The Colours of Merida.

The Window

Life often felt like a movie in a sense that scenes would play back in her head on loop, fixated on a certain detail for no apparent reason.

Today, it was green eyes of a stranger and flash of a white van.

But these movies played out as though she was watching them from the sidelines. Seeing the van coming, seeing herself unaware crossing the road, holding her breath as she saw it getting closer, and then the scene would jump to her on the floor unable to see the moment that started the drum of her heart.

She had been a little rattled until she got home. Though it wasn't the initial fact she was almost hit by a van that unsettled her, but rather the fact that she had been perceived. This Mikey character must think of her an idiot, to see her make such a fool of herself like that. To see her so vulnerable. It was embarrassing.

She hated the fact she cared what other people thought of her, even strangers, because she knew logically that it didn't matter. But the thought of people looking at her, of people judging her, of seeing her, made her so uncomfortable it actually hurt.

It wasn't until when she got home, under the shelter of her bedroom, that she actually let herself even think about the emotions coursing through her.

She cried, and it had nothing to do with the van.

#

When she was younger the view from her window used to scare her.

It overlooked the slanted roof of the bathroom below. To the left of the roof was the neighbours garden, and to the right was her own garden. But often she used to open her window and see the neighbours outside sitting and drinking and feel really uncomfortable about looking outside at all, even though she enjoyed looking out the window very much.

On quiet days, she could open the window and climb out to sit on the slanted roof. She used to a lot in summer to just sit and listen to music on her headphones and draw on her sketchpad, though her mother would get awfully mad and call her back inside, but the need to sit there outweighed her mothers caution.

She sat there now, sitting on the slanted roof outside her bedroom window looking at the view. It wasn't anything magical, she lived in a small town. The view was a main road behind her house that lead to a roundabout, and a few minutes up the road was a giant supermarket.

If she sat here and took off her glasses at night, the lights of the supermarket and the headlights of the cars would blur and shine and almost look like her own magical world. Somewhere where she didn't have to actively try to see, actively understand, actively do anything.

Maybe that's why she liked it so much.

It was so often in movies, too. Mostly American ones where the troubled teen would sit on the roof and cry until the love interest would come find her and they'd kiss. Those movies weren't real. Love like that could never be real -- not for her.

No when the world to her was an oncoming van in a world where she was blind and deaf.

A sudden buzz made her head jump so much so she nearly fell off the roof. Clutching her phone, she quickly climbed back through the window to sit on the ledge instead as she pulled out her phone. It was Ashley, another friend from college. It read: Hey, Debs put the new project on the blog. You need to check it out!

Frowning, Merida scrambled back inside, nearly falling on the floor from her window to find her laptop. She reread the text again as she waited for it to boot up, biting her nails.

'Debs' was one of their lecturers at college. She was one year in to a two year art and design course in the next town over, and although she had no idea what she wanted to be when she grew up -- probably working in a shop stacking shelves for all she knew -- for now, she loved art and creating things. And since she had to be in some sort of education, she chose something she enjoyed.