of the city and I knew, as we approached the final station, that I was going to continue to see Rachel even though I didn't want to. And then, as we slowed, I decided the opposite. We were going to break up. And that was how it went: a circling of decision, with my mind changing and shifting with each clack of the tracks. As we came to a halt it ticked back and forth increasingly slowly. Split up. Stay together.
Split up.
Stay together.
'The train terminates at this stop.'
Everybody started to get up, to get their things together. The carriage was full of the sound of bags scraping off the luggage racks; the aisle, with bodies stretching and shifting. The politely tense commotion of a journey coming to its end. It was almost a competition, and I always avoided it.
Split up.
I stayed sitting down while everyone around me rummaged and shuffled, side-stepped and squeezed out in between people who would quite clearly love to kill everyone in their way.
But not Rachel. She was just sitting there. She'd woken up, but she still looked sleepy as she gave me a bleary-eyed smile. I got the impression that right now the borderline between the train and her bed was a little blurry, and suddenly there was something quite sweet about that. I smiled back.
'Hey,' she said.
'Hey.'
And then - without warning - she did what I'd wanted her to do all along: she rested her head on my shoulder and her loosely curled hand on my thigh. All around us, people were fighting to get off, and it was at this point that she'd finally decided to touch me, lean on me. She wasn't getting up and pressing me to move into the throng, but doing the exact opposite and keeping me seated.
Maybe another day she would have got up. But that day it hadn't even entered her head; she'd just leaned against me because she wanted to.
Stay together.
So we sat like that for a bit. I put my hand on hers and gave it a squeeze. When the aisle was half-empty, Rachel turned her hand round and squeezed mine in return, and then she started to gather herself upright.
'Come on, then.'
'Yeah,' I said.
That was how it all started with Rachel. Not when I met her (that had been in a bar, where she'd been both startlingly and refreshingly indifferent to everyone, including me when I started speaking to her) but when I made the decision that the relationship was worth sticking with. Not because she lit up my life or because I was inspired by her, and not because it was perfect. But simply because ... she wanted me. And she clearly had something about her that was worth a lot. It felt like it should be enough to work with.
And as the months passed, I realised with some relief that it had been the right choice. Everything relaxed. We both let down those everyday guards that we hadn't been aware we'd had, and we accepted our mutual baggage: kicked it around a bit, got an idea of the shape and heft. Within a year, I couldn't imagine a life without her, and I know that she felt the same because even now, four months after we'd split up, she was finding it difficult.
The problem was the different feelings inside me at the time that led me to make that choice. I was telling myself that I needed to accept what I had, when I should have been appreciating the plain truth that there was nothing better. There are always problems.
Nothing is perfect; every relationship requires effort and compromise.
By not understanding that, I was setting myself up for a fall when someone came along who seemed to fulfil an ideal that only existed in my own head.
It's the same as a wound. Unless you get the bullet out, the skin might heal over the metal but the bullet's always there. You get these people sometimes: they live with shrapnel close to their spine or in their head, and there's always the danger that something might shift slightly and then suddenly everything's in jeopardy. My self-doubt was a little like that. I should have got rid of it somehow, and then perhaps everything would have been
Split up.
Stay together.
'The train terminates at this stop.'
Everybody started to get up, to get their things together. The carriage was full of the sound of bags scraping off the luggage racks; the aisle, with bodies stretching and shifting. The politely tense commotion of a journey coming to its end. It was almost a competition, and I always avoided it.
Split up.
I stayed sitting down while everyone around me rummaged and shuffled, side-stepped and squeezed out in between people who would quite clearly love to kill everyone in their way.
But not Rachel. She was just sitting there. She'd woken up, but she still looked sleepy as she gave me a bleary-eyed smile. I got the impression that right now the borderline between the train and her bed was a little blurry, and suddenly there was something quite sweet about that. I smiled back.
'Hey,' she said.
'Hey.'
And then - without warning - she did what I'd wanted her to do all along: she rested her head on my shoulder and her loosely curled hand on my thigh. All around us, people were fighting to get off, and it was at this point that she'd finally decided to touch me, lean on me. She wasn't getting up and pressing me to move into the throng, but doing the exact opposite and keeping me seated.
Maybe another day she would have got up. But that day it hadn't even entered her head; she'd just leaned against me because she wanted to.
Stay together.
So we sat like that for a bit. I put my hand on hers and gave it a squeeze. When the aisle was half-empty, Rachel turned her hand round and squeezed mine in return, and then she started to gather herself upright.
'Come on, then.'
'Yeah,' I said.
That was how it all started with Rachel. Not when I met her (that had been in a bar, where she'd been both startlingly and refreshingly indifferent to everyone, including me when I started speaking to her) but when I made the decision that the relationship was worth sticking with. Not because she lit up my life or because I was inspired by her, and not because it was perfect. But simply because ... she wanted me. And she clearly had something about her that was worth a lot. It felt like it should be enough to work with.
And as the months passed, I realised with some relief that it had been the right choice. Everything relaxed. We both let down those everyday guards that we hadn't been aware we'd had, and we accepted our mutual baggage: kicked it around a bit, got an idea of the shape and heft. Within a year, I couldn't imagine a life without her, and I know that she felt the same because even now, four months after we'd split up, she was finding it difficult.
The problem was the different feelings inside me at the time that led me to make that choice. I was telling myself that I needed to accept what I had, when I should have been appreciating the plain truth that there was nothing better. There are always problems.
Nothing is perfect; every relationship requires effort and compromise.
By not understanding that, I was setting myself up for a fall when someone came along who seemed to fulfil an ideal that only existed in my own head.
It's the same as a wound. Unless you get the bullet out, the skin might heal over the metal but the bullet's always there. You get these people sometimes: they live with shrapnel close to their spine or in their head, and there's always the danger that something might shift slightly and then suddenly everything's in jeopardy. My self-doubt was a little like that. I should have got rid of it somehow, and then perhaps everything would have been
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