Clean Up on Aisle Two

I’m drifting through the supermarket, minding my own business, snugly cocooned in the blissful vacuum of my own inner world. Head down. Mission-focused. Milk, toothpaste, escape. No eye contact. No accidental conversations. No emotional ambushes in the freezer aisle. The automatic doors hiss behind me like they’re sealing a submarine hatch. Too late now. That’s when I see her. Dionne. She’s standing in front of the ready-meals, clutching a plastic-flavoured tragedy. Her face is folding inwards, delicate as a tent in a storm. Tears slide down her cheeks and drip onto the cellophane lid. Somewhere nearby, a random shopper inhales the airborne melancholy and begins quietly weeping into a bag of salad. I was never taken by Dionne. Her aura always made me want to retreat into my own skin. She’s the kind of person who’ll beam sweetly to your face while quietly calculating the most efficient angle to slip in the blade. And now she’s upgraded to a full-scale public implosion in aisle ready-meals. I instantly initiate stealth protocol. Don’t look. Don’t breathe. Become shelving. I angle my trolley behind a promotional display of discounted melons, attempting invisibility through suggestive curves. Buy one get one free. Even in crisis, capitalism whispers seductively. Her head snaps up. “Amanda.” The word lands like a tracking dart. “Dionne,” I reply, my polite voice sliding on like a seatbelt before impact. Her mascara has migrated south in thick tributaries. She’s sobbing so hard the lasagne vibrates — a trembling tub of polythene sorrow. I have absolutely nothing to say to this woman. My brain scans for socially acceptable noises. My mouth betrays me. “So… how was Christmas?” A flawless choice if my goal is to emotionally trigger an already close-to-the-edge individual and possibly get escorted out by security. “The worst Christmas of my entire life,” she howls, voice echoing off the freezer doors. She leans closer, eyes wet and wild. I can practically see the story swelling behind her eyeballs, desperate to escape. “How come?” I whisper, like someone opening a cursed book they absolutely should not have touched. Everything spills. Marriage: evaporated. (Of course it has.) House: repossessed. Job: vanished. Children: sided with their father. “I ate cold baked beans straight from the tin,” she sobs. “With a fork I found in my coat pocket.” Jesus. The image lodges itself in my brain like shrapnel. A sorrowful violin scrapes somewhere behind my sternum. No one deserves that level of bleakness. Not even Dionne. Some microscopic ember of compassion flickers to life — a lone spark in a cavern of shadows. Yay me. I offer a sympathetic noise that might also be mild choking. People sense something about me. Some invisible sign above my head reading: FREE TRAUMA DUMPING ZONE — NO APPOINTMENT NECESSARY. Maybe it’s the calm face. Maybe it’s the ghost of that psychotherapy course still haunting my posture. Whatever it is, strangers unload their psychic baggage onto me like I’m an emotional carousel. So I nod. “Mmm.” “That’s awful.” “Oh no.” My face performs empathy while my soul Googles the nearest exit. Paying lip service to the psychologically combustible public was not in my life plan. I came in for semi-skimmed milk, not a front row view of bread-aisle bedlam. Dionne launches into happier years, nostalgia spilling everywhere. Her words start stacking on top of each other, forming a leaning tower of unresolved misery. I attempt polite exits. Visual cues. Subtle body angling. Nothing lands. I try to inch my trolley forwards, millimetre by millimetre, like a nervous chess piece attempting escape. She follows. I am now wearing her grief like a damp trench coat. My brain has abandoned the premises. It’s currently on a beach somewhere, being gently massaged by a waiter named Carlos. Every so often she pauses to sob. I awkwardly place a hand on her arm because this is what humans do, apparently. Comfort. Touch. Perform empathy rituals. Time is ticking on. I have places to be. Emotional hostage situations were not in today’s schedule. I pencilled in laundry, avoidance, and a loosely held fantasy of inner peace. The aisle feels narrower. Her sadness starts echoing inside my ribcage, tapping out a melancholic melody — a private funeral march for my patience. Finally, a gap opens. A glorious conversational air pocket — sweet oxygen! — my chance to escape. She collapses again. Tears. Nose-blowing. A deluge of despair. Clean up on aisle two. “Dionne,” I start. “I’m so sorry you’re going—” She steamrolls straight over me, launching into the tragic downgrade from five-bedroom detached to bedsit purgatory. I feel for her. I truly do. I’m not completely heartless. I also fantasise about ramming her into a freezer and leaving her there to chill. My inner therapist has mentally checked out. All that remains is a frayed nerve and a sprinkling of sanity. I feel something inside me snap like an overstretched rubberband. “Will you just shut the fuck up!” I bark. The sound ricochets off frozen pizzas — pepperoni witnesses everywhere. Silence. Dionne freezes. Her mouth trembles. She places the lasagne gently into her basket, as if the pasta itself has feelings, and drifts away. Guilt rams into me like a shopping trolley to the guts — unexpected, mildly bruising, deeply inconvenient. I should feel terrible. I feel… mildly relieved. Never liked that bitch anyway. The supermarket rolls away like a rogue trolley escaping a lifetime of oversharing — free at last, unburdened, cartwheeling into the unknown. I’m in Boots. Home of mascara, cotton pads, and bottled WTF? Apparently, it now doubles as a doctor's surgery — but I suppose stranger things happen on a Thursday. I’m waiting to see a doctor about my heart. Instead, I get him. Waistcoat. Pocket watch. Smug face carved from moral superiority — a man who alphabetises his spices and corrects innocent strangers mid-breath. “Remove your clothes.” I hesitate. He watches with the pleased patience of a man who enjoys discomfort recreationally. “You won’t be needing underwear either.” “Hard pass,” I snap. “We don’t hide in this room,” he says sanctimoniously. “I’m here about my heart.” He sighs like I’ve disappointed his ancestors — all twelve generations of arrogant prick. “You’ve experienced childhood trauma.” “Everyone’s experienced childhood trauma,” I mutter. “We’re going to sit in it,” he says eagerly. “Let it crawl all over you.” Before I can escape, strangers flood the room dragging folding chairs like some kind of morbid cult gathering. “Circle,” he commands. They obey instantly. Obedient grief sheep. “On five, release your wounded inner child.” There’s a collective tsunami. One woman screams like she’s being exorcised. A man rocks and whispers apologies to the floor. Someone sobs so hard they hiccup up a toad. Another curls into the fetal position wailing like a newborn who’s taken one look at the world and thought, “Nope. Get me back in the womb!” The room becomes a grief aquarium. Everyone is drowning in their wounded inner child. Everyone except me. This is too much humanity. I don’t belong here. I can’t breathe in this sadness. I crawl towards the door on all fours — dignity shed somewhere near the folding chairs. “Amanda,” the therapist sings. “Avoidance is your coping mechanism.” I think about Dionne. About beans. About how fast I flee other people’s pain like it’s contagious. My hand grips the handle. Grief settles in my chest like a shadow drifting down the aisles of my life, toppling shelves, scattering tins, touching everything I thought I tucked away. It reminds me that control is an illusion, that the world — and I — are fragile, brittle things. That letting it in might mean it never leaves. And yet, for the first time, I feel it not as an enemy, but as a weight I can bear, a silence I must honour, a reality I cannot escape. That insight lasts roughly two seconds — “Peace out, motherfuckers,” I announce, swinging the door open. “I’m out of here.”