to wake up to. Nobody to wake up to. I’d resigned myself to short, sharp bursts of pleasure and long, dull days of survival. And yet, as he spoke it all made sense to me. It was as if he’d opened a door on a new possibility for me. A world, a life, in which I made some sort of sense and – maybe – I could be loved by someone. By God. By whoever. Every so often he would look my way, directly at me. Or that’s how it felt. I knew he was probably just scanning the crowd, but I also desperately hoped he did see me. I wanted to be seen. And I was terrified I would be. I sat there with my heart racing and adrenaline surging through me. I sat there long after he finished speaking. I sat there as the sun set and the vans drove away, and the crowd dispersed and all that was left was a grubby group of his mates cranking up the council BBQ and cracking open a few beers. I sat there. Then, there he was, walking towards me with a couple of paper plates of food and a couple of beers. I just gaped. When he sat beside me, I felt everything inside me clamp up. When he said “G’day”, I just stared. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you looked like you could do with some company. Maybe a chat. Was I wrong?” I swallowed hard. I stilled my breathing. I told myself to stop acting like a teenager on a first date. “No, you’re good,” I said. “No-one is good but God,” he replied. “But I appreciate it.” And he smiled. That was that. That was the moment it all changed. He handed me a plate and a beer and we started to talk. Mostly him at first, not because he was full of it, but because I was still struggling get my words together. And then it was mostly me, pouring out my life and my questions and my pain and my … well, pretty much everything. Have you ever been listened to? Really listened to? Listened to without that sense that the person listening is formulating a whole bunch of 117
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