I love that smell. The smell of home when you walk through the door.It's a comfort thing, like the warm feeling you get when you smell someone wearing the perfume your mother wore when you were little, it makes you feel safe.
Once that door is closed all of what you've seen and heard outside is gone. Ok so it can play on you mind but when you're in here, in your own little space, it can't get you. That's the problem with this place. It's that sense of foreboding that lingers in the stair wells and creeps around the landings, dragging it's cold fingers down your spine as soon as your back is turned. It makes you jump, even the tiniest thing, like someone banging a door six floors up. It's that constant sick feeling you get deep in your guts, the way you climb the stairs, fists clenched so you don't touch the handrail because you don't know what's been on it.
I've got to get out tonight, I know I said this before but I do. I don't know what her upstairs will be like later, when I saw her earlier she was looking drawn. We could be in for a bad one tonight, some anniversary, maybe, that she's clinging onto in the vain hope that if she remembers it she's not technically alone. No, I can't sit here with that above again. It's horrible you want to go and say something to her, cheer her up, tell her it's all ok, but what do you say? 'Hi, don't worry, I know you miss him but your better off out of it.' No, you couldn't. Then she'd know, she'd know that all those times she'd been crying into her fists, just wanting to hide from it all, all those times she'd wanted to cover up her tears and bruises I'd been there. I'd been listening in to her own private trauma, I knew what had been going on. I knew that he'd hit her and I had not once said something, not once tried to stop it, to help. Well, I'd called the police hundereds of times but do you know what? It was more I wanted the noise to end, and I didn't want to listen to it. God how callous! when you really dig deep into the 'why' of your actions you see how self absorbed we can be. And here I am now hoping that she isn't going to come home all melancholy and ruin my evening with her whimpering and wailing through the roof. I've half a mind to stay in now, so at least someone's here for her, even if it is just some sad voyeur with nothing better to do than pick her apart when she's at her lowest.