Sunday, February 21, 2010

Chapter 16

Full novel for sale at Lulu.

It seemed to Hazel that he would not be needing his body anymore, so he left it lying on the edge of the ditch…

“So how are you?” Suspiciously well. At least ok.
“Happy, I guess.”
“That’s good.”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“Because happiness means depression isn’t far off. It might be a couple of hours, days, weeks, possibly even months, but it will come and the longer I’m happy and the better I feel, the worse it’s going to be when I come down. Besides, I can’t prove that I’m happy. I can only reject the null hypothesis that I am unhappy within an undetermined uncertainty. So, really I don’t know anything.” Am I talking really fast?
“You’ve talked about sleep irregularities before; How is that right now?”
“I am regularly awake.”
“You’re not sleeping?”
“Yes. No. Yes. Can you rephrase the question so it’s not a double negative?”
“You could just tell me what you’re trying to say.”
“How can I answer a question that hasn’t been asked?”
“You already know what the question is. But we’re kind of on a tangent here. So how have you been sleeping?”
“I – have – not – been – sleep - ing – much.” See, I can talk slower if I want to.
“Are you still taking zopiclone?”
“Yup. It slows me down some, but doesn’t make me sleep, unless I take a lot.” It’s annoying actually, when you’re body is forced to slow down but your head won’t stop racing. Paralysing. Like you’re trapped in someone else’s body. “It’s better if I don’t take the pills. It’s not so bad really, having the extra time.”
“What do you do with the time?”
“Sing. Dance. Jump. Paint. Clean. Bake.”
“And you don’t get tired?”
“Of course I get tired. But I’m still full of energy. Weird.”
“What’s weird?”
“I just realised contradictions can exist. Something can be composed of opposites and still be true.”
“I think you’re right. Everything exists in its totality as a spectrum with certain aspects of its character perhaps being more pronounced than others at certain times. Right now, it sounds like you’re experiencing two extreme poles. What you need to do in order balance things out is add in some of the stuff in the middle.”
“It’s not really up to me.”
“Yes it is.”
“No it’s not. I can’t control what I’m thinking or doing. My body says move, so I move.”
“Then say ‘no’ to your body.”
“It doesn’t ask. I don’t get options. It functions of its own accord. I could no sooner tell myself to stop spinning in circles than I could tell myself to stop breathing.”
“Maybe you’re body is telling you it needs more activity and a way to control these outbursts would be to add physical activities into your daily routine. That way the body gets what it needs without having to take away from all the other necessities – like sleep. You can think of it as like taking vitamins. You have to take a little bit every day in order for them to be effective. If you take too many at once, you get sick.” Sick. “Are you still doing your morning walks?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I like my bed better. Outside is…too much information. It’s sad and cold. And my bed is safe and warm.”
“Maybe you could try incorporating a walk into your morning routine. If it’s not at sunrise, then first thing when you get out of bed.”
“That might be more likely to work.” But I’m not going to force myself despite the fact you just said I should. There’s no guarantee it would improve my situation and I can’t take the risk that it would increase my discomfort.
“How have you been eating?” I shake my head back and forth. “No, you haven’t been eating?”
“No. I can’t. I tried, but the food was wrong. I tried to make it right. But. I couldn’t. Came close once and tried to eat, but it wasn’t right when I ate it so I had to throw it out. Up. I threw it up.” I had made some vegetables and rice, but when I saw the food on the plate, it looked disparate. I tried rearranging the food by colour, size, texture, but nothing I did made it look less foreign and more edible and I ended up with a pile of vegetables mixed up with rice. It looked disgusting, like cheap Chinese take-out, but I didn’t want to waste food so I forced myself to eat it. Not all of it. I ate three mouthfuls before my stomach began to agree with my eyes as to the disgusting nature of the food. It was heavy in my stomach. Wrong. I knew it couldn’t stay there, but I also knew it wouldn’t come out on its own. I pulled my hair back into an elastic and positioned myself over the toilet. My finger pressed against tight ridges of my throat and I realised why men must like oral sex. Then I threw up.
“When was the last time you ate?” Not yesterday. Maybe the day before. Each day is the same as the next and the same as the previous, so it could have been yesterday. You want a number though, so on a wild guess…
“Three days.” That’s not right. I remember now. Kayla made me peanut butter and toast yesterday. I tried to help her, but every time I held the knife with its heap of peanut butter against the dry bread, the knife fell out of my unsteady hands. Laura sat with me on the bed as I picked off little pieces of bread, though the smallest crumb I could tear off still seemed too enormous for my stomach. It must have taken me an hour to eat that piece of toast. I couldn’t sit still long enough to chew and swallow repeatedly without boring myself to death. When I had finally finished one piece of toast, leaving a second behind on the plate, Laura kissed me on the forehead, took the plate to the kitchen and said we would try more later. Then she gave me one of the blue pills. I asked Kayla for another, but Laura said I was only allowed one.
“You haven’t eaten anything in three days?”
“No. Yes. Why do you ask questions I don’t understand? I had toast.”
“Just toast?”
“I don’t know. Eating is boring. I can’t be bothered to remember. Can I borrow that?” I am pointing at one of your many medical books on the tall shelf next to the filing cabinet.
“My neuropsychiatry textbook?”
“Yes.”
“Of course. You’re welcome to borrow any of the books here.”
“I might wreck it.”
“That’s ok. I don’t consider a book to be well read unless it shows some wear. I guess this is a good time to end today. Have a good week. Enjoy the book.”
“Thanks.’


……….


When I asked to borrow your book, my interest in the subject was genuine, if my motive was contrived. The pages were filled with pretty, colourful drawings of the brain, all the pieces labelled and explained in excruciating detail with additional clinical notes. Hypothalamus, corpus callosum, medulla oblongata. All things I used to know. It was like looking at a photograph of my lost memory. There was a vague familiarity of the subject matter that was difficult to attribute to any body of knowledge I currently possessed.

I tried to relearn the four lobes of the brain, repeating the names to myself – frontal, parietal, occipital, temporal, frontal parietal, occipital, temporal – but I couldn’t make the words stay in my brain, much less remember which part of the brain each label was assigned to. So I indolently abandoned the effort to locate pieces of who I was, who I thought I was, who I used to be, and instead looked for pieces of you.

You had underlined the more important, perhaps more interesting, facts with a red pen and a ruler. It was the ruler I found interesting. Your penmanship is poorly developed and it seemed odd you would take the time to carefully mark your book with such diligence. In some places, you had marked important paragraphs with a single parenthesis in the margin and, if you found what you were reading to be of particular interest, you added an exclamation mark.

Then there were whole chapters that had been left unmarked. You must have lost interest in what you were reading, maybe it was information you already knew and so you grew bored. But there was one chapter near the end of the book where you resumed your marking, only now it was with a blue pen and the wavy lines underlining your choice phrases were quite obviously not drawn with a ruler. It reminded me of the way I used to study, with a lot of effort and concentration in the early stages until I got bored and lazy and realised I didn’t even need the book. If anything it was slowing me down. It’s interesting how much a person leaves behind of themselves in the books they read.

There was also a bonus opportunity to leave an appointment slip with my name on it inside the front cover of your book. It would look innocent, forgotten, unintentional. But maybe you would flip through that book one day and see my name. Probably the little green piece of paper will end up in the recycling without a second thought. But maybe, you will see my name spelled out in your awkward handwriting and think of me. That would be enough. To be thought of. Even if only for a moment and even if I never know.


……….


It was out of control today. I was desperate, like a junkie after more drugs. I had misplaced my ritual razor but needed to cut myself, so I ransacked the house looking for my favourite tool and, in the mean time, using anything else I came across in my hunt that was remotely sharp to injure myself. Only every other sharp object I could find wasn’t sharp enough to satisfy my need.

Nothing hurt enough. Nothing cut deep enough. Even my previous favourite, the serrated paring knife, was unsatisfying. I tried stabbing myself repeatedly with it, lightly. I tried using some shaving razor blades, but the safety guards made cutting deeply difficult. The house was torn apart from my searching – under the sink, at the back of drawers, behind books - for a razor that must be there. When, after half an hour of searching, I couldn’t find any suitable sharp objects, I looked through the house again, dispelling more contents of cupboards and shelves onto the floor.

My search for a knife, a razor, a pair of scissors, anything to cut myself with, became frantic. Each empty drawer and cupboard increased my anxiety until the room began to spin and I fell to the floor with my head in my hands. There was a noise, silent but deafening. Bright and white, if noises can have colours.

Then I felt hands on mine, gently pulling them away from the ears I was covering. There was a voice, a whisper in my right ear. I could feel the air move around my ear, gently bending the fine hairs around the canal with the sound of the words. Words soft and light, abating the harshness of the silent noise that was filling my head.

“Ssssshhhhhh. It’s a secret.” Kayla offered her hands as a support for me to pull myself up off the floor. Her hand was warm and the close contact of our skin caused my palm to sweat, just a little.

She didn’t have to force me to stand. She didn’t have to order me. She didn’t have to ask me. She had already provided me with quiet relief from the dizzying noises and for that, and wanting more of the same, I would have followed her anywhere.
She led me, the fingers of her right hand intertwined in the fingers of my right hand. It occurred to me what a perfect fit our hands were. Indistinguishable. One hand blending and folding perfectly into another. There was safety and comfort in that similarity; a hand so like my own could not harm me.

She took me to the bathroom and pointed at the medicine cabinet. The mirror had been covered with sheets of white paper a few nights earlier when I couldn’t sleep and the reflected image of my face was more disturbing than usual. I opened the little door of the cabinet and, on the narrow shelves, amidst blue plastic prescription bottles, nail clippers, band-aids, was a small yellow exacto knife. “Thank you,” I said to Kayla, grateful that there was someone in my little world who would take care of me.

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