Mundane choices

The tone of the iPhone, specifically, triggered it.  I used that particular "bling" for incoming e-mails, work e-mails, onto the phone, back when I was working in St Helier.

Gut-wrenching pain reverberates through me, momentarily, as I remember the familiar smell of my beautiful apartment on the Esplanade, overlooking the yachts, and the walk to St Aubin's beach, 3 km of pure bliss as the tide was out, gazing longingly at the sand and sea. The staleness of struggling out of bed and the sinking feeling every time I would be called into an office, after moving to Malta. It was never-ending and the voices still echo in my head, as though I were in a time-travel cavern.

I remembered the anxiety as it all spiralled again - and my struggling with myself and the thoughts of the one person  I had joined this team to escape. The crushing grief, his dogged insistence on remaining so close and yet so far. My perseverance in trying to get it out of my system but eventually succumbing to severe depression.  Even healed, the memory of pain can  be severe to handle.

I recalled humiliation turning to a sense of achieving - from not knowing what I stepped into, to the learning curve and then ownership of the task at hand, and assertion and pride in what I was doing. Others attempted to claw at that ("We're surprised how they actually trust you" - when a client actually wanted to work with me, rather than with anyone else), until I could no longer handle the situation. Nor myself. Moreover, I was too crushed to care.

I recall the time she took away from Sunday chores, to take me to see La Corbiere lighthouse that afternoon; the only person there to take time to spend afternoons with me and to befriend me in this bewildering new world. She was like an older sister and a mentor.  That would be her last autumn on this earth, and I was devastated when I got the shocking news of her passing , despite the fact that we had been friends for just one year. I was on the beach then, and I recall how the sea and rocks splintered into a thousand pieces as I wept.

I sometimes wonder whether I should buy an iPhone, simply so that hearing these ringtones become so mundane that they no longer strike a chord.  

Then again, a daily reminder might easily trigger the tunnel of pain that has now subsided.

So I decide against.

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