Falling Daisies

Chapter 27

Like all good decisions it had been a rash one. Making the phone call to Dad in Greece to ask to go and stay was seemingly stupid but as I stood at the airport gates, I knew getting away right now was for the best. I was never one to run away from my problems, just to accept them, but that was because my expectations were so low, I never was disappointed in the eventual outcome. Yet this time, as Ben had delivered his final blow it had hurt more than I thought it ever could, because this once – I had opened myself up and expected better, only to be crushed once again.

I didn’t want to leave, I wanted to fight but right now I wasn’t the warrior I needed to be, to fight a battle I’d go into sure to lose. I needed to give him time and I needed to give myself time. I was grieving too and it was hard because I didn’t feel like I had the right. I didn’t feel like I had the right to be sad. I’d known her the least and I yet I still felt trampled by her absence. At least with her just gone I still knew she was there... Now she was gone and only gone.

Death just didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t wrap my head around the finer points. I was ignorant to the afterlife because I didn’t want to imagine a time when everything would just stop. But now I was suddenly seeing the potential in everything. In the car that I drove that could crash at any second. In a busy street where I could be attacked. In the plane I was about to board that could malfunction at any moment... I turned on the news and it would be filled with death and tragedy and sadness and I just couldn’t breathe. I was suffocating on this life that I was leading.

It was meant to be my freedom time. I had had a whole summer of activities planned out with Ben but now it was mid-July and our lives had been turned upside down because of one thing. I had never thought he would react as he did... I couldn’t understand where it had come from but I guess I had never really understood him fully as a person. I’d gotten glimpses of his suppressed temper but I never knew what he had been. He was right; I had been living in this bubble of his perfection and not taken the time to see the flaws, the very real flaws. Everyone has them and often a person falls in love more with those than the good parts; the little things that make them unique and special. But he hadn’t given me a chance to love them too.

I knew everything he had said at the railway was just him lashing out because of guilt and grief but I had allowed the words to eat away at me until they became very real thoughts implanted in my own mind.  Maybe it had all been my fault. Most things were. Still, I wondered if he thought about me as half as often as I thought about him.

“Ticket please,” The smiling flight attended asked as I handed her my boarding card and passport.

I gave her them with a small, half smile back and once she’d checked everything was correct she motioned down to where I should go. I wheeled my hand luggage along the gateway and starred out at the bleak landscape and dreary English weather through the glass windows that would soon be replaced by the hot sun and sand of the Greek Islands, that I would call my home for the next month.

Another flight attendant checked my card again as I stepped onto the plane and pointed a finger to his right telling me that my seat was on the left hand side. I took my seat where there was already an elderly lady sat by the window who gave me a brief nod and grin before going back to her book whilst delving into her paper bag off toffee and placing a piece in her mouth, audibly chomping away. I took the aisle seat and hoped that the middle one would remain vacant through the flight, allowing me to stretch out a little.