PartOne
Happy Talk
ChapterOne
Have you ever tried to meditate? And if so, did you find it nigh on impossible? I don’t know why it’s so hard, because it seems pretty simple on the surface: sit still, breathe deeply, clear your mind. In reality, you might as well ask me to design and assemble a NASA space rocket from scratch – I think I’d find it easier.
I have been coming to these sessions for months now, and I wonder if they know I am a complete fraud – that while everyone else is serenely finding their inner peace, I am sitting here, cross-legged, pondering everything from what I need to buy from the supermarket to the leak in the downstairs loo to the fact that I’m overdue for my smear test. My mind is like an endless spin-cycle on a washing machine, my thoughts churning and tumbling, any hints of calm drowned out of existence.
We’ve been told not to expect to have clear minds – that most of us might struggle to turn our mental landscape into a blank canvas. Thoughts are normal, we’re told – but when they start to intrude, just gently swat them away like you would a curious butterfly that gets too close to your face.
Except my thoughts aren’t curious butterflies – they’re murder hornets.
I suspect I have been wasting my time, and that I should have been doing something more productive instead, like eating a cake or watching Netflix or sleeping. Except…well, I have trouble even enjoying those things these days. Hence the alleged meditation.
I am, truth be told, a bit of a mess right now. I hide it well: I manage a demanding job, I live in a swish house with a swish man, and nothing about the way I look screams ‘disaster zone on legs’. Inside, it’s a different story – murder hornets all the way.
I open my eyes a tiny crack, and glance around the room. Everyone else looks pretty blissed out, and I wonder if it’s just me who is feeling this way – just me who comes to a meditation class in search of calm and ends up feeling like a big fat failure of a woman who can’t even sit still properly. In fact, I find these classes stressful, which is pretty ironic really. I might be the only person who comes out with higher blood pressure than I started with.
I see the big clock on the wall at the front of the room, and feel a sense of relief when I realise that this self-enforced torture has almost finished.
The instructor tells us to think about who we are, to be grateful, to fill ourselves with love. I do my very best: I am Ella Farrell. I love my life. I love my job. I love my partner. I love myself. I repeat it over and over in my mind, but it’s hard to maintain a lie you’re telling yourself – in truth, I’m not sure I love any of those things any more. I’m not sure I have loved them for a long time. And I don’t feel grateful, I just feel empty.
The course leader moves on to the one part of the sessions I really enjoy, telling us all to go to our happy place. I have no idea what everyone else’s happy place is, but mine is easy – it’s a coastline. Wild and beautiful and free, with dazzling blue waves and soft sand beneath my feet and endless views of the edge of the world. I can almost feel the sunlight warming my skin, smell the salt in the air, hear the hiss of the water rolling into land. For those few moments, I almost fool myself – I am almost happy. I have found my nearly-happy place.
We finish up, roll mats, nod goodbyes. I see small clutches of women chatting, maybe planning to go for coffee, sharing stories and laughter and friendship. I just keep my head down, grab my backpack, and leave. I want to try and stay in my happy place for however many minutes my mind will let me.
I walk out of the building, still imagining that sand beneath my feet, that warmth against my skin, and emerge into reality.
I am in inner-city London. It is raining, and it is loud. I lurk by the edge of the pavement, momentarily stunned by the assault on my senses. A big red double decker bus whooshes past, splashing me with filthy gutter water. Two pigeons are fighting over a discarded sausage roll, and I notice that one of them only has one leg. I can hear sirens, and shouts, and am immediately approached by a man who could be anywhere between 30 and 90. His front teeth are missing, and he tells me he needs some change to pay for a night in a hostel.
I hand him a fiver and walk away before he can talk to me any more. I know I am being rude, that a few minutes of my time would be more compassionate than the cash. I can’t find it in myself to care, and I stride briskly ahead, avoiding eye contact with every other living creature around me – human, pigeon, even the big fake smiling faces on billboard ads.
My happy place is gone. I’m left with this – my actual place.
I need to go to work. I have a night shift at a drop-in health centre, and I have my clothes in my bag. I need to make my way there, shower, and put on my game face. Transform myself into a caring professional who can help people in their hour of need.
Except, I realise, as I narrowly avoid stepping into a pile of vomit on the pavement, that I don’t think I can. I don’t think I can help anyone any more. I don’t think I have anything left to give.
I stand still for a moment, frozen in time and space, the raucous rhythms of the city moving around me, people jostling me out of their way, the sound of a drill on a building site burying itself deep into my brain.
I have to go home, I think, hailing a black cab. I have to go home, and escape the murder hornets before it’s too late.
ChapterTwo
I stand outside the house I live in and stare at it. The cab driver leans his head out of the window, his sparse grey hair getting flattened by the incessant rain of our glorious English summer.
“You all right, love?” he asks, frowning.
“Perfect,” I reply, forcing a smile onto my rain-soaked face. “Never been better.”
He shakes his head, and I suspect he’s seen stranger things – cabbies have seen it all, haven’t they? The history of human existence should be written by Hackney drivers, I suspect.
He performs an impressive three-point turn and disappears in a cloud of diesel. I heft my bag onto my shoulder and get my keys ready. It is, quite obviously, very wet out here, and it will be much nicer inside four walls. Somehow, though, I still can’t quite face it.
I have lived here for eight years, and yet I still don’t think of it as home. It is a grand house on the outskirts of Regent’s Park, its façade a picture of Georgian grandeur, the inside all mod-cons and cool interior design. There are apple trees in the small garden, and a roof terrace that overlooks the park, and four double bedrooms. It is far too big for the two of us, I’ve always thought. Far too easy for distance to creep in when you have so much space to retreat to.
Mark’s Mercedes is parked in the drive, and I can picture him inside: crashed out on the sofa, maybe watching football, a glass of expensive wine in his hand. It’s always wasted on me, the good stuff; I’m a wine philistine.
