BARELY HOLDING ON

Chapter 6 – Hiding as the Lively One

Seasons holds its breath in the city’s throat, and I learn to breathe with it, not out of some grand plan to conquer the air, but because there is no escape hatch in the heat-hazed streets. The first image I trust comes not from a moment of triumph on the field but from the exact, tactile memory of a cricket ball resting in the curve of a glove, the leather rough and familiar against my fingertips. The sun leans on the boards of the pavilion, and dust floats in the light like motes of small, patient promises. There is a weight to all of this, the weight of expectation, yes, but more insidiously, the weight of a quiet loneliness that travels with me even when the crowd chews at the air and the boundary rope writhes in the heat as if it has a life of its own.

I’m late teens/twenty-something and foolishly grateful to be out of the old country town and into a city that looks like a new page turned at speed, an engine purring under the hood of a life that might finally look okay. I’m lodged with my uncle and aunt, Salvation Army officers who have a soft, almost ceremonial way of inviting conversation into the room, polite questions that feel more like a test of endurance than a genuine welcome. The church bells ring at odd hours, as if the city is auditioning to be holy, and my agnosticism shivers beneath a tailored shirt collar. It is not a life I chose so much as a place I happened to fall into, a settlement after the initial sprint of change. The city’s walls come up slowly, and I learn to measure their height by the sound of a train passing beneath the street, the clack of carriages, and the engine’s deep, steady pulse that makes the ribs feel as if they were a map of the world behind the skin.

The junior partner at Ruwald & Evans has a cricketing dream that makes mine look almost respectable in its simplicity, a patchwork of discipline, minutes, and a team that seems older, more weathered than I am able to be. They are not cruel; they are practical, and their acceptance feels almost ceremonial in its ease. They don’t ask why I’m here; they ask how fast I can learn to bleed the same shade of green as their field, how quietly I can carry the weight of a score without showing the tremor in my hands. I join them not for companionship but because the city’s rhythm requires a partner in motion, someone who can pretend, with a better face than the one I can muster alone, that I belong.

And so I become the lively one, the one who moves with a certain snap and crispness in the crease, who glances up with a smile that is almost a curtain drawn aside to reveal a flicker of something else. I tell myself this is the work of a natural, not the mischief of a boy who learned to hide the pain in a field where every ball’s seam mirrors the seam of a well-kept uniform. It is easy to perform when you are surrounded by older individuals who speak in a language I once thought I understood, and who laugh with a kind of weathered warmth that resembles rain after a drought more than anything else. I listen to the rhythm of their chatter, the casual, confident talk that sits in the hollow of the chest like a steady drumbeat, while the clock on the pavilion wall tics in a way that makes it feel as if time itself is testing me, wondering if I will break.

The cricket ground becomes a current I ride. There is a wind that moves across the field with a particular impatience, the kind of wind that knows what it wants and refuses to pretend otherwise. It carries the dust and the chalk and the pale, chalky glare of late afternoon light that makes the grass look almost blue in certain angles. My gloves feel already worn in, the leather grained with the salt of sweat. The bat rests in my hand as if it has chosen me, and perhaps it has, because I need something I can trust to stay steady when everything around me is unrooted. The sound of the ball meeting leather, the sting of the impact, and the soft, almost maternal creak of the padding speak to me with a blunt honesty I can hear only when I’m pretending not to listen.

Inside the crowd is a tide that does not know my name. The city air tastes of hot metal and something sweet that pretends not to be sugar but is certainly a kind of sweetness, an invitation to forget for a moment that your breath can ache with a weight you cannot name. The weight, I learn, comes from a place that the eyes cannot see but the chest can feel, the Black Dog, a stubborn, familiar shadow that pads just behind my ribs and leans into me when I lean forward to take a swing.

The first cracks in my armour appear in the quiet between innings, when the crowd’s laughter fades and the air grows cooler in the shade of the pavilion. I have learned to move in these gaps as if they are a second skin, a way to hide the misgivings I dare not share. It is a skill I have practised for years, one honed in a family that spoke in victory and resignation in equal measure, the kind of household where a smile is a currency and a confession is a luxury. In the present moment, I wear my liveliness like a uniform that fits just enough to pass as ordinary, to pass as someone who belongs to a shared club rather than the stranger who wandered into it by mistake.

The sounds of the game, ball on bat, the scuff of shoe on dust, the load-bearing inhale of players before a big hit, become my anchor. The rhythm gives me a map to follow when the interior map dissolves into chalky air. The field’s edge is not a boundary but a path that runs straight into a quiet, private room in my head where the Black Dog sits and breathes in the same way I breathe, with a slower tempo that challenges the tempo of my outward life. If you’ve ever watched a man perform and felt the room tilt slightly toward him because you misread his gravity, you will know the feeling I wear when I stand at the crease and pretend not to notice the way my chest rises a fraction too high as I raise the bat to begin the process of making a story out of a moment that feels like a lie.

The truth is far simpler and far less dramatic than the performance would have you believe: I hide not because I am weak, but because I am frightened of how small the world becomes when the dog takes the lead. In the crowd, in the coach’s office, in the quiet car ride home, the dog nuzzles at the door and asks if I can be anything but this, the lively one, the smiling one, the one who knows exactly how to stand and beam and run and pretend that the ache is a shadow that belongs to someone else. And I answer with the only language I know that won’t draw attention: a practiced, easy smile, a refusal to flinch when the ball hits the bat in a way that could invite questions, a refusal to weigh the air with my own breath so heavily that it fogs the glasses on my face and makes the world blur just enough to pretend I am someone else for a few precious, uninterrupted moments.

I tell you this because I want you to hear what I am not saying: that I have learned to align with the day by obeying a stubborn, almost mechanical discipline. When I stand at the crease, I align my breath with a rhythm I learned as a boy, when I learned that the only way to survive is to count, to count again, and to count in a voice someone else would not mistake for fear. The ball’s seam is a line I trace with my eye before it comes to rest in the gloves. The glove’s glove-form is a memory of a childhood I pretended not to miss, a memory of a father who said nothing, who did not celebrate in the way I did, but who taught me how to keep the edges of a story from fraying.

Nowhere is there ever simply a room. All rooms carry a weather, dust that clings to skin, a draft that carries the sound of the street into the bed, the light that slides across a ceiling in a way that makes you feel you are being measured by someone who does not know you at all but can tell with a glance whether you have learned to breathe with your own weight. I have learned to breathe with mine, not by defeating it but by naming it, by letting the dog sit in the corner and watching it watch me with its quiet, ancient eyes that have seen too many humans pretend to be something they are not.

Aunt and Uncle are kind in a way that does not require confession, in a way that offers a steady meal and a chair by the window as if to say: “Here, be present.” They are Salvation Army officers who move with a rhythm of service that makes even ordinary conversation feel like a ritual. They invite the city into their evenings the same way they invite the weather into the kitchen, as if nothing can exist outside the ordinary acts of care. Sometimes, late at night, I hear their prayers drift up the stairs, a soft murmur that carries a sense of safety even though I do not share the beliefs those prayers assume. The difference between their faith and my scepticism is not a gulf but a distance I learn to cross in increments: a shared room, a shared meal, a shared eye contact that doesn’t demand a pledge of allegiance to any creed.

With the cricket club, I find a different kind of belonging, the kind that lets me “be seen” while still protecting the interior map of myself that I’d rather keep to the margin. Their approval is not mercy; it is a mirror I lean toward, a surface that makes the edges of my self feel real, not fragile. Yet the more I lean against that mirror, the more the shadow behind me seems to press closer, making the room feel smaller, the air heavier. The Black Dog is not a thief who steals the light; it is a patient tutor that teaches me to grade my own brightness with a careful, almost judicial restraint. If I am bright, I must be careful about how bright, lest I shatter the moment and expose the fragile mechanism that keeps me upright. For now, my sheer talent creates a platform for acceptance.

And then there are moments when the city breaks in, the way a storm breaks a window and scatters glass across the floor. A bus engine growls in the distance, a weight of heat and grease that pounds in my ears and makes the world feel thick as if I were walking through syrup. The sound is so vivid it becomes a map: the sound of the engine is the path I choose to walk, a sound I can track back to a memory of a child’s summer when the world felt more navigable than it does now. The weight of the day sits on my shoulders like a heavy woollen coat I cannot shake off. The coat is a metaphor, of course, but it is also something I can touch, feel, and measure. Its warmth is suffocating; its texture is familiar; its weight is constant, even when I try to be light.

There is a particular afternoon, the kind that you remember by the exact shade of light on the pavilion roof, where I walked to the edge of the field and looked out at the street beyond and realized how small I was in the grander plan of the city. The distance between the two, my outward life and the private ache, made a seam that pain could slip through. I could hear the field’s boundary rope sigh with each gust of wind, could feel the roughness of the bench along the wall as I squeezed the handles of my bat, could taste the salt on the inside of my lips where the sweat pooled. The world’s attention, when it finally lands on you, is a strange instrument. Sometimes it’s a tune that lifts you; other times it’s a weight that pins you to the ground, and I am grateful for the moments when I can take the weight and turn it into something I can use, an excuse to slow down the breath, a reason to tilt my head and listen to the room with the intent to learn rather than perform.

In the conversation with a teammate, I begin to wonder if honesty is a kind of courage I have not exercised enough. He tells a story about his own father’s absence, how the old man’s silence was louder than anything spoken in a crowded room. The cadence of his voice has a rough, even comedic warmth that makes him seem unbreakable, and yet there is an undercurrent of what he will not name, a fear that hides in the dust on his tie. He talks about the importance of showing up, not to erase the fear but to hold it steady while you walk through the day. His words land in a way I did not expect, not as a sermon, but as a practical invitation to speak about what hurts without turning the room into an inquiry. He does not demand a confession that could ruin him or me. He offers a ground to stand on, a tree root to grasp when the earth trembles.

I realise that the act of hiding, of performing and smiling in a way that makes the eyes look away from the moment you fear the most, is a lonely craft. The act does not disappear simply because you name it. But naming is a start. The memory of a walk with the aunt or the quiet car ride with the uncle, both of them offering their robust, ordinary kindness, teaches me a skill: to breathe with the weight. The dog remains, of course, a patient, quiet presence that makes me look more deeply at what I am offering the world in return for belonging. If I am going to be accepted, I must accept myself first in the room where no one else is looking, the space between the crease and the shadow, the moment when the ball’s arc turns and I know whether the shot will be clean and simple or crooked and uncertain.

You might wonder how one learns to live with a dog in the room and still keep the fire going for the day ahead. The answer is not a triumph but a method: I learn to delay the relief of an immediate escape and instead give the body a schedule, stick to a practice, a ritual, a conversation, a walk, that does not pretend the interior blackness does not exist, but makes a place for it to rest long enough for me to do small things that matter. The road is not an escape route; it is a corridor that leads to a deeper, more patient kind of presence. The city’s engine, the wind, the dust, the weight of the uniform, all these things become the scaffolding on which I learn to stand, not as a conqueror of the day but as a resident of the day, a person who is allowed to feel the cold edge of loneliness and still find warmth in a shared bowl of soup, in a seat by the window with a view of the bus lanes, in a handshake with a teammate who tells a joke that lands just right and makes you feel less alone for a minute or two.

In those minutes, I notice something I did not expect: the sense of being seen is not a chorus of applause. It is a single, quiet line spoken by another person that says, “I am here, and I can see you.” The line does not erase the ache, but it makes it less solitary. And if you, reader, can hear that line as well, perhaps you will learn that you can be seen too, by someone who does not know your name but knows the shape of your breath when you are afraid, or someone who recognises your quiet courage when you decide to stay in the room or in the field rather than walk away. The Black Dog does not vanish with this recognition. It changes shape, becomes legible in a new way, and the weight shifts from being a weight you always bear to a weight you can tolerate with intention and care.

The settlement continues to press on, and I continue to learn, not how to stop the dog from barking or the heart from beating, but how to live with both. The city, with its walls and windows and the many doors that promise a different life, remains a stubborn teacher. It teaches me to count—seconds, breaths, and the quiet, reliable sounds of a routine that does not pretend, but endures. The road is long, and the engine’s hum marks the miles. The wind changes direction with the season, and I learn to listen for its new song, even when the dog’s old tune still thrums in the chest. There is a stubborn hope in the air, that I can keep showing up, that I can stay visible, that I can keep stepping toward a future where I am not always hiding as the lively one, where the weight becomes a partner rather than a prison.

If, in these pages, you hear a note of stillness, it is not fatigue but an overture. I am listening for the moment when the weight loosens its grip enough to let a breath come through without paying a toll in fear. That moment may not come every day, but it comes often enough to remind me that resilience is not an eruption of power; it is a quiet, steady alignment, a positioning of the self in relation to the room, the field, the road, and the dog that never quite leaves the corner of the eye.

So I keep my stance, not in denial of the dog, but in a careful, precise partnership with it. I do not pretend that I am already healed or that the road ahead is clear. I pretend only this: that I will walk it with intention, that I will watch the weight and the light together, and that I will tell the truth to those who stand near enough to hear it without judgment. In this, there is a kind of safety, the knowledge that you are not alone, that your own struggle has neighbors, and that there is a way to carry the day that does not require erasing the pain but giving it a purpose: to teach you to listen, to endure, and, when possible, to care for others who hide in plain sight, in the same crowded room, under the same shared sky.

The chapter closes not with a triumph but with a finite breath, a small, ordinary thing that does not shout but endures: a drink of water to steady the hands, a moment’s pause before the next practice, a look toward the window where the city’s light flickers into dusk and then to the field. The dog remains in the corner, but so does the possibility of another day in which the weight is carried with more grace, the crowd’s noise becomes background, and the heart learns to say again and again, in a voice that does not pretend to have all the answers, that you are not alone.