Brittle Sounds

In yesterday’s Flashback Friday, I revisited a story I wrote four years ago—about a sledding mishap that ended with me breaking through the crust of a snow-covered lake of frozen chicken s**t.

It was meant to be funny. And in many ways, it still is.But after I posted the new version, I found myself reflecting on how different it felt from the original.

The first one was polished, practiced. It kept things tidy.It told the story without really telling it.

Later, I read a chapter from Kathy Parker’s Bless the Daughters, about the mother wound and inherited patterns. It landed hard.I ran both versions of my story—and that chapter—through ChatGPT and asked what it saw.

What came back wasn’t just analysis. It was recognition.

* Hyper-independence as survival.

* Emotional attunement as protection.

* Performing for love.

* Losing myself when I finally let someone in.

I got it—the words, the logic, how it all fits together.But sometimes dry, almost clinical language needs to be translated into something more embodied.

That’s where this poem comes in.

A reckoning with all that wasn’t said.

Unbecoming

Not everything that shaped mewas spoken aloud.Some truths were absorbedin silence—in glances that warned,in warmth that never came,in recognition never bestowed.

Holding onwithout ever asking why.Gripping hardto prove my worth.That I mattered.That I belonged.

It’s not disappearingwhen it earns you praise.Learning to vanishin just the right ways—muting your voice,swallowing your needs,leaving all your best partsin other rooms.

Patterns not mine,but living in and upon me,like a second skin.Following rulesI never agreed to.Carrying weightmisread for love.

Some truthsstill won’t be spoken.Abandoning myselfto delay the sentence.Mistaking kindnessfor danger—and misnaming it instinct.Carrying shamelike a second spine.

It’s not about blame.It’s about ending the performance.Mouthing: never again.This ends with me.

I want to hearwhat I silenced—the voice I muted,the ache I buried,the wounds I smoothed over,the child I abandonedto stay safe.

I won’t perform to be loved.I won’t vanish to be chosen.I won’t wrap myself in silenceanymore.

This isn’t a declaration.It’s a practice.Slowly, steadily—unbecoming.

Unbecoming the manthat no one came back for.Still here.Still learningwhat to hold,and what to release.

Before Holding On was a novel, it was a pattern: of gestures, silences, things people held onto because they didn’t know how to let go.

The Ralph in Holding On—milkman, watcher, a man both there and fading—is a direct homage to the real Ralph from my childhood. He delivered milk by horse and cart, before his health gave out. Then his wife, Lily, took over the deliveries.

After that, Ralph had just waited—for Lily to return from her rounds, for the kettle to boil, for the world to keep moving without him.

Sometimes, I was allowed to join Lily on her collections. Going from house to house as people settled up for the week’s milk.

This piece began life as a much longer essay called Chicken Run. What follows is a stripped-back return to the same memory—just the cold, the rope, the boots, the silence. It never really left.

I revisited it because the world I’m writing now still belongs, in part, to theirs.

The first three chapters of Holding On are live at brittleviews.com. New ones drop every Wednesday.

Everything Was White Until It Wasn’t

Seanor Lane is 320 yards or 293 metres long, and I used to know each and every one of them. My world was shaped by its edges: one footpath to the brook, another to the green, and a slope that vanished into the woods.

Mum’s rule was fixed:“Don’t, under any circumstances, go past the end of the lane.”

She never said why.I never asked.I just believed her.

Sometimes Lily let me walk the rounds with her, collecting milk payments from the houses on Seanor Lane and Parkhouse Road. Coins passed hand to hand, usually with a nod or a few soft words. I liked the quiet of it—the rhythm, the way people trusted her to show up.

We’d stop by her house too, near the bottom of Parkhouse Road, where her husband Ralph sat by the back window like a habit no one questioned.

My brother John remembers Ralph as the milkman, before his health gave out. He used to deliver by horse and cart, and sometimes John got to ride along.

I couldn’t picture it.

The Ralph I knew never stood.He wore a wool hat indoors and slurped tea from a saucer like it was his only task left.He didn’t speak—not to me.Just stared out at the backs of the terraces.

I watched him the way you watch something you’re afraid of becoming.

Then came the snow.Thick. Slow-falling.The kind that covers what you were told not to touch.

John—fourteen, and already angling away from childhood—dragged the sled out from the garage.I was six. I was there as ballast.

We went up to the Pilsley hill. I begged to steer.John said no.I begged again, louder, until even his friends sighed.

He’d been stringing me along all afternoon—grinning, teasing, always about to say yes.At the end, maybe out of pity, or because his friends were watching, he handed me the rope.

He ran through the rules like a teacher.His voice flat, certain.The last line stuck:“Whatever you do—don’t let go.”

I didn’t.

The sled took off like it had been waiting.My body hadn’t.I flew.The hill blurred.The fence at the bottom didn’t.

I heard voices yelling—Jump! maybe.I closed my eyes.

The crash cracked through me.The snow stung.I opened my eyes, half-buried, fingers locked around the rope.

John crouched beside me, pale.

“Why didn’t you jump?”

“Because you told me not to let go.”

He looked at me like I’d just told him the moon was made of cheese.Then said nothing.

One runner was split clean.We didn’t tell Mum.

Later—another year, another storm.John was off at university now.

I don’t remember how I got the sled out.Only the need.The pull of it.To get it right this time.

I didn’t go back to the woods. That would’ve been too far.I stayed within Seanor Lane.Plausible deniability.

I chose Lily’s field.

It looked untouched.White, clean, quiet.The chickens watched from the sheds.They didn’t move.They knew their place.

I set the sled just past them.My gloves were tight.My scarf scratchy.I was wearing my new Chelsea boots—zippered, like John’s.I loved them more than I’ll ever admit.

I ran.I pushed.I jumped.

Fifteen seconds in, the sled stopped.I didn’t.

I’d landed in something warm.Thick. Slippery.Moving slightly beneath me.

A pond of chicken s**t.Hidden under the snow.

The smell rose slowly, then all at once.I gagged.

It was in my nose, my eyes, my mouth, inside my gloves.

And I hated myself—so fast, so hard, it shocked me.

I walked home crying without sound.The sled dragged behind me like punishment.My boots squelched.I couldn’t tell if I was cold or just ashamed.

Mum opened the door.Looked once.

“You are not coming in here like that.”

I stripped in the porch.Air sharp on my skin.The zippers wouldn’t budge—clogged.I pulled until they gave.

She left a towel by the sink.Still warm.

I still remember the rope.Warm in my glove.How tightly I held on.

I write every day. One novel, in pieces. Essays that come in sideways. Most of it memory. None of it tidy.

I got to school early most days. My parents both worked retail, and Mum didn’t trust me not to leave the cooker on, or the door unlocked, or any one of the hundreds of things she’d worry about. So I waited in classrooms before anyone else arrived—quiet places where nothing happened, until it did. You learn early not to expect much. Especially from the people in charge.

Same Bruises, Different Wallpaper

At Deincourt, form classes were named like chemical compounds—three characters: a number for the year, two letters for your form teacher. Mine were 1PU, 2PU, 3TR, 4GR, 5GR. Same teacher for the first two years. Same teacher for the last two.

Deincourt had recently transitioned from being a Secondary Modern school to a newly minted Comprehensive. But it was a change in name only. A new Science block, some fresh signage—but the same old culture. The teachers taught like they always had—out of habit, out of spite, or maybe just because no one told them not to.

Some of them were good. Chris Twigg—if you ever read this—thank you. But too many clung to the old ethos: survive the day, maintain control, punish often. It wasn’t a place where sensitive kids like me thrived. I didn’t thrive—I endured. I learned early that seeking solitude in an empty classroom was safer than the playground or the school fields.

I got to school early most mornings. We left at eight, with Dad dropping me and my mum off at the bus stop at North Wingfield church. If we timed it just right, I’d be at Deincourt by 8:15.

I didn’t wait outside. Too exposed. Instead, I went straight to the geography room, which was also my form room. It was quieter there. Lonelier too—but that was the point.

One morning, I was bored. A stupid idea occurred to me: put a textbook on top of the door and wait for someone to walk in. It worked. The book hit Dave Roe on the head. He staggered, laughed, saw the humour in it immediately. Then he reset the trap.

For the next thirty minutes, we kept the game going. Sometimes it hit. Sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes someone would clock the silence in the room and open the door cautiously, or peek up and dodge it.

At some point, I felt it shift. Fewer people left to enter. The odds narrowing. I suggested that maybe we should stop. No one listened.

Bryan and Dave had been taking turns by then. Bryan had reset it the time before; Dave had done it just before PU walked in.

PU, our geography teacher, arrived in a rush, as usual. Shouldered open the door, tea in hand. The book dropped. Square on his head. His reaction was instant—rage, unfiltered. He kicked the book aside and scanned the room.

“Who did that?”

Dave was still on the move—caught mid-return to his desk, like a cricketer stranded between wickets. “Roe, come here!”

I hadn’t touched the book in a while. I’d already stepped away—my half-hearted pleas to quit while we were ahead having gone ignored. Still laughing. Still playing. Bryan said nothing at first. Just watched. Then, as PU turned away, he called out my name—too quickly, too eagerly. Like he’d been waiting for the moment. Like he enjoyed it.

I suppose self-preservation was the one subject that Deincourt taught well.

I tried to explain, but PU wasn’t in the mood for conversation. My mouth moved, but my feet stayed still, like standing still might soften what came next. He wanted blood.

He didn’t do it straight away. First, he told us to wait in the map room.

There was a side room—where he kept old worksheets, rolled-up posters, maybe maps. I never looked closely. The walls were half pinboard, half peeling gloss paint, and everything in there felt soft-edged, like memory worn down by handling. It wasn’t a secret place. Just a place where things happened—things that didn’t leave marks on the register, only on the kids.

He didn’t use a cane or a slipper. PU had a cut-down snooker cue—his own private tool for discipline, the grip worn smooth from use. It lived in the map room, like it was an optional part of the curriculum.

We stood inside—quiet, afraid. His beatings were the kind of thing people whispered about. My hands wouldn’t stop twitching. Dave kept looking at the floor.

Then something broke the fear—just a sliver. He worked his way through the register, one pupil at a time, but skipped our names. Moved right past them.

We caught each other’s eye. One of us whispered, “Here, sir.” We sniggered. Not because it was funny. Because it was the only thing between us and crying.

Then the door opened.

He beat us. I don’t remember how many times. Three? Six? Long enough to know it was for him, not for us. This wasn’t a lesson. It was release.

There was no paperwork. No escalation. No parent meetings. Just two boys, same bruises. Different wallpaper.

The emotional scarring took a little longer.

Essays, Needle Drops, and reflections on memory, power, culture, and the quiet mechanics of harm. Subscribe for new writing that lingers—whatever form it takes.

Not everything ends with a door closing.Sometimes it’s subtler: a line through a name, a drawer left unlocked, a ledger closed mid-page.

This is the beginning of Iris’s quiet departure—not from place, but from record, from habit, from view.She’s not unraveling. She’s editing.

This is Part One of a two-part story about withdrawal that isn’t absence, and presence that no longer asks to be seen.

The Ledger

The light came slow. Not hesitant. Just unhurried. Like it knew it would get there eventually.

Iris turned the key. The door gave its usual groan—less protest, more familiarity—and settled shut behind her. She didn’t flip the sign. There was time.

The fluorescent lights buzzed, but she left them off. The east-facing windows offered enough soft light that didn’t press.

She moved through the aisles without sound, without urgency. At the reading corner, the peace lily had gone a little too long without watering. She took the can from under the desk, ran a thumb across the spout, and poured just enough to darken the soil. The pot was still chipped. The plant was still fine.

On her way back, she passed the poetry shelf. The Art of Leaving waited there. She’d left it out last night. Not needed. She slid it back without marking the return.

At the desk, she pulled out the old ledger.

Everything was digital now. But this one still felt like hers.

She uncapped the pen.

March 1Returned: The Art of LeavingCondition: WornNotes: —

The line filled the page. She turned to a fresh one. Waited. Then closed the book.

In the glass of the display case, she caught her reflection—softened by glare, reduced to shape. Absorbed into spines behind her.

She reached into her coat. Pulled out the envelope. Cream. Creased. Name printed neatly, her own just below. Inside: a sentence, a date. She’d changed it twice.

She slid it under the blotter.Not gone.Not sent.Just somewhere else now.

The mug by the sink held yesterday’s tea. Cold. A faint ring at the bottom. She rinsed it without soap. Set it down on the windowsill. The condensation left a ghost on the glass.

Back at the desk, she sat. Hands resting. The clock ticked forward. 8:04.

She picked up the pen. Held it.

It slipped. A soft clatter. She didn’t move to catch it.

The page stayed blank.The air didn’t move.

The Unlisting

It started with the phone book.

She hadn’t thought they delivered them anymore. But one arrived—thin, printed like apology—and there she was:I.M. WellsPrinted like it still meant something.

She circled the name in pencil. Drew a line through it. Not erased. Just marked for deletion.

The call to remove it took ninety-four seconds. The voice on the other end didn’t ask why.

Two days later, an envelope arrived. Confirmation. She didn’t open it.

Next came the alumni postcard. It arrived every spring, asking for updates. This year, she folded the blank card in half and mailed it back that way. No return address. Just the crease.

That felt enough like a message.

She hadn’t opened her email in a month.

By week’s end, she’d unsubscribed from five mailing lists, opted out of the neighborhood bulletin, and handed back her loyalty card at the grocer.

“I don’t keep track,” she said.

The cashier nodded like he understood.

She paid in cash. The bag felt lighter than it should have.

That night, she found a book on the returns cart—Collected Poems: 1957–1982.

A receipt was tucked inside, not far from the middle. Folded once. No store logo—just heat-faded ink, soft and gray.

On the back, in pencil—faint—You were right about this line.

No name. No mark. Just that.

She turned the page. Read the stanza. Then tucked the receipt behind the front cover.

Closed the book gently.The page made no sound.

The Archiving

She started with the drawer.

The one on the far left of the desk. It hadn’t been opened in months—maybe longer. The key resisted, then gave. Less lock than concession.

Inside: envelopes, some blank, some not. Two pens that no longer worked. A receipt from the hardware store, folded into quarters. One postcard—unmailed—from someone who’d once meant something.

She took each item out slowly. Not to examine, but to handle. Not reading, not sorting. Just touching. A quiet proof that these things had been real once.

The library’s back room held a locked filing cabinet—rarely used. She carried the items there. Set them inside an old manila folder without labeling it. Closed the drawer. Turned the key.

That evening, she logged out of the system for the first time in eight years.

She’d always left the browser open. Now she closed the tab. The click was too clean. She didn’t reopen it.

Later, she sifted through the shelf above her kitchen sink. Notes. Torn corners. Scribbled lists in her own hand. Things like remember salt and ask Martin about Sunday and car inspection. Each one once urgent. Now brittle. She stacked them—not chronologically. Just until the pile fit her palm.

The recycling bin was full. She placed the stack beside it. Not in.

On the floor of her bedroom closet: a box of photos. Not many.

She sat beside it, legs folded, and opened the lid with the kind of care reserved for things you’re not sure you want to survive.

Inside, the photos had curled at the corners. Some were stuck together from humidity. A younger version of her in most. Her hand always doing something—adjusting a collar, reaching for a glass, pointing at something off-frame. Rarely looking at the camera. A smear of motion, even then.

She set the lid aside and rested her hand on the top photo.

She noticed that her other hand still held one of the old notes—ask Martin about Sunday—creased but uncrumpled.

She stood and walked it back to the desk.

Opened the drawer. Slid it in alone.

Closed it gently,without turning the key.

Part 2 arrives tomorrowSome things leave even when they stay.

Not everything asks to be seen. Subscribe if you’re still reading between the lines.

Some articles don’t demand a response. They plant something quieter. A resonance. A recognition. And later—sometimes days, sometimes longer—they surface again, not as argument or summary, but as poem.

I read a piece about why many empaths choose solitude. It described the quiet violence of absorbing too much—of scanning rooms, softening tone, bracing for someone else’s storm. It spoke to what happens when peace becomes not a preference, but a boundary. When solitude isn’t retreat, but reclamation.

I didn’t write a reaction. I wrote a poem. This one.

Peace, as Boundary

Some silencesreturn the breath—held too long.

He reads a shruglike scripture.Catches a glance mid-airand braces before it lands.

He mistook stillness for safety.Silence for care.

He thought that was love—to be the buffer.To swallow mood swingslike pills meant for someone else.To dim his own light—so no one had to turn their eyes.To be stillwhile others erupted.

Charm was the bait.Then camethe redactions,the revisions of guilt,a lovethat kept scoreand made softness a fault.

Even a lighthouse tireswhen no one seeks the shore.

He gave patience like currency.Swallowed his truthone syllable at a time.

He shrank his presenceso their quiet wouldn’t crack.Left jokes unfinished.Leaving the punchlineto die in his throat.

Still—he stayed.Thought being neededmeant lessening himselfto fit the shapedefined by someone else.

But even that gave way.Not with a crash.With a quiet decision:Not this.Not again.

Now—he shapes his silence.Not out of fear,but as both boundaryand stewardship.

The kettle sings.His chest unclenchesat the sound of no doors slammed.No sighsstrung tight like tripwire.

He no longer reads the room.He writes it.

There’s no one to calm.No moods to manage.No eggshells.

The groundforgives his weight.

He doesn’t rush into love.He walks.Measures each stepby how steadyhe still feels after.

He wants lovelike a porch swing.Not a stage cue.Just earth—his bare feet meeting it.

Because this man,this quiet man,knows:peace is not the absence of conflict—peace, as boundary.

It’s a body reclaimed.It’s a home.

He does not wait to be saved.Just seen.Just asked.Just met.

Let them come gently,or not at all.

I write at the intersection of tenderness, truth, and quiet defiance. Essays and poems that don’t rush to resolve—but stay with what trembles. If that speaks to you, subscribe.

I wasn’t supposed to be here.Not really.Not with those grades.

October, 1979.Brinsford Lodge, Wolverhampton Polytechnic.B.Sc in Combined Studies—which sounded less like a qualification, more like a confession.Computer Science and Economics: the sensible face I put on something more tangled.

If I’m honest, I’d sabotaged myself just enough to make staying seem reasonable.After my mum’s death the year before, the idea of leaving my dad on his own—it felt too sharp, too soon.Maybe I’d take a year off.Maybe I wouldn’t go at all.

That summer, I tried to loosen the grip.Foundry work instead of shelf-stacking.Hard, tedious, well-paid.Something heavier than tins.Something hot enough to make the next goodbye feel survivable.

The reps who came by Dad’s store had their own way of saying farewell.Chocolate biscuits. Instant soups. Luxury samples smuggled from their boots like contraband affection.By the time he dropped me off, my wardrobe looked like a fallout shelter curated by someone with a very sweet tooth.

Then came Kate.

“Kate… Kate from Kent,” she said, with the faintest pause between the Kates—like the second one needed its own runway.

There were no other Kates.

Just her.

I didn’t think much of it at first.Short, sensible hair. Newsreader glasses. Paddington Bear–style duffel coat.Not unkind. Just built like someone who’d packed a thermos for life.

Brinsford Lodge wasn’t a campus.It was a place history hadn’t moved on from.A wartime hostel, then a teacher training college, then a holding pen for political exiles.The walls knew things. The plumbing remembered.

My room was in K Block—long and narrow, like someone had unrolled a caravan and called it higher education.A single bed. A scratchy chair. A desk that wobbled.And a tin of luxury biscuits tucked in the wardrobe like treasure.

That weekend, I DJed the disco.Old habit.I had the vinyl. The lights.The need to keep the room moving—because stillness let too much catch up.

When I played one of my favorites—The Specials, The Cure, XTC—I’d sprint onto the dancefloor and stay for every second.Then dash back, heart thudding, just in time to cue the next track.Not elegant. But mine. A loophole. A reminder I was part of the party, not just its mechanic.

That night, Kate watched me.Not flirtatiously. Not confused. Just… curious.Like I’d become her favorite glitch.

After the last record faded—Echo Beach, probably—I packed up in silence.She was at the door. Still there.No discussion. She fell into step beside me.

She talked the whole way back to K Block.Not to me—at. A stream of low-pressure chatter about crisps, dorm lighting, someone named Sebastian who may or may not have owned a boat.

I invited her in.Politeness, mostly.Sat her on the bed. Opened the biscuit tin—the holy grail of my stash.“Help yourself,” I said. Then left to make coffee.

The kettle was occupied.Someone already standing guard over it like it might float away.I waited. Refilled. Waited again.

By the time I returned, Kate had made steady progress.

A small pile of crumpled foil wrappers beside her.Gold, red, blue.She’d picked the ones I would have.The hazelnut whirls. The dark chocolate ridged fingers.The layered ones with the wavy top.

She had excellent taste.

We drank our coffee. She kept talking. I kept sweating—remnants of disco and nerves.

I stood to change.Not a performance—just necessity.Surely, this was her cue to leave.

She didn’t.

Her eyes tracked me like a wildlife documentary narrator might:The male returns to his den, shedding his outer shell.Munch, munch, blink. Munch.

It wasn’t fear, exactly.But it was something breath-held and dumbfounded.A weird kind of standoff I hadn’t trained for.

Eventually, maybe when the good ones were gone, she said,“I should probably be going.”

“Yes,” I said. “It is getting late.”I was halfway to the door before the sentence ended.

She rose, wiped her fingers delicately on a napkin I hadn’t offered, and left.

I bolted the door.Stood in the biscuit-scented quiet.What was that?Not a question. A verdict.

A week later, Kevin decided our corridor needed a party.Twelve rooms. Six on each side. Shared kitchen. One long, echoey hall.

He knocked on doors. Handed out cans.Asked me to turn up the music.

Kevin stood in his doorway, directly opposite Paul’s.We were chatting—music playing, laughter pinging down the corridor—when someone asked about Kate… Kate from Kent.

I started telling the story.Dash-dancing. Coffee. Biscuits.

Paul’s door creaked open almost immediately.He grinned at me, leaned against the frame like a man settling in for the next episode of something very entertaining.“Go on,” he said. “Don’t leave out the good bits.”

So I didn’t.I gave it all—her quiet fixation, the biscuit massacre, her unblinking stare as I changed my shirt.I thought Paul was laughing just at the story.Then he stepped aside.

And there she was.

Kate… Kate from Kent.

On his bed.Eating his biscuits.Red-faced. Silent. Caught mid-munch.

She didn’t say anything.

Neither did I.

I didn’t apologize.I just turned.Stepped backward into my room.Shut the door.Bolted it.

Head under pillow.Walls still echoing with Paul’s laughter.

It took a few weeks for me to face her.

I mumbled something over jacket potatoes in the dining hall.She waved it off.Said she’d already moved on.

She’d seen the funny side long before I could.

Maybe that was her magic.Not the voice. Not the polish.

The pause.That tiny breath between Kates.

Room for absurdity.Room for forgiveness.Room for someone off-beat, off-rhythm, still learning how to cue the next track.

Room for someone like me.

Essays about memory, missteps, and the moments that almost slip by unnoticed. Come for the biscuits, stay for the echoes.

Flashback Friday began as a way to revisit older work—not to tidy up the past, but to reexamine the stories that shaped me. Some essays ask to be reworked. Others ask to be re-seen.

Thirteen years ago, I wrote Life in a Northern Town. It was part family history, part personal reckoning—a tribute to the grit and pain woven into the coal-stained fabric of my lineage. I was tracing the path from miners to university graduates, from inherited limitation to opportunity seized. What I didn’t fully see back then was how much of that path I was still walking in someone else’s shoes.

The essay ended at a turning point—the moment I spoke a dream aloud and was mocked for it. What followed was bullying, disillusionment, and silence. But what followed in life was far more complex.

This week’s piece, You Can Do Better Than That, picks up not just the thread of aspiration, but the cost of it—the way ambition, especially when entangled with family legacy, can warp into something heavier: performance, perfectionism, pressure. It’s about what we inherit without consent, and what it takes to finally choose our own way.

Back then, I thought I was telling a story about escape.Now, I see I was also chronicling the blueprint for how not to belong.This is the second story.The one that took me a while to claim.

And this time, I’m not asking for permission.

You Can Do Better Than That

I never set out to build a life of borrowed dreams.But looking back, I can see the shape of it.

As the youngest of three boys, I was expected to follow the family pattern—same school, same Physics degree, same unspoken hopes that belonged more to my parents than to me. They were both bright but denied opportunity. Their deferred dreams slipped into our bones.

I remember being about eight or nine, watching my brother John prepare to follow David to university. I don’t know what prompted it—maybe a question, maybe my own quiet declaration—but I told my mum I wanted to be a teacher.She shut it down instantly.“You can do better than that.”

It confused me. My headteacher, Mr. Wright, was a hero to me—sometimes gruff, always kind, magnetic. But my mother didn’t see it that way. Her comment didn’t come from cruelty. It came from the ache of unrealized potential. I carried that ache, too—though I didn’t know it then.

So I overrode my inner compass.I learned how to nod, how to perform.And I did it again and again.

It wasn’t until 2009—after the financial meltdown—that I chose a hard yes. The startup I’d poured myself into collapsed, taking half a million dollars of my money with it. I was offered another chance to run a similar tech firm, got to the final two for a Fortune 500 CIO role. And then I remembered a different calling. A quieter one.

Helping kids be all they can be.Helping kids like me.

That’s how I entered the nonprofit world—stepping into rooms I never thought I’d occupy. Working with mayors, governors, senators, meeting Presidents. The founder of the organization—a descendant of a robber baron—had grown up with access and entitlement. I hadn’t. He taught me the power of a big idea. I taught him how to execute.

I believed in the mission.I believed in myself.And for a while, I belonged.

When I came across financial activity that raised red flags, I brought it to the auditor’s attention. Just days after being praised for my performance, I was let go. The official reason didn’t hold up under scrutiny. I later learned that documentation had been revised after the event. The Board chose not to pursue it.

I’ve never regretted speaking up. I acted with integrity. And even though it cost me, it brought something clearer into view: the realization that I would no longer compromise my values to protect someone else’s power or comfort.

In the years that followed, I stepped into more behind-the-scenes roles—strategy, grantwriting, quiet mentorship. I kept doing work I was proud of. But I also saw behind the curtain. Too many so-called leaders—ethical in public, hollow in private.I stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt.I stopped giving them my silence.

Instead, I learned to trust myself again.

My big ideas would often got funded—but once the spotlight shifted, they’d be mismanaged or abandoned by those chasing the next ego-stroke. I no longer felt the need to stay and fix what others broke. I learned when to say no.I began to police my boundaries.

That shift didn’t come easily.It came from letting go of something I’d carried far too long.

For decades, I’d harbored resentment toward my mother—her emotional distance, her long illness, her early death. I never got to be the child who was nurtured without having to earn it.I became a shape-shifter, a pleaser.It was exhausting, remembering who I was supposed to be in each room.

Only when I made peace with her humanity—understood her fear, her silence, the traumas she never spoke of—could I stop accepting crumbs in relationships. That forgiveness didn’t feel like release. It felt like returning to the child I hadn’t allowed myself to grieve.And it allowed me to rewrite the story of who I am.

I said yes by not saying no, over and over again.Now, every yes is deliberate. Every no is mine to give.

When my own daughter stood at a similar crossroads—fresh from Cambridge, considering a government job or becoming a teacher—I heard my mother’s words leave my own mouth.“You can do better than that,” I said.There was a pause.Then the hurt in her voice, across the Atlantic.A long-distance ache I still feel in my chest.I apologized instantly. She forgave me. But I haven’t forgotten.

That was the last time I let inherited judgment speak for me.

These days, I no longer search for rooms that make me feel seen.I create from a place where I already am.

Not to prove. Not to please. Just to belong—to myself.

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Welcome back to Holding On.

Last week, we stepped into the green room. The nerves. The lights. The impossible weight of a story almost too personal to speak aloud. This week, we go back—back to where the story truly begins. Not with cameras, but with a silence thick enough to stretch across years. A hospital room. Two beds. A love story flickering gently in its final chapter.

This novel continues to unfold in quiet places—in gestures half-finished, in breath caught in the throat. It’s a story stitched from the ordinary tenderness of family: jokes repeated too often, glances that say what words can’t, and the soft persistence of grief that doesn’t demand to be solved—only witnessed.

Chapter Two isn’t loud. It doesn’t try to impress. It lingers. Like a hand hovering just above another. Like a question asked not for the answer, but for the memory it invites back in.

If this chapter sits with you a while, I hope you’ll let it.

And if you’re sharing this journey with someone who might need it—thank you.

We hold stories better when we hold them together.

Chapter Two

Ralph and Lily Jackson lay side by side in their hospital beds, the frames pushed close together. Ralph’s hand rested on Lily’s blanket, trembling slightly, reaching but never quite bridging the gap. The stillness in the room pressed down on Rachel, broken only by the faint hum of voices from the corridor.

Golden light filtered through the blinds, stretching across the beds in uneven stripes. Rachel sat close to her father’s bedside, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. When he lifted the spill-proof cup, she steadied it, watching as his trembling hands turned the simple act into a struggle.

“Dad,” she said softly, “do you remember when you first met Mum?”

Ralph’s tired eyes lifted to hers, a faint spark cutting through his weariness. “Aye,” he murmured, a small smile tugging at his lips. “She were a picture, hangin’ out her washin’. I circled the block just to see her again.”

Rachel smiled faintly. “Quite the move,” she said, even as her throat tightened.

“Bold as brass, yer mam,” Ralph said, his chuckle barely more than a breath. “A week later, she asked me out. I knew then I’d met my match.”

Rachel’s smile deepened, the memory vivid—her mother recounting this story with her signature tilt of the head and that familiar glint in her eye. “He circled the block, mind,” Lily would say, “but only ‘cos he didn’t have the nerve to talk to me the first time. Took him three tries.”

Hearing it in Ralph’s faltering tone now, the humor felt both comforting and achingly distant—a thread stretched taut between the past and the present.

“Did she fall for you straight away?” Rachel asked gently.

Ralph’s gaze softened, settling on Lily. “You’ll have to ask her that,” he said quietly, as though speaking to Lily rather of Rachel. A faint smile lingered on his face. “But I think she fell for me the third time around—when I brought her that bunch of wild flowers.”

Rachel’s throat tightened. “She used to say they were mostly weeds.”

“They were,” Ralph replied, his chuckle faint but warm. “But they were her weeds, and that made all the difference.”

Rachel’s gaze shifted to her mother—still and silent, yet somehow the room’s unshakable anchor. Even now, Lily’s quiet strength seemed to steady them all, her presence grounding a space on the brink of unraveling. Rachel thought of how effortlessly her mother had held their family together—comforting Ralph, raising them, creating a home that felt untouchable. A pang of inadequacy struck her. Would her children ever see her that way?

Her chest tightened as her eyes caught on a single silver curl resting out of place against Lily’s temple. She wanted to smooth it back, but her hand hesitated mid-air, unsure if her touch would bring comfort or only deepen her sense of loss.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket, breaking the silence. Rachel hesitated, then pulled it out. Chris’s message lit up the screen: Kids picked up. All fine. Stay as long as you need.

She typed a quick reply—“Thank you”—and tucked the phone away. Relief mingled with guilt. Chris made everything seem effortless, a calm presence where she often felt stretched too thin. She wished she could juggle it all as gracefully as her mother had.

“Chris okay with the school run?” Ralph’s rasping voice pulled her back.

“He’s fine,” Rachel said, managing a small smile. “Better at the chaos than I am.”

Ralph nodded faintly, his eyes drifting closed. Rachel watched his hand, its warmth fragile but reassuring—a tether to a life she couldn’t bear to lose.

For a moment, the urge to step into the corridor gripped her—a chance to escape the stillness, the silence, the relentless press of her emotions. She imagined herself out there—the air lighter, the quiet less sharp. But she stayed, her hand brushing Ralph’s blanket as his soft, uneven breathing filled the room.

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The Rec had the best slide. We’d sit on waxed bread wrappers to pick up speed, launching ourselves off the end toward a patch of grass, and just beyond that, a roundabout.

Our goal wasn’t to stop—it was to fly. Not land—launch. We never stopped to consider how that might hurt. At the top, we had rituals: gripping the side rails, bouncing our knees, breath held like we were waiting for the shot—then letting go.

We didn’t want to be careful. We wanted speed. We wanted flight.

The playgrounds in Lower Pilsley—The Rec and The Green—were linked by a lattice of footpaths, carved long ago by miners walking to work. They linked the pits, the playgrounds, the terraced houses—thrown up quickly and cheaply when industry arrived.

The paths were short, direct, familiar. That didn’t mean they led anywhere we were meant to go.

They once led to Pilsley Colliery—“Catty Pit,” closed before we were born. We knew the name, not the story. Not the explosion. Not the 45 who never came home. We just played. Slid. Raced. We knew how to run on it, not what it had buried.

The collieries were gone. The local train stations, too. Only the main line still ran through North Wingfield. A few years later, when I was at Deincourt, we all went down to the tracks to watch The Flying Scotsman roar past. We waved like something might wave back. It steamed by like it still believed in arrival, even if it no longer stopped.

The trains didn’t stop anymore.But the sorting remained.

By eight or nine, the split had begun. I was one of three in the top set that year—me, Chris, and Bryan—extracted from the rest to prepare for the 11-plus. Every day, we were fed a steady diet of logic puzzles and aging test papers while the others made papier-mâché, sang with the student teacher, and watched Meeting Our Needs on the wheeled-in TV.

We weren’t bitter. But we noticed.

The 11-plus wasn’t explained so much as absorbed. It decided which school you went to—Tupton Hall, the grammar, if you passed; Deincourt, the secondary modern, if you didn’t. But what it really decided was who got to be going somewhere.

Even the language was uneven.A few of us—boys, mostly—got verbs: aim, climb, achieve.The rest got nouns. Miner. Sheet metal worker. Factory hand. Nurse. Housewife. Shop girl.Maybe teacher, if you were lucky.That was the sorting, too. Not just by gender. By usefulness.

I got a verb. Not because I was better. Because someone decided I could be shaped.

So when we were told something special was happening after lunch—and yes, the three of us were included—it felt like we’d been let in by mistake. At the octagonal lunch tables, speculation buzzed. A film? A treat? A visiting magician?

We filed into Mr. Wright’s classroom after lunch. The desks had been rearranged. On each: a pink envelope, too neat to be ignored.

"Don’t open them," he said.

He was waiting for Miss Cotton—his girlfriend, though it was the worst-kept secret in the school. She wore tailored skirts and jackets, and her hair was the color of copper—the shade that only comes from bottles, though I didn't know that then. That day, she was late. Mr. Wright looked impatient. Checked the hallway. Then left to find her.

It took less than a minute.

One rustle. Then another.Soon, most of us were peeling open the envelopes. Inside were slim booklets—not games, not puzzles. Just rules for a body we didn’t have the words for yet.

I remember the drawing.

The female reproductive system, pale blue ink. Fallopian tubes curling like cursive. Ovaries looking like something hidden behind a curtain—familiar in shape but unnamed, unclaimable. I stared too long. Not because I understood—because I didn’t. I didn’t know whether I had any of it. I didn’t even know what I was supposed to feel. A sudden thud in my stomach. My throat tight with embarrassment. And beneath that, a hard flicker of something like envy. Or panic. I wanted to ask, but the question didn’t have words. Just shape. Just heat. Just the awful feeling of being caught mid-thought.

Mr. Wright and Miss Cotton returned to a room gone still. At least one of the girls was crying. Miss Cotton went pale, panic rising.

"Put the booklets away," she said quickly."Back in the envelopes."

We obeyed. Clumsily.

Then the boys were told to stand and leave.

We filed out into the corridor, awkward and silent. We found out later the booklets were part of a sanitary product company’s campaign—information for the girls, a video too.

It was never mentioned again.

But I knew, immediately, that I’d seen something I wasn’t meant to. That there were rules I hadn’t been told. That shame and knowledge came in matching envelopes. That someone else always seemed to know more about my life than I did. Not just teachers. Not just adults. The kind of systems you don’t see until they’ve already shaped you. Paths that seemed open until you stepped off them. And someone—some institution, some design—wanted it that way. It kept us polite. It kept us obedient. It kept us guessing at what we were allowed to know. And for boys, especially, it taught us that ignorance was masculine. That not knowing was a kind of strength. That questions were a kind of weakness.

Even now, in rooms where I’m meant to speak, I feel for the edge of the map.

And when the silence came again, years later—different body, different questions—I recognized it. I knew how to obey it. I still do.

Some days I think that was the real test.Not the 11-plus.

It was that moment—when a question formed, and I was told not to ask it.

The tracks were still there. But no one said what to do when the map ran out.

Maybe that was the point.Maybe it still is.

Brittle Views is where I write what memory distorts, defies, or won't let go. Childhood, silence, systems. Sometimes punk. Always more my voice.

By the time June came up the drive, I knew I couldn’t let her in.

We weren’t really dating—just paired off by mutual friends who thought shared faith was enough. We were all church kids—Methodist by label, Evangelical by tone. Singing solos in borrowed pews one week, speaking in tongues the next. It was meant to feel like belonging. Sometimes, it did.

Helen was older, louder, and drove like she was trying to outrun her hometown.She never said it, but you could feel it—in how she scanned every room for someone single, in how she gripped the wheel like it might steer her straight into the life she thought was waiting for her.

Even years later, when I bumped into her again, she still wanted the same thing.

June rode along. A passenger in every sense.

She was twenty. I was sixteen. The age gap didn’t raise eyebrows back then—not in church, where the dating pool was shallow and the theology forgiving. But it felt like something I’d been drafted into, not something I’d picked.

Prayers were going unanswered. Mum was slipping.Church had started to feel like pretending.

The first time we kissed, I mostly remember what I didn’t feel. The second time, she told me that she’d read my mum’s medical chart.

She said it like she was offering something generous.Her mum worked at the local doctor’s surgery, and June had picked up some hours there while waiting to start nurse training.“I saw your mum’s file,” she said, like it was something she was proud to bring me.“I know how bad it is.”

Words like ‘liver failure’ and ‘Royal Free’ and ‘pneumonia’ came out of her mouth like they belonged to her now too.

I didn’t say anything.But in my head: You shouldn’t know that. That wasn’t yours. You don’t belong in this part of my life.

But I didn’t know how to say that out loud.Not then. Maybe not now, either.

A few days later, she called. Said she was sorry.I mumbled something that could pass for forgiveness, but we both knew it wasn’t.

She asked if I wanted to go out that weekend. I told her I had to be home.Then she offered to come over. Said she’d love to meet my mum.

No one was coming over anymore.Even my godparents—who’d lost their daughter-in-law to cancer—had stopped visiting. Said it was just too hard.

Mum had just come back from the Royal Free in Hampstead.We’d been told it was only a matter of time.We hadn’t told her that part.

She was in a hospital bed in the living room by then. Mostly asleep. Her breathing all over the place.

We kept the curtains drawn. What was left of our life fit behind them. And that felt right.

I told June it wasn’t convenient.I thought that would be enough.

It wasn’t.

That afternoon, I was sitting with my mum. The house was still.Then I saw movement.

Through the curtain: June.Walking up the drive like she belonged there.She’d walked the whole way.Like that proved something.

My dad went to answer the side door.

I felt my body freeze before it moved.Out of the living room.Through the kitchen.Into the hall.Unlocked the front door.Around the house.Over the fence.Gone.

I stayed out in the fields for a couple of hours.The grass had that early-spring scratch to it—the kind that leaves a memory on your jeans.

I don’t remember what I thought about.Just the cold. The quiet. The safety of being nowhere.

When I came back, the kettle was cold.

My dad said, “You missed your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” I said.He looked surprised.“She said she was.”“Well, she’s not,” I said again.

I heard how young I sounded.But also, how final.

He didn’t ask any more questions.Just told me she’d come in, met my mum, stayed for tea and biscuits, and talked for a while.

I never asked what they talked about.I never told my mum what June had done.I don’t think I could.

Mum was close to the end by then.Everything unsaid felt kinder than anything I could have said.

I never spoke to June again.Didn’t see her either.She just vanished. No confrontation. No apology. Just... gone.

Years later, I ran into Helen.She smiled at me like someone who hoped I might finally see her differently.Maybe now, she thought I’d be one of the things she was still waiting for.

Some people treat your life like something they’re owed a piece of.Some people wait a long time for the life they thought would come.I don’t know what June thought she was offering me.Maybe she believed it was care.But it didn’t land that way. Not then.

I’ve never really told anyone this before. Not like this.Not with the fence, and the fields, and the way my heart beat louder than her knock on the side door.

But what I come back to now isn’t the breach.It’s the decision.Mine.

To run.To climb the fence.To choose distance over explanation.To say no with my feet.

There wasn’t a lock.So I built a door.Out of breath and grass and flight.

She stayed for tea.I stayed gone.Silence was the truest thing I could’ve done.

The above story is true(ish), but below are two fictional prequels, imagining the backstory from Helen and June’s perspectives.

I write about memory, care, loss, and the small decisions that shape us. Subscribe if that sounds like your kind of story.