Chapter six - Groundhog day

The first light of morning crept quietly through the caravan blinds.

Rich reds and soft golds of dawn stretched across the small table. The kettle hummed softly in the background.

Neither of them spoke.

She wrapped her hands around her mug and stared into the steam.

“Feels strange,” she whispered eventually.

The guide looked towards her.

“How so?”

She smiled uncertainly.

“I feel as though I’ve lived this day before.”

The guide remained silent.

“Not this day exactly,” she continued. “But this feeling. Different people, different places, yet somehow the same ending.”

She looked down at her mug.

“It’s like life keeps changing its clothes, but telling me the same story.”

The guide tilted her head slightly.

“Same story… or same feeling?”

She inhaled and thought about it.

“Feeling,” she murmured. “Like I’m always slightly too late. Or already bracing for something to go wrong.”

The guide let the silence stretch between them.

Not empty.

Spacious.

Then, quietly, she asked:

“What are you noticing within yourself right now?”

She closed her eyes.

“Tightness in my chest. Like I’m waiting for the bad news bulletin.”

No rush came to patch it.

No reassurance.

The guide simply stayed with her.

“I hear you turning on yourself,” she said gently.

A pause.

“How do you know you’re not worth more?”

The words settled between them without any sting.

Just room.

She swallowed hard.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Then just let yourself not know for a moment.”

The silence thickened.

Time seemed to slow.

Outside, morning was beginning. Inside, neither of them moved.

Then the guide’s voice came again, quiet as breath.

“What are you really afraid of?”

No answer came.

She just sat there, wrapped in the sticky stillness.

Seconds passed.

Perhaps minutes.

And then, barely audible:

“Because I’m not good enough.”

The words landed.

Pause.

Quiet.

The guide waited.

Then she asked:

“Who said that?”

The question wasn’t an accusation.

It was an invitation.

Silence again.

Long enough for the kettle to cool.

Her brow furrowed as she searched backwards through the years, trying to find the person who had handed her those words.

Who had told her?

Who had decided?

Who had passed sentence?

Her expression changed.

Confusion at first.

Then something softer.

“No one,” she whispered.

The guide said nothing.

“No one said it.”

Another pause.

“I just… decided it.”

And in that moment, something shifted.

Not outside her.

Inside.

She saw the child she had once been — wide-eyed, sensitive, trying to understand a world she didn’t yet have the words for.

A child trying to make sense of things.

Trying to understand where she fitted.

Trying to understand why other people seemed to find some things easier than she did.

And somewhere amongst all those moments, the little girl had reached a conclusion.

It must be me.

I must not be good enough.

It hadn’t been a verdict.

It hadn’t been a fact.

It had been a child’s guess.

And somehow, somewhere along the way, the guess had become a rule.

The rule had become a story.

And the story had become a life she kept recognising.

Different people.

Different places.

Different circumstances.

Same feeling.

She looked across the table.

But for a moment, it wasn’t only the guide sitting there.

She could see the younger version of herself.

Small. Uncertain. Watching.

“I really did think that,” the little girl seemed to say.

“I know,” she answered.

“It felt true.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t know anything else.”

She looked at the child for a long time.

And something in her softened.

“But it wasn’t true.”

Another version of herself seemed to appear beside them. Older now. The teenager who had carried the same conclusion forward, gathering evidence for it wherever she went.

“But I felt it too,” the teenager said.

“I know.”

“So many things happened.”

“They did.”

“And every time they did, I thought they proved it.”

She looked at her younger selves.

And suddenly she could see what none of them had been able to see while they were living it.

They hadn’t been discovering who she was.

They had been repeating what she believed.

The same old story had simply kept finding new characters.

New relationships.

New disappointments.

New evidence.

Life had changed its clothes again and again.

And she had recognised the costume without ever noticing the pattern underneath.

Until now.

She breathed in slowly.

The frightened child.

The uncertain teenager.

The woman who had spent so many years trying to prove herself.

None of them had been stupid.

None of them had failed.

They had simply been living from the best understanding they had at the time.

And perhaps they didn’t need judging anymore.

Perhaps they needed listening to.

She drew in another slow, gentle breath.

As she did, the first warmth of the rising sun slipped further through the caravan blinds.

Deep reds and soft golds stretched quietly across the table.

The room seemed unchanged.

Yet everything felt different.

She closed her eyes.

For a moment, she felt every version of herself.

The frightened little girl.

The uncertain teenager.

The woman who had tried so hard to prove herself.

None of them needed to disappear.

None of them needed fixing.

They had simply been waiting to be understood.

She breathed again.

And it was as though those separate parts of her began a quiet journey home.

Not away.

Together.

She noticed warmth spreading through her chest.

No argument now.

No need to defend.

No need to prove.

Just the quiet feeling of coming home to herself.

She opened her eyes.

The room was still.

There were only two people sitting at the table again.

Across from her, the guide watched with a small, gentle smile.

Not the smile of someone who had given her an answer.

The smile of someone who had simply been there while she found her own.

She drew one more breath.

She felt different somehow.

More complete.

More settled.

More secure.

More herself.

Outside, the sun continued its slow climb into the morning, as it always had.

But this time, she wasn’t searching for herself in the day ahead.

She was already there.