Snapped

SNAPPED

If only I hadn’t rummaged in Carly’s handbag tonight, desperately searching for my keys that seemed to have disappeared.  If I’d not had one too many drinks, and in that intoxicated haze mistaken her brown bag for my own.  If I’d been more sober, I’d have never found that photo, a photo that was clearly intended for their eyes only.

There they are, my best friend and my fiancé, their infatuation cruelly captured by the camera.  Their faces glow.  Their eyes, staring at me through the lens, say it all.

In that moment, alongside the kaleidoscope of visceral emotions that flood me, a bitter taste rises from my belly to my throat.  I try to catch my breath.  

Steady yourself.  Breathe.  That’s it, now another breath.

My stomach heaves from here to forever, a tumble-dry of despair.  

I cast my mind back to that moment – was it really just minutes away? - before everything changed.  Can it just be minutes since expecting Tom and I were going to be together forever?  To the time when the world had a luminosity that belonged to us, and only us.  To a time that lit the path ahead.  Marriage.  Magical trips overseas.  Back home to our house with the proverbial picket fence.  Nights where the bed sheets get crushed and sweat-soaked from the glorious passion of our love-making.  Our two, or maybe three children.  Discussions about which of the many prestigious schools might be best for our darlings.  A textbook-type reliability about our future life.

Have I misunderstood the photo?  Is it really an innocent shot of two friends together?      

But no, Carly would probably have shown me if that were the case.  There’s no mistaking the intimacy of his hand caressing her neck.  And more than that, the expressions on their faces give lie to any naïve interpretation.  They clearly have the look of two people in love.     

When was it taken?  And where?  It’s not a place that’s familiar to me. 

I swallow hard.  So this is what is real now.  It’s like a cruel sliver of glass has fragmented the life I’ve known, and the splintered remnants are smashed and scattered.

I shove the photo back in Carly’s bag, and slam it shut.  As if, provided I return it to its original home, it will no longer exist. 

I wait for the pain to subside.  But with each moment, the stubborn nausea in my belly refuses to be mollified.   

And then, for a conciliatory moment, my body feels a gratifying anaesthesia. A stillness.  

Because this can’t be real.  I try to tell myself I’m immersed in a nightmare, and I’ll wake up soon.  This thought allows me to go numb.

But numbness is the first stage of grief, isn’t it?  Of course.  Who wouldn’t want to deny this impossible agony?  

Unfortunately the moment of stillness doesn’t last.  An avalanche of veracity comes crashing back.  It’s like a punch in the gut that threatens to completely knock me senseless.  My heart is thumping so hard I fear it could burst through the wall of my chest.  

The pain is accompanied by a familiar internal condemnation, one I’ve always struggled with.  

Well, what did you expect?  You’ve always known you weren’t good enough.  You’re aware there are a thousand ways you don’t measure up.  Your body is far from perfect.  Come to think of it, why would Tom prefer you?  Just look at Carly’s voluptuous figure.  Those boobs that you know you’d die for. Those legs up to her neck.  Lips that would sing to any man who yearns for the melody of lust.  

Then another voice enters into the internal dialogue.  It’s a voice clothed in an unfamiliar emotion, an emotion I can’t yet name.  

It speaks first to Carly.   How could you do this to me?  Have you forgotten all those years of us growing up together?  All the way through school and university.  Those nights, dotted right through our lives, when we shared confidences about our latest crushes.  You were the first one to know about Tom.  You were the one who encouraged me to take the initiative and invite him to that party.  It was you who reassured me every time I went through one of my periods of doubt when I thought Tom might prefer one of the other girls who crowded around him.  “Don’t be ridiculous,” you told me.  “Tom adores you.”  You were the one who supported me.  

But no!  You were the one who I thought supported me through my insecurities and fears and doubts. 

And to Tom.  Why, why, why?  You told me you loved me.  Many times.  Did something happen to change your feelings for me?  Or...or were you pretending? Surely not, but... It  was just last night you made love to me.  How could you make...what the...what were you doing?  Was it just a charade?  Did I imagine you sighed with contentment afterwards, when we lay there in the dark?  I think...I thought you told me just last night you loved me...but maybe that’s my wishful thinking distorting reality.  Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time!

What is reality?  My life is like a thousand pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that I’d almost finished putting together, but suddenly all the pieces lie disengaged and scattered, and none of the parts seem to fit any more.

Now the tears fall.  Like a thunderstorm with rain that refuses to stop.  What’s that sound that comes from my throat?  A sound I can’t seem to quieten.  Deep.  Guttural.  Loud.

Someone will hear you!

My usual pattern.  Always worried about what others might think.

I wish I’d never seen that photo.  

For a brief moment, there’s a paradoxical mix of heartbreak and something else that has always been alien to me.  

I’ve never known rage before.

And  suddenly I’m not who I’ve always been: the me who’s concerned what others might think of my sounds, my thoughts or my actions.  Instead the beast in me has been woken.  It’s a beast I struggle to recognise, and would previously have felt fearful of.  But with the frenzy of rage there’s a metamorphosis: from the mild-mannered woman I’ve transformed into this wild uncontrollable creature I’m unable to still.  I’ve lost sight of reason, as I go to the drawer in the kitchen and search for the sharpest knife I can find.  

For just a split second, I question myself, but the beast has taken over my being.  Nothing else exists as I head for the lounge room.  

I take delight in seeing the look of sheer terror on Carly’s face as she spots the knife in my hand.  Tom leaps in front of her.  This stirs the animal in me even more, and now there’s no stopping me as I lunge forward. 

I’m no longer in charge of the me I’ve become.  The old me is detached from the scene as I step back and review the sight of blood flowing from their bodies.  

I feel powerful for the first time in my life.  And I like the feeling.  

Perhaps I might never return from this new persona.