I stood, just looking around the campus, then walked home.
My mother was surprised to see me so early, and I said;
“I have to take a break… at least asmall one before my brain explodes.”
We went shopping, not that I needed anything specific, but it was a great stress remover. I saw people,I spoke to my mother, I looked around, I was ‘me’.
In one way there was a sense of embarrassment and a little shame at being so stupid for so long. In another, I felt like a child, retracing my steps to the thirteen year old who had ‘fallen in love’ with Shaun, and starting again.
It is hard to explain, maybe it’s like learning a secret or realising that what you believed didn’t exist as you thought it did.
I felt new.
All these years, contemptuous of Shaun’s love for a woman who didn’t know he was alive, reflected in a broken mirror, on me, who had loved Shaun, who didn’t know I was alive.