{"id":1252,"date":"2022-07-12T08:32:30","date_gmt":"2022-07-12T08:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1252"},"modified":"2022-07-12T08:32:35","modified_gmt":"2022-07-12T08:32:35","slug":"you-were-always-telling-me-to-take-a-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/you-were-always-telling-me-to-take-a-chance\/1252\/","title":{"rendered":"You were always telling me to take a chance!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got a surprise for you,\u201d Martha laughed \u201cbut first, close your eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was this little surprise? Martha would probably hold up a deformed jumper, which she had knitted over many nights, and Chris would force herself to wear the itchy ill-fitting thing with a \u201cOh it\u2019s just what I wanted!\u201d kind of smile. That was typical Martha. A trait Chris still found rather charming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her birthday surprise as it turned out was much more alarming, for as Chris sat cross legged upon her lavender sofa, she felt the warm sensation of something soft pressing against her lips. Her eyes bolted open to find Martha, her BFF, kissing her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

At that moment, Chris couldn\u2019t even think, never had an inkling that Martha liked her like that! And as her best friend drew back, her lower lip quivering and tears welling in her eyes, Chris still couldn\u2019t find her voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martha loved her?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When they had met last summer, Chris had hated her guts, deciding that there was nothing likeable about Martha Sullivan. She was smart, funny, charming, beautiful, kind, considerate, basically she possessed all the virtues the dull, dim-witted Christine Norman didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But since both women had uprooted themselves from their home countries, and were trapped on a continent of strangers, they naturally bonded. Hitting the nightclubs on Louie Street before retreating homeward to share secrets they couldn\u2019t tell their parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris confessed to her shame of fatally reversing over a rottweiler. Martha told a horror story about watching a schoolfriend leap in front of an oncoming train. It was while Martha, resting her head upon Chris\u2019s lap and tearfully recalling this event, that Chris found herself in the novel process of caring about someone else\u2019s problems, which she had to admit with a little shame, was rare for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For when she was with Martha, she stopped worrying about herself, stopped beating herself up over her failure to be perfect and instead was content with being happy. It was an odd feeling. And when Martha went on holiday to visit her family for a month, Chris felt as if she had lost a limb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m so sorry,\u201d Martha was blabbing \u201cyou were always telling me to take a chance. Oh god Chris I\u2019m not some sleazy groomer, I swear I\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Chris hating herself, silenced Martha the only way she knew would work. She leaned forward and kissed the fretting girl, all the while her own conscience scowled in stern disapproval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t as if she felt bad over sapphic love, rather it felt strangely immoral that someone as unintelligent, ungifted and all around unremarkable as herself should ever be with a legend like Martha. The woman deserved better. A hell of a lot better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChris, I love you,\u201d Martha whispered. \u201cI really do!\u201d and all Chris could do was ask in utter bafflement: \u201cWhat the fuck do you see in me?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019ve got a surprise for you,\u201d Martha laughed \u201cbut first, close your eyes.\u201d What was this little surprise? Martha would probably hold up a deformed jumper, which she had knitted over many nights, and Chris would force herself to wear the itchy ill-fitting thing with a \u201cOh it\u2019s just what I wanted!\u201d kind of smile. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10158782359051062_103813597863211":"","twitter_1225722811282530305_1225722811282530305":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[597,635],"tags":[7,47,11],"class_list":["post-1252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-597","category-july-2022-chance","tag-her","tag-martha","tag-was"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbrNJE-kc","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1257,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions\/1257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swanseawriterscircle.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}