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Isolation

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

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It happened slowly. So slowly, that I didn't even realise it was happening.

When are you going to be online?

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Ah, a message. It could be so innocent. He misses me, I thought. It's sweet. It's nice to be missed. Sometimes, no one else seems to miss me.

But then it happened again. And again. Whenever I was out, my phone would ping with a message, if I was back too late. And I never knew when "too late" would be.

I don't know why it was so insistent, why he was so insistent. It didn't seem real, the lines of text on the screen. It could be another life, another world... But the reality of it is that it's my world. It's my world that this is in, that it effects.

Maybe it was innocent. Maybe it was not. From how things ended up, it was not. Though my mind still likes to tell me otherwise.

I wanted to go out, wanted to see friends. I remember rushing back from the cinema. I couldn't even go out for that time without my phone pinging with message after message. I knew it was there, the pressure, everything rising, mounting, coming to the top of it all, one thing after another. My fingers twitched for my phone.

I couldn't even read. I wanted to read, I wanted to play a game... But I always had to be available.

You seem distracted.

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Couldn't I read? Why couldn't I read? It didn't make sense. Other people got to read, do normal things. That didn't apply to me, for some reason, but I just could not see why I was the exception to the rule.

He just wanted me there. He wanted my attention, all of the time. Even if I did not have it in return, I had to give it to him, waiting there, attentively, patiently, while he played games.

Did I disturb him or not? If he was distracted, I couldn't mention it. But there I was, complicit in my isolation. I did it, didn't I? I must have done it to myself, trying to be a good girlfriend, trying to do the best I could, always.

I didn't understand. It didn't make sense. He didn't want me to get a full-time job after I finished university. But I only saw that as a perfectly normal thing, something that people at least tried to do after spending so many years on their studies. It was hard enough to get a job and how else was anyone supposed to earn enough to live on a part-time wage or salary?

But then you won't be around as much.

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That's what he said, that's what he wanted. He wanted me there, even if I didn't get afforded the same courtesy - and just why would I? People in relationships... They were supposed to have their own lives, right? They needed jobs.

What I knew did not match up with my reality.

Someone to turn to... Hah, who was I kidding? It was only him. Anytime I went out with others, there would go my phone, ping, ping, ping, over and over again. There was always a message waiting there and it did not take a genius to realise that the arguments came when I went out, when I did things that I wasn't supposed to do.

Like see friends. Like have connections. By the time that I realised something was wrong, I'd lost all of them, my friends. The people who could have pulled me out of it, shown me that something darker and more twisted was going on, something that came with a thread of poison curdling through the core.

I couldn't go horse riding. I couldn't go for a walk. I couldn't go to a museum. I couldn't do anything. Anything from the computer was okay, that meant that I could still talk to him, give him attention. Maybe being at the computer, my status set to "online", meant that he could keep an eye on me, that he knew where I was at all times.

Eventually, I didn't have the energy to do anything anyway, so it ceased to matter in my isolation. I became very familiar with the four walls of my bedroom, the fairy lights strung around the edge of my wardrobe, how the paint was peeling off the wall and there was damp in one corner. The edges of my poster lifted. I tried to play a game but, in my isolation, I just didn't have the concentration.

The early signs were ones that I could have gotten out and away from, if I'd known what they were. But the end ones left me breathless and dragging the duvet under my head. A little more sleep, just a little more, I told myself. If I didn't rise to face the day, maybe I wouldn't have to face him.

Funny how someone so far away can sink their claws into your soul. It shouldn't happen but it can happen. And you won't even know it's happening, ignoring that stir of unease in the pit of your stomach, the cloying insistence in the thought that, without any so-called real reason, something is wrong.

Do you listen to that feeling? You should.

Everyone left. I wasn't around. I just lay there, staring at the fairy lights, the twinkle and the gleam.

Don't do anything. Don't say anything wrong. Be there. Do what you're supposed to.

That's all it was for me, all in my isolation. But he was okay with it, so, really, shouldn't I have been okay with it too?

I didn't know and I couldn't say because all of those that could have told me otherwise, well, they were long gone.

Blinking, I stared at the fairy lights, not moving, alcohol swilling in my stomach, eyelids heavier and heavier. Sleep was the greatest isolation of them all but the isolation I craved. For it was the only thing that could take me away from him.

Only... I didn't want to leave that isolation. It was comfortable. It was safe. It was a place where even he could not get to me.

Breathe in...

Breathe out...

Stare at the same four walls...

All over again...

And back to sweet isolation, eyelids closing, slipping away into darkness. Sweet, blissful isolation.

He couldn't follow me there.

I didn't want to wake up again.