What does reality mean,

When you’re surrounded by a sea of faces, that are taut, tired and lean

Waiting to be seen

We all are scarred and afraid

Because soon the glitz and glamour will fade

Leaving behind weary tricks and trade

And saddened minds, in a world as cutthroat as a razor blade.

When the only glimpse of the life you’ve left behind are fragile traces

This is it, we’ve come out of Quarantine!

Said all the diamonds, kings and aces

They don’t know that none of us is really safe and clean.

But when we see the horizon and sunrise

And beyond it the sea

With our own flesh, mind and eyes

Sadness will be replaced by an unfamiliar rush of jubilance and ecstasy

I feel awful. My head hurts and I can sense nausea slowly creep upon me. Today is the worst kind of day. The kind where nothing makes sense, and my deepest fears about the world we live in start to consume me. I reach to the table and pick up a glass of water. Slowly, but surely the room stops spinning and my fears don’t call out to me invitingly. They’re always the same, the worst one’s come loose at night, where the people I love won’t recognize me when we come out of Quarantine tomorrow. The anxiety builds up, then the voices in my head scream and their shouts turn into a noisy clamor, and finally I black out for mere seconds that scar me eternally. I try to distract myself and think of the happy moments in my life. At the beach, with the sun shinning overhead. With the people I love, whose memories are still etched in my mind.

Oh well, might as well go to sleep now….

I can’t believe how quickly the night passed. I waited for it to stretch out endlessly and lull me into a fragilely false sense on intrinsic security but to my chagrin that doesn’t happen. Instead I’m wide awake and I feel like my sanity is at stake. At this point I’m battling myself. I’m trying to stop myself from panicking, from wondering whether my friends will be bothered to seek me out in a crowded room, whether my parents will smile when they see me or if my fiancé, Alex will casually dismiss me in a torrential sea of mindless faces.

I can only wait and see………

The moments here. It’s suddenly a rush of faces as people crowd around me. It’s a room without walls and the horizon stretches out endlessly. I can’t believe it. I have to find them. All of them. Each and every one. The shouts of government officials fill the air as their words fade into nothing. No one is in an orderly row. Everyone is looking into a sea of faces, trying to find the one that reflects their own and trying to find eyes that stop frantically darting around when they catch their own. I feel more panicked and afraid now. Terrified even, I can’t find my parents. Suddenly, almost magically everyone quiet’s down. The official’s voices grow authoritative. They are reading out death lists. The silence is carefully ruptured by a women’s cry. And another’s. Everyone is tense but I’m trying to brace myself. Trying to gather my lost wits, to calm my fear and to stop my head from spinning. I need Alex’s comforting arms around me to stop me from shaking. And then I hear their names. My parents. I can only scream in silence.

I have to find Alex………

“Move on. Come on. You can do this. He’s here somewhere” I tell myself. I have to find Alex. I need him to tell me that it’s okay. But it’s hard to distinguish him in a sea of faces that seem to echo my fears. I go ahead, scanning the crowd but I can’t find him. At this point I’m exhausted. But I can’t stop, if I do I’ll start thinking about them, about my parents. If I start doing that then the final vestige of my sanity will crumble. Suddenly, I spot Alex. There he is, he hasn’t changed. I make my way towards him, nervously excited and defiantly terrified. Just as I’m about to say his name, my hands start to tremble with foreign familiarity when he frowns. He makes a quick, seamless and casually cruel motion towards another woman. I look down and see that her hand is intertwined with his. The sudden realization hit’s me abruptly. Alex meets my eye and his look conveys a certain sense of solitary sheepishness combined with a hint of guilt. I can’t bear it. Instead of sitting down and trying to make sense of the world we’ve been thrust into I start running. I can’t stop. I want to forget it. To forget Alex and my parents. No amount of official’s whistling can stop me. I want to shut myself away, to go into hiding. Nothing will ever be the same. My world has been shattered into a thousand shards and broken pieces, each one encompassing an eternal sense of disappointment. We all should never have come out. The only thing invitingly waiting for us is the sinister surprise of change. I want to get away from it all. Get away from the seamless frailty and sheer insanity of it all. I want to get away from the voices in my head screaming my parents name, and the look in Alex's eye when he saw me.

I have to keep running…….

I am instantly forced to stop. A wave crashes into me, and as the salty water washes over, trickling down, I can’t help but smile. I’ve missed the beach. Somehow, here the gentle memories of my parents come flooding back with the water. The second wave is far more gentle and I feel as if I’m moving in with the water. I can’t help but chuckle with delight as the sea breeze sweeps across my cheek. For a moment I stand there, frozen in a kaleidoscope of colors, forgotten memories and timeless serenity. Another, more intense wave breaks at the shore and I smile as the light, frothy and exceptionally salty water laps around me. Honestly, I wouldn’t trade our world for anything. Even after everything I, and no doubt countless other people have endured, I’m sure no one would trade right now for anything because right now is beautiful. The horizon stretches out infinitely and I know that coming out of quarantine was not just needed desperately, it is now also perfect. Because no matter what we lost, we’ve also gained an intense and long-overdue freedom and respite from our constrictive, quarantined lives. A sigh of relief escapes from me as I watch the sky and sea paint a thousand hues into my memories.

‘Each ending is a brand new beginning’ the billboard read. ‘honestly you’d think there’s a limit to the saccharine-sweet goodness people have the audacity to make up.’ Shelly cried out in dismay to the empty street and paused for an answer. Endings aren’t exciting, jubilant and triumphant beginnings, they’re merely a substantial form of an escapist reality. A way to find shelter. A way to hide from mind-numbing monotony. Sometimes, endings are just inevitable, they need to happen for everyone to move on, for everyone to escape from the carcass of an incomprehensible wreckage.

Shelly trudged on, it was raining and the water droplets fell in an elegant harmony that felt like a stained-glass picture of intense perfection. The only thing that marred it's beauty was the street filled with dirt, worn bags and rubbish. Shelly could ignore it on most days. She could pretend to be at home, with three children, a husband and a dog. But not today. Today was different. It felt bitterly painful and she desperately wanted it to end. Today felt like a sudden note of finality in her dreary life, like a triumphant end to all the obstacles she encountered in life, all the problems, all the failures and all the endings.

She wanted to go to see river Thames, the river that was home to a distant nostalgia that Shelly cherished. Before everything fell apart and all her emerald dreams faded to grey ashes she had gone there with her family. She had been there only once, in her childhood, and as a result Shelly had no memory of it but she knew that the water must be beautiful. She decided to do it and to finish the journey and complete it, once and for all. She wanted to end the constant suffering, the wretched loneliness and the stifling sorrow.

Shelly walked along the dirty, polluted and filthy street. She lived here. But in her mind she lived in a nice house, with her three kids, a husband and her dog. Oh, the fantasy of it all was not just achingly perfect but had become her only means of keeping sane. They all would be happy, they’d be a brand of exclusively cheerful optimists, ones who believed that each ending was a brand new beginning. And most importantly they all would go and see the river at every weekend. It would be a trip they all lived for and cherished.

The rain made it hard to see and the decreased visibility annoyed Shelly. She still ploughed on though, and she knew that she would get there soon. The river was easy enough to locate as every signpost led her to it. Shelly walked alone, but she wasn’t lonely though, in her head she was surrounded by her family. They all laughed at the comforting normality of their lives and found meaningful solace in each other. Suddenly she was brought back to earth by the sound of chocked sobs, and looking around she saw a young girl. Shelly felt a stab of sympathy but decided to move on. She had to go to the river, she couldn’t let her past down. Shelly walked on with strengthened resolve but haltered when the crying girl met her eye.

For a moment she forgot about everything. Instead Shelly remembered how she had been just like that girl. Left alone to fend for herself at sixteen, after her aunt threw her out. The clichéd stories are often the most personally terrifying. No one stood by her. Shelly had also once sat down and cried, comforted only by empty streets, whispering winds and gallant cobblestones.

‘But now it was going to change’ Shelly thought. she would go to the river. She would look back at her glorious past, and would be surrounded by a vista of memories and her old self, one not marred by harshly cruel realities, would come back to her. Shelly wanted to escape from everything. She wanted to end the constant stream of sorrow and dismay that had encaged her and engulfed her since the day she was welcomed by the streets.

Shelly took a final turn. There it was! The river looked hauntingly picturesque and welcomed her with open arms, Shelly could almost hear the happy laughter of her children beckon to her as she walked towards the river. She felt transfixed by its beauty and climbed up the railings. Shelly looked down as her old self smiled back at her. The river was a beautifully perfect end. She felt nervously excited and eternally hopeful as she smiled and took it all in. This was a world she belonged to, away from worn out streets and a sense of conflicting despair that, no matter what, would never cease. But this was perfect! This was a brand new beginning filled with glory and warmth! Shelly smiled took the leap as her heart filled with awe and hope. Each ending really was a brand new beginning.