life. He got sick of my crying and self-pity and drove me to a head doctor. I sat in the corner of a small office, hiding the shame in my cheeks behind the green fronds of a parlour palm while the two middle-aged men in suits discussed my ‘predicament.’ Apparently, he had done everything he could to support my move to London, but the city was getting to me, and I had failed to thrive here. He’d tried to persuade me to meet new people and get out more, but I hadn’t even found a job and spent my days wallowing in despair of my own making. I wasn’t asked for my own opinion. The doctor had dirty grey-brown hair and lines of filth deep under his nails. He also had limited time and more important things to do.

The drugs made me sleep but that was worse than being awake. Terrible dreams mingled with terrible memories and terrible memories mingled with terrible dreams. I heard things that weren’t really there and wondered if I was awake or not. It wasn’t clear what was real anymore unless there was pain. His fists were real and so were my injuries. Eventually he took me to a hospital where they listened to him recount the story of my suicidal ideation and how if I threw myself down the stairs one more time it might be the end of me.

He reminded me of how beautiful I used to be before he left me there. He said he couldn’t understand what had gone so badly wrong and why I had reduced myself to this self-loathing mess. It was embarrassing.

But he will always look after me and he pays for private care - out of the proceeds from my lake house of course. He’s got the best doctors on my case, but he couldn’t afford a nice room, not really. You can’t have both.

The new medication makes me slow and keeps me quiet. That’s fine since my opinions are no longer valid.

It’s always close and sweaty in my basement home. I miss the sky. The orange security light from the corridor breaks under the door at night and sets a hellish tone. There is one tiny rectangular window, at street level. It’s too high up the wall for me to look out of, but it lets in a little sun on a bright day. That adds to the heat and to my discomfort.

The sewers run beneath my floor, dark and festering like my thoughts. I hear the scratching at dusk and dawn. They are eking out a life, like I am, in the only way we can.

I’ve seen a rat once before. He had dirty grey-brown hair, filth under his nails, and was wearing a suit. The sign on his door said ‘Psychiatrist.’ His rat hole was filled with certificates in frames, but it still stank of shit.

I’m on a high calorie diet until I put some meat back on my bones, but it’s hard to find an appetite now, and the coffee is dreadful. I leave what I can’t eat for them. They sneak through gaps in the skirting boards and up to my dish, washing their dirty grey-brown hair with their tiny, filthy hands when they’ve finished. I breathe in the plague they represent, hoping it will kill me.

There used to be doves in the sky, but now there are rats in the walls, and you can’t have both.