Roses are Red, when Life is Blue...

Thought I’d escape to a rose garden to find some answers and fresh air during lunchtime. Turns out that all I found was roses. And air so heavily scented with the roses’ perfume, I could almost taste it. It didn’t taste like answers and the roses didn’t talk to me like I almost expected they would. Oh, they were ever so pretty, but utterly silent.

There was no dramatic soundtrack to accompany the moment, and no epiphany to bring peace to my inner turbulence. What do you do when you want something you just can’t seem to have? What happens when the past comes back to remind you of your failures?

Rose gardens are such disappointing oracles of wisdom. All they do is bob around in the breeze and look pretty. 

When ...it happens.

Have you ever wondered what you would do if you became the victim of a smash-and-grab, or a burglary, or a mugging...? Well I can tell you: Nothing. I did nothing. 
I didn't chase the perpetrator down the road with the intention of running him over and reclaiming my bag. Tempting, but I was stuck in traffic. I didn't fall to pieces and spend an hour crying on the side of the road. I just... went home like nothing happened.

I came to a traffic light on Friday evening, 20h30, at a traffic-congested, but dark intersection. In the corner of my eye a figure rushed to my car passenger window, shattered my passenger window, grabbed my bag from the car floor and ran off into the night. It happened in about four seconds. They say that time slows down when you fear for your life... I'm not so sure, but you do remember every terrible moment in detail. 

My whole body went numb with fear and adrenaline except for a weird, hot rush of pins and needles that pulsed into my hands and feet. And even though the perpetrator was on the run with me staring in horror at his back as he fled like a coward, I was afraid of him. I am afraid of him. There was nothing I could do. I simply put my foot on the accelerator, and got home as fast as I could. 

What bugs me is this feeling of guilt that I have. The inner argument that has been going on in my head ever since Friday, as that awful man looms outside the passenger window of my mind, his arm raise to shatter my internal safe haven...

I shouldn't have been out visiting my friends at night alone. 
But I left early, it wasn't that late? 
Was it? 
Oh no, I'm often out at night. How am I going to live?
I'll have to be a hermit. I'll have to quit half my commitments in Winter. The sun sets too early. 
I can't, I can't! I have to live!
No. I have to stay alive. 
I shouldn't have been driving that road. 
But I drive that road every day, often after dark.
It's a dark road you idiot.
But I thought it was the safest at the time. I even thought about it before I left. It has the least traffic lights and stops, and it's the fastest way home. Only 2 traffic lights, in fact, and a lovely highway. 
There are police patrolling that road constantly.
It's a dodgy road and you know it. 
I disagree. The other routes have just as many real threats, and more can go wrong on the other roads. Drunkards use the other route on Friday nights, and it's riddled with dodgy traffic lights. 
Suit yourself. Idiot. 
I should have had my phone in my pocket, not my bag.
I should have been locking my bag in my boot.
Really? I should spend an additional 30 seconds outside my car, in an open parking lot, putting my bag in my boot? 
Well it should have been behind my seat at least, not on the passenger floor.
I didn't think anyone would be able (or brave enough) to reach the passenger floor in such a rush. 
Exactly, I didn't think. I was arrogant enough to believe that I'm immune to these things. 
Oh stop it!
I should have kept a peppergun in my car, just in case. 
But then what? I gas someone else and myself in an enclosed vehicle? 
That's a good point. And he was gone in 4 seconds, like we said. That would mean I'd gas myself alone. 
Still. A peppergun might have made me feel better. 
Or worse. 
I should have..
I should have..
I should have...

My mind is racing with all these thoughts of self-blame and guilt and I suddenly just feel really ticked off. Wait a friggin minute here...! I didn't do anything wrong! I am a careful and vigilant person. If anything, I'm a bit too nice and naive, but I'm not an idiot. I did not 'deserve' this out of my own carelessness. It happened. And please forgive my use of this phrase but "Shit happens". 

And it did happen. So what now? It was such a petty crime, so not-a-big-deal. I am so grateful to be safe and un-harmed, unlike so may others. And yet... a part of me is stuck there, on that corner. I'm behind a truck and in front of a string of other cars. A man is crashing a sharp object into my car window and my mind is screaming out..

Is this it? 
Is he going to hijack me? 
What does he want?
Will he leave me here?
Will he force me to go with him?
Will he let me live?
Is this the end...???

I am still afraid, looking over my shoulder. My sense of freedom, humour and enjoyment of life is shivering in the corner of my mind, asking if it's safe to come out yet. In time, it will be ok. But for now, I have to clutch onto one thing to help me feel in control, and that is the fact that it was out of my control. I am not to blame. For that reason, I refuse to discuss the matter with anyone any further. I refuse to have people carelessly speculating on what I should have done, what I could have done, what I might have done, if I'd done it different, what I could have decided, should I decide I should have done it different....

As if I am somehow to blame.

No. No more. It happened. And that's it.

Simply DistuRbED

I can't sleep. It's 11.30PM and I've been lying in bed for roughly an hour feeling disturbed.

You know what it's like, when you have something troubling you deeply, and you just can't quiet your loud mind. I would love to confide in you about the screaming thoughts within my mind, but instead I have decided the path of denial for now, and will be accounting my sleeplessness to one harrowing incident that occurred today.

It all began when I discovered on my way home that, by some grisly misfortune, an entire album of Simply Red had found its way onto my iPod. How could this be? Is this some kind of morbid joke? What kind of psycho would do a thing like this??

I was driving on the highway, and so concentrating on the road inevitably forced me into enduring more than 30 seconds of a song - I reiterate: circumstaces forced me to listen, I swear it...! And that's where the really disturbing part comes in... I couldn't bring myself to skip the song. I just..... couldn't.

Some kind of dark magic must be involved in all this, for I have spent my life believing that Simply Red is creepy. Something about that man just makes my skin crawl... and here I was in my car... captivated. I may have belted out a note or two when the spell cast really took hold of me.

Come now, listen to this...

"For Your Babies" - Simply Red

Gosh, what a sexy song, the kind to which one could gaze adoringly across a candlelit table into the eyes of the one whom you love... despite the fact that the song has a distinctly creepy title!

And this...

"The Air that I Breathe" - Simply Red

How can you not melt at how he caresses each note, literally making you believe that you are the air he breathes... And yet, is it just me, or is the the notion that "Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe, and to love you" is a bit obsessive and... stalkerish...? Ok, ok, in Simply Red's defence, it's not his song originally... but he does a darn good (stalkerish) delivery of it.
And ok, admittedly the actual music video is quite compelling, and not stalkerish at all.

Oh my. And now I have just admitted to listening to more than one song. *hangs head in shame*

This new-found discovery that I am not only able to tolerate Simply Red, but actually like him is most unsettling. I fear I am changing.

And so here I sit. Midnight now, dark rings under my bloodshot eyes, eating caramel straight from the tin.

I am so disturbed.