The Unguarded

Mary handed him the blanket. “There you go”, she smiled broadly. “Should keep you warm. Help yourself to anything in the fridge if you want a snack”.

Jason smiled back. “After that big meal. I think you gave me enough for a couple of days there. Awesome dinner. Thank you”.

Mary stepped forward and gave him a quick hug. “Kids are fast asleep but they tend to start their day around 5 or 6. They won’t bother you, they’ll just be watching cartoons until me and Matt get up for breakfast.”

“Thanks again and thanks for letting me stay. Your family are lovely”.

“Why thank you, and it’s been lovely to have you. I’ll see you tomorrow”. She walked down the landing and went into the bathroom.

Jason closed the door and lay the blanket out on the bed. He felt relaxed. For the first time in a long time he felt able to unwind. He got undressed down to his underwear and climbed under the bedclothes. Normally he would lay awake, his mind racing with anger and the unspent energy of a multitude of grievances. But tonight, with the good company he’d spent the evening with and the unconditional friendship, he finally let himself fall asleep in a way he hadn’t allowed himself to do for many years. And he dreamed…

And awoke a short time later, gasping for breath and panicking in the darkness. He shook his head, disoriented and scared before he quickly realised where he was. The clock on the wall was ticking, the faint light from the window, the bedposts. Reality. But the sweat hung thick on his forehead and his T-shirt was soaking wet. He sat sat up and took deep breaths, trying to slow his heart. His mind was still half dreaming and in the room he could see familiar shapes that dissolved into nothingness as his mind sluggishly returned to reality.

Unguarded sleep was something he’d abandoned a long time ago. Any hint of nightmares or troubled sleep and he would wake up again. His nights were a minefield of waking, tossing and turning. On this night though he’d slept deeply, for the first time since he didn’t know when. And he had dreamed of her again. His grandmother. The vivid, grey haired old lady who had tickled him and made him laugh when he was a little boy. Who always had a sweet in her pocket and who he’d pleaded with every Christmas to stay longer than Boxing Day. His grandfather had been there too. The old man who was good at building things. Who’d built him a sledge for his 10th birthday and always had pocket money for him and his brother. They’d been there in that dream, as real as the people he’d known as a boy. Not the anguished ghosts that haunted his peripheral vision when he was out cycling or when the shadows in the rooms played tricks on his eyes. The wonderful, beautiful, kind, loving old people that he’d loved as child. Not the broken, dispirited shells that he’d seen as they entered the winter years of their lives. Their hearts broken, their kindnesses forgotten. Abandoned at home and left to rot.

Jason breathed deeply and his fists clenched the sheets of the bed. He exhaled. He couldn’t believe he’d let sleep trap him so easily. He’d let his guard down and the foetid sewers of his memory had finally overflowed. His grandparents had been real to him then. For the first time in over ten years he’d dreamed of them both and it had been a good dream. He closed his eyes and found wetness under his eyelids. He reached up and wiped the tears away. His grandparents were…say it, dead. Gone, forgotten, used up and thrown away like banana peel in the trash. The strong, kind people he’d known as a small boy replaced by fragile, frightened geriatrics unable to face the reality of a world that simply didn’t care about them. They’d lived their entire lives helping other people. And when they most needed help they were faced with their daughter-in-law, Jason’s mother. Too absorbed in her own petty life to even feign gratitude for the multitude of favours that they’d done for her from way before Jason or his brother were even born. 

The memories came back now and Jason couldn’t stop them. He stifled a sob in the darkness, fearful of being heard in the next room. He’d paid back his mother for what she’d done. Given the fucking bitch exactly what she deserved. Made certain she would know exactly what it felt like to be abandoned like that. He hadn’t spoken to her in over ten years now and never would again. But even cutting her off hadn’t made any difference, hadn’t even mattered really. Because nothing could bring his grandparents back, not even for a moment. They were gone. Along with Jason’s own ability to trust anyone ever again. He’d drifted through life from job to job, never holding down a relationship for longer than a year. Never letting himself get close enough to another human being to feel anything beyond superficial attachment. Because he was terrified of recreating the same scenarios that he’d seen destroy his grandparents when he was a boy. He’d become no better than the mindless thugs he’d once sneered at for pissing their lives away every Friday and Saturday down the local boozer. Unfeeling, uncaring and above all untouchable. At the age of 27 he realised that this had gone on for too long. Above all his fears, the one that terrified him more than anything was actually being close to someone else. 

He exhaled in the darkness and forced himself to lie down again. Turning on his side he stared into the dimly lit shadows of the room. His friends tonight had shown him nothing but kindness and had wanted nothing in return except his company. They had laughed and joked and drunk wine and for once he had actually enjoyed himself. The scared boy who didn’t dare let himself get emotionally attached, hadn’t been there. 

No wonder people usually looked at him life he was crazy. He had what a former girlfriend had once called “an edge”. Something in him that always made people feel slightly uncomfortable because deep within him was that unresolved bitterness of having to stand back, helpless while people he loved had been abused and mistreated. No one could ever get close to a man with that kind of burden. His anger had driven him to become a social exile. Existing on the fringes of interaction and only taking what he needed to survive

Jason blinked and felt sleep returning. Maybe he could live a normal life, finally. Maybe life could be more than isolation and a cycle of wandering. He remembered his grandparents and for once he had seen them as the loving, special people that had always been. Not the tortured souls that his imagination turned them into if he let his mind wander unchecked. 

As Jason closed his eyes again, he dozed off smiling as he saw his grandmother’s face as she waved at him from the doorstep of her house as he ran up the garden path to give her a hug.