Queues

You can run as fast as you like, but when you stop - and you always have to stop - the truth catches up. And if you happen to be at the front of a sixty five minute queue in the middle of Le Louvre at the time: so be it. It will find you, and it will knock you right out of the queue again. Which probably won't impress the person you've been queuing with. Sixty five minutes is a long wait to have to do all over again.

I have had two and a half of the busiest weeks I can remember ever having. Two and a half weeks of everything: of Morocco and Shisha pipe and swimming and meat and orange juice and cigarettes and donkeys and camels and stars and Paris and wine and wine and wine and wine and cheese and wine and more cheese and bed bouncing and bread and more cigarettes and pain au chocolat and boats and umbrellas and laughing; of London and burgers and wine and pizza; of Bristol and dancing and cocktails and shouting and singing and starting a fight with a homeless man because he was rude to me. I've drowned myself in good food and good drink and good company: friends, family, and a host of peculiar strangers. I've received a chat-up line so accidentally funny that the poor guy thought it had worked ("God, you're gorgeous. You look just like Kate Moss.... Although you might not. To be honest, I'm pretty much blind"); I got given contact details by a nice looking and respectable 30 year old doctor and the afore mentioned homeless man ("Changed my mind. You're not stuck up after all. I like you. Come and see me again. I'll be.... here."). It was a fantastic holiday: great fun, and an enormous success. I laughed a lot, I saw a lot, and I travelled a lot. I know that, because I'm now far more tired than I was when I left and far, far poorer.

Five countries in 14 days, and it wasn't until I got into that goddamn queue that what I was running from came and grabbed me by the throat. And I mean as literally as a metaphorical thing can grab. I actually felt its cold little metaphorical fingers holding on to my windpipe.

"And," I continued mercilessly to my friend, fifty five minutes into talking at her: "there's a bit in this book that talks about this concept of immortality as being part of the wider..."
"Hol," she said tiredly. "Please. Stop."
"Stop what?"
"It's okay to be quiet, you know. It's nine am, I've not had coffee, the air conditioning isn't working in here and I'm sick of queuing. I really can't talk about immortality right now. Really. I can't. I just can't."
I looked at her with wide eyes.
"Oh."
"Just not right now, okay? We can talk about immortality and Eastern European works of literature later. When I've been to Starbucks."
My eyes got wider.
"Okay."
And then I looked at a far point of a naked statue and felt - strangely, inexplicably and completely unexpectedly - my chin wobbling violently. Just as I was trying to work out why my chin was wobbling, something invisible put its hand round my throat and I discovered that I couldn't breathe.
"Hol? Jesus. Are you okay?"
"Mmm."
I tried to get my breath, started shaking, realised that tears were pouring down my face, and discovered to my horror that - in front of approximately 2,000 French people and a handful of Americans - I was having what I could only assume was a panic attack. Having never had one before I couldn't be sure, but if I had been carrying a paper bag I would probably have reached for it.
"Oh fuck," my friend said, and dragged me out of the queue and into a corner behind a statue of a woman with an abnormally large bottom.

I sat on the floor behind a statue in one of the greatest museums in the world - surrounded by some of the most beautiful art in the world, in one of the most amazing cities in the world - and I huffed and I puffed and I cried as quietly as I possibly could, with my chest aching and my knees shaking, and my friend staring at me in astonishment. It was the last day of Paris: we had had a glorious, funny, comfortable, reassuring holiday. And nothing had prepared either of us for this.

"Shit," she said finally. "If you want to talk about Milan Kundera that badly then let's talk about Milan Kundera. I haven't had my coffee yet but I'll wing it."
I sobbed in silence a couple more times (I rarely make noise when I cry: I just sort of start... weeping. Literally weeping. As if I'm too full of liquid).
"Shit. Shit. Umm, have you read The Unbearable Lightness of Being? What did you think of the translation?"
I took a breath and managed to squeeze out, from in between the fingers of the thing holding on to me:
"It's. Not. About. Kundera."
"It's not?"
I shook my head.
"What is it, then?"
I opened and shut my mouth a few more times, like a little panicky goldfish.
"Is it dickhead?"
"No. Yes. No. Yes." I shook my head a few times. "No."
"No?"
"It's not."
"It's not?"
"No. It's not about him. It's about me. You're right: I can't be quiet. I'm scared to stop, even for a minute. I don't know who I am anymore, or what I want, or what I can do. And a big bit of it is because of him and how much he hurt me, but mostly it's because of me. I've never been on my own before. Not really on my own. Not since I was a teenager. I'm twenty eight, and I've jumped from relationship to fling to relationship to fling, and there has always been somebody: to think about, to try and love, to try and not love, to arrange my life around, to put first, to care about more than I care about me. Always a man in my life, stopping me from being.... just me. And now... It's all stopped, and I'm alone, and I'm me, and the minute I stay still I start to panic, because I don't know who I am without it. I don't know what I'm worth without being told by a man. I don't know how to love myself without seeing love in the eyes of somebody I'm seeing. I depend on being adored to feel like I am worth being adored. And I can't stop talking because as soon as the silence starts I start wishing I wasn't ... me. And I don't know how to make it better."

At least, that is what I was trying to say. What I actually said was a string of unrelated words, joined together by sobs and hiccups.

Nina rubbed my back for a few minutes, deep in thought. And then she said what I needed her to say, which was:
"Fuck."
I nodded.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
I shrugged. "What am I going to say? Hey, buddy, how's tricks? Long time no see. How's the house hunt/ job/ boyfriend? I want to die. Shall we get some cheese?"
"But you are loved. You should be letting the people in your life who do love you love you, Hol. We can't do that if you don't tell us what's wrong."
"I tell my blog."
"Your blog isn't going to queue twice in the Louvre so it can rub your back when you cry, can it. You need to tell people, Holly. Not internet sites."
"It's easier to write it," I sniffed.
"Of course it is! It's not real! Why aren't you telling the people who can help you?"
"Because I'm ashamed. For being weak. And for needing people."
"Be ashamed that you're talking about Milan Kundera at 9am without so much as a sniff of Cappuccino. Not because you're falling apart and need a few cuddles now and then."

So we talked. I stopped crying, the hand around my throat released itself, and we talked. And then - when we had finished talking - I went home and I talked, honestly, to my parents and my sister and my two other best friends. And I resisted the irrationally strong urge to text the cute Doctor back, because that's what I would have done at any other stage in my life: run straight to my next source of adoration, arms wide open. Straight into the arms of whatever I could find that would make me feel whole again, so I wouldn't have to do it myself.

This time, I didn't. I didn't need to. The love I need has been there all the time: it just hasn't been romantic. My family and friends sang my praises until I blushed. And, when I had stopped crying, I realised that the weight had started lifting already. Because it wasn't just me anymore, struggling against my own loneliness, and my own confusion, and myself. I had people to fight with me. And if I couldn't see my way out - despite the exercise, despite the yoga, despite the wine, despite the laughter, despite the cheese, for God's sake, and cheese normally does it - then I needed other people to stand up and show me the way. To hold up a torch so I could see in the dark.

I'm in a hole: a hole I fell into by accident, and haven't quite worked out how to get out of. A hole I've been digging for ten years: ten years of putting myself second, and needing somebody else to put me first. But I know I'm there, now, and so I know I can start climbing back out again; start putting myself first, and working out what it is I want to do with my life. This holiday hasn't just given me laughter and dancing and wine - all of which were much needed, and have done their part - it has shown me, finally, that I'm not on my own. That there is a rope, thrown in, ready to pull me out again. And it has forced me to take control, and start climbing. Because I have no other choice: not if I want to visit public museums without humiliating myself again.

I'm at the front of my life for once, and behind me I now have a very different kind of queue to the one I ran out of in Paris: a queue of people  who adore me. Who believe in everything I do: who defend my mistakes, and cheer my moments of glory. Who see me with such adoring eyes that even the faintest reflection lifts and strengthens and inspires. Whose love I can feed off, and grow stronger. My very own, private army.

With an army the size and quality of mine - an army with so much wisdom, and so much affection, and so much ability to drink huge quantities of wine and eat boxes of Camembert - there aren't many things I can't battle against and win.

And that includes myself.