By bike

Next to my house is a road that runs in between the sea and the mountains. In a car, it is beautiful; by foot it is calming.

By bike it is bloody hard work.

With messy relationships - particularly those that begin messily, and then continue messily, and then end very, very messily - the mess doesn’t necessarily limit itself to one room: it gets carried far and wide, and it’s only later - when you can’t get it out of the carpet - you realise how long it is going to take to really clean up properly. And that the explosion was just the beginning.

On Saturday, I went with my closest friend to the hairdressers. It was my idea, but she ended up dragging me: I decided at the last minute that I didn’t want to go (and went as far as offering to pay her to cancel it).

“No; you’re coming,” she told me. “You’re going to sit there and you’re going to get your hair cut nicely, whether you like it or not.”
“I don’t like it,” I told her.
“I don’t care,” she replied briskly.

Ten minutes into getting my hair cut, I was bright red and my chin was wobbling. As the hairdresser chatted in Japanese and I tried to reply, I realised that I couldn’t meet her eye in the mirror: worse, that I couldn’t meet my own, either. And - as I stared at the table and the ceiling light and my hairdressers’ apron - I realised that I hadn’t looked at myself in a mirror for nearly a year. To wash my face, to brush my hair, to clean my teeth: yes. But I had not looked: not at myself, not making real eye contact, not liking what I saw there or who I saw there. I had avoided it completely. And now that I was being forced to, it was making me want to cry.

I spent the remaining twenty minutes staring at my lap and speaking in a smaller and smaller and wobblier and wobblier voice.

The minute I came out of the hairdressers, I got a hair band out with a sensation of panic and tied my hair back again.
“What the hell are you doing?” my friend demanded. “Why are you tying it up?”
“I just want to,” I mumbled.
“But it looks great!”
“It doesn’t,” I mumbled again. “I just… I want it out of my face that’s all.”
My friend stopped walking and grabbed my arm.
“Let it down again,” she said. “This minute.”
“I can’t. I just can’t, ok?”
“Why not?”
“Just…. Just let it be, okay?” I snapped, my cheeks getting hotter and hotter.
“Why?”
“Just leave me alone,” I said as politely as I could, and tried to carry on walking.
My friend grabbed my arm again, and this time her chin was wobbling too.
“Oh, God, Holly. Look at you. I didn’t realise how much of a mess you still are; I didn't realise what all this has done to you. You don’t have any confidence at all, do you.”

And - confronted with confirmation of what I thought I had managed to hide so well - I abruptly burst into tears and sat down on the kerb.

The Boy has been in contact again: is doing very well, apparently, and healing nicely. I, however, am not: the mess exploded too far and too wide, and got into all of my carpets. I no longer believe I am worth anything: I can no longer meet my own eyes in the mirror. And admitting that I have started to hate myself is one of the hardest things I have ever done.

I don’t really know what to do; I don’t know how to get myself back. I don't know how to get back to being somebody who can sit in a hairdressers chair for an hour, chatting to a hairdresser, and look us both in the eye when I'm talking; to get back the girl who walks out believing she looks good. I don't know how to get back the girl who thought she was worth loving, or talking to, or being with. Because, right now, I don't at all. Not at all.

“Start running,” my friend said when I had eventually stopped crying. “Do sport. It makes me feel better immediately.” And I laughed, because “sport” seemed a ridiculous way to solve the problem: what was wrong was on the inside of me, and having nicely toned limbs wouldn't change a thing.

When I had stopped laughing - and realised I still felt the same, and neither getting my hair cut nor crying on the kerb had fixed anything - I decided I didn’t have a lot to lose by trying it.

Today, I went for a bike ride on the road that runs in between the sea and the mountains. The road that I normally take by car, and occasionally by foot. The road that is normally beautiful, and calming, but that is all. On a particularly hard hill, I fought the incredibly strong urge to just stop cycling and walk: swore and cursed my way up until my legs were burning and sweat was in my eyes. And then, when I got the top, the pain abruptly stopped and I sailed down the other side: in between the mountains and the sea, with the sun in my face, crying for a reason I couldn’t understand. Crying, perhaps, because it had stopped hurting. And because coming down was so amazing that it had made it all worth it.

The climb at the moment is so incredibly hard; the climb to believe in who I am again, and what I am, and who I can become. It seems, at the moment, impossible; and it's getting harder with time, not easier: the hill is wearing me out. But it’s a journey I can't take my car, or by foot: I can't take the easy route. I have to take the road by bike: the hard way, and the way that hurts, and the way that means something. The way that makes my body stronger, in the hope that it will make my mind stronger too.

And maybe when I've cycled far enough, and I'm strong enough, it will stop hurting, and the bit on the other side will make it all worth while.