Watercolour Surrender

"They teach you to push through the pain, to finish the routine no matter what. Nobody teaches you how to stop when stopping is the only thing left."

Dawn came slowly.

I watched it happen from the lounge room window, curled up on the couch where I'd eventually migrated sometime in the small hours. The sky lightened by degrees—black to grey to pale pink to gold—the colours bleeding into each other like watercolours on wet paper. The street emerged from darkness, familiar shapes resolving into houses and cars and fences, the ordinary architecture of a life that still existed even though everything felt different.

The driveway was visible from here. I'd positioned myself so I could see it without having to move, without having to get up and check, without having to admit that checking was what I was doing. I could see the empty space where Paul's car should be, the gravel undisturbed, the evidence of his continued absence written in the nothing that was there.

I'd stopped crying hours ago. Stopped feeling much of anything, really—the emotions had burned themselves out, leaving behind a kind of numbness that felt almost peaceful. My eyes were gritty, my head thick and heavy, my body stiff from the awkward position I'd held for too long.

The house was silent except for the usual morning sounds—the heating system clicking on, a bird singing somewhere outside, the distant rumble of a truck on a far street. Normal sounds. Ordinary sounds. The sounds of a world that kept turning regardless of whether Claire Smith's husband had come home.

My phone was in my hand. I didn't remember picking it up, but there it was, the screen showing nothing new. No calls. No messages. No sign that my 2am voicemail had reached him, had moved him, had made any difference at all.

I should get up. Should shower, dress, eat something, start the day like a normal person starting a normal day. Should call Mum and check on the children. Should do any of the thousand things that constituted a life, that proved I was still functioning, that showed the world—and myself—that I could handle this.

Instead, I sat on the couch and watched the light change and felt the full weight of the empty house pressing down on me.

I can't do this.

Not the dramatic I can't go on of tragedy, but something more mundane and more true. I couldn't do this—couldn't face the day, couldn't perform normality, couldn't pretend that everything was fine when my husband had climbed out a window and driven away and hadn't called me back even after I'd left him a message at two in the morning with tears in my voice.

I couldn't do it. Not right now. Not yet.

The light outside grew stronger, golden and warm, and I sat in its glow and felt nothing at all.

The bathroom cabinet held the usual collection of half-used medications. Paracetamol. Ibuprofen. Antihistamines for Paul’s hay fever. Cough syrup that had probably expired. And there, at the back, the small white box I was looking for.

Temazepam. Prescribed months ago when I'd gone through a patch of insomnia—too many late nights choreographing, too many early mornings with students, my mind refusing to quiet when my body desperately needed rest. I'd taken them for a week, maybe two, and then the sleeplessness had passed and I'd forgotten about them.

I shook two tablets into my palm. Small and white and unremarkable. Just chemicals, really. Just a way to make the brain do what it should do naturally but sometimes couldn't.

The face in the bathroom mirror looked like a stranger. Pale skin, dark circles under red-rimmed eyes, hair flattened on one side from the couch cushion. I looked old. Tired. Like someone who'd been through something terrible and hadn't yet figured out how to come out the other side.

I filled the cup by the sink with water. Put the tablets on my tongue. Swallowed.

The bedroom was still cold, the curtains still drawn from the night before. I climbed under the covers without undressing, still wearing the cardigan I'd pulled on hours ago, and pulled Paul's pillow against my chest. It smelled faintly of him—his shampoo, his skin, the particular scent that was just Paul—and I pressed my face into it and closed my eyes.

He would come back. He always came back. This was just another one of his retreats, another sulk, another cycle in the endless pattern of our marriage. When I woke up, his car would be in the driveway. He'd be in the kitchen making coffee, or on the couch watching television, and we'd have the conversation we always had—the careful dance of not-quite-apologies and not-quite-forgiveness that let us keep going without ever actually resolving anything.

When I woke up, it would be different.

The pills were already softening the edges of everything, blurring the sharp corners of thought into something rounder and more distant. I could feel sleep pulling at me, finally, after all those hours of resistance—a dark tide rising up to carry me away from the empty driveway and the silent phone and the terrible weight of not knowing.

I let it take me.