Free From The Heart by Sheila O'Flanagan Page A

Dermot, Declan . . . God, I thought miserably as I got onto the train to Sandycove, my track record was utterly abysmal.
    I wondered why. It wasn’t as though I kept picking out the same type of loser in a different body in some kind of co-dependent want-to-get-hurt type of relationship. You know the type of thing the self-help books accuse you of. They were all very different kinds of blokes; some were fun-loving party-types; some were more intellectual; and some (God help me) were sporty. Going out with Stuart had meant spending Saturday afternoons on the touchline watching him get covered in mud at the local rugby ground and wondering exactly how dangerous a sport it was – it seemed to me that the major skill was not in scoring a try but in being able to walk intact off the pitch afterwards. I think it was my inability to find any positives in the sport whatsoever that finished me and Stuart off even though he was actually a kind and decent sort of bloke.
    Anyway, I was determined that my relationship with Ian would be different. And mostly it was, especially since he wasn’t the sporty type either. But I didn’t make the mistakes I’d made with Alan and Michael either. I wasn’t too clingy or too possessive. I didn’t moan at him about going to launches instead of having romantic meals for two. I never freaked out when he told me that he was working with models/actressess/whatevers. I trusted him. And I wanted to be with him. I wanted him to be The One.
    A girl sat in the seat opposite me. We were lucky to have seats at all, it was six o’clock and the train was crowded. But sometimes you get lucky. I was kind of hoping that finding the seat was an omen for what would happen in the future. (I like omens and signs. I wouldn’t say that I was superstitious exactly but if I see one magpie I look around frantically until I see another one. And I don’t walk under ladders – well, something could fall down on you, couldn’t it, so it’s actually a superstition that makes perfect sense.) Anyway, I thought that finding a seat was telling me that I would find my place with Ian too. I wondered if the girl who’d squeezed into that last available space had any karmic thoughts about it herself.
    She was pretty in a way that I could never be. Her curly, fair hair tumbled from beneath a denim baseball cap. She wore a shocking-pink jacket over a plain white T-shirt and her long legs were encased in the tightest jeans imaginable. I had a horrible, fleeting thought that she’d be more suitable for Ian and his media life than me. You see I’m a bit overweight, with short dark hair, and short stubby legs . . . I’m making myself sound totally unattractive and I know I’m not but sometimes, despite my good features like huge blue eyes and a kind of button-nose which loads of men think is cute, sometimes I just feel ugly. And looking at the Barbie clone opposite me made me feel very ugly indeed.
    She was listening to a personal stereo. I’ve got a bit lost on the whole personal music bit and so I’ve no idea whether people’s music is now on MP3 players or Walkmans or cassettes. But the funny thing about it is that no matter what system they’re using and no matter what kind of music they’re listening to, it all sounds exactly the same when you hear it echoing from their so-called personal headsets. A kind of thunka-thunka-thunka bass with a tinny treble overlaying it. I mean, it could be gangsta-rap or disco-diva stuff but the beat still sounds the same when you overhear it. I thought she was a bit disco-diva myself but that was just guessing. Regardless, the relentless tuneless sound was getting to me. I could feel my shoulders bunch up again and the headache take up another prominent spot at the back of my head.
    I closed my eyes and tried to do some conscious breathing. My best friend Leanne and I had done a set of yoga classes earlier in the year and our instructor told us that whenever we were feeling stressed