Between Living and Existing

The woman's hands were red raw from the cold and from years of neglect. The biting wind was snapping and sniping at her so she wrapped her ill-fitting coat around her just a little bit tighter. She shuffled along the path purposefully, even though she had no destination. Walking eased the pain in her heart and helped her forget. The scuff of her feet against concrete gave her rhythm. It gave her a structure to an otherwise directionless life. She was a grey shapeless figure, invisible to most, but she felt that her outline stood out strong against the damp path and as her feet scraped the ground she felt connected to something stable. The solid ground beneath her would never let her down. 
The woman lifted her head defiantly to meet the fierce elements. It had begun to rain and it dripped from the trees overhead to fall icily down the collar of her coat. As she walked through open spaces, the rain added another layer to her rhythmic journey. She avoided puddles and stood clear of passing cars driving through gutters full of cold water. She hunched her back to shield herself from wind fuelled rain attacking her from the front. She did not mind the cold for it numbed her like a natural drug. She stopped feeling, she stopped caring, she was just one with the cold elements and like a harsh parent it controlled her with its cruelty. 
She was now wet through. All her colours had drained away and her face was like a wrung-out cloth. From afar, she was a large bundle of damp darkness – the dark hues of failure. Her face failed to smile and her eyes refused to brighten as they had done once upon a time. Her skin was pallid apart from her weather-beaten cheeks and her hair was a lifeless grey. She was a shadow that nobody noticed. She was a phantom of her former self. 
Although the rain had now eased, the gunmetal sky above still reflected the colour of her heart. It did its job; it kept her alive, but it did not have a beat that made her want to dance or make her appreciate what being alive was all about. She merely existed and she existed to walk, walk, walk until she could walk no more. She would continue through this concrete jungle until she was a husk of a woman and at that point she would find a place to sleep. 
She reached her edge and did not push the boundary. She found a shop entrance she knew did not belong to anyone else and made that step her bed for the night. She took a nip of solace from her hip flask. It warmed her throat nicely. It helped her sleep, like the walking. She slept like she always did, eyes not quite shut, brain still aware. There was much danger for a woman on her own and even more for a homeless one, but she refused to sleep communally down by the river as she did not want the unpredictability of others to affect her need for solitude. 
She slept until the sun rose at five. The sky bled deeply, the colours stretching like fingers that desired. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she sat up to allow the colours to soak onto her face. Oh, how she wished she could jump into the sunrise there and then, forgetting the greyness that kept her invisible and become one with the sky and its beauty. But she was meant to be broken and stay broken she would, beaten down to a cobweb of dust by life’s miseries and unexplained traumas. She was unfixable and it would take more than a sunrise to blend her colours once more. 
She gathered up her meagre belongings and headed for the grey area of life again – the area between living and existing.

By Sarah Bowden