Chapter 10

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They limped and stumbled through a bad dream to that terrible place they were bound for.

“So how are you?” Embarrassed at what I’m becoming.

“I got a job”

“That’s good. What’s your new job?” Something is wrong here. The lamp is sitting half off the filing cabinet and the shade is slanted. The kleenex box is lying on its side. It shouldn’t be like this. I could fix it. No. That would be giving in to my delusion. If I look away for a minute, I’ll see that everything is normal

“I count change and steam milk and put pastries into paper bags.”

“Are you enjoying it?” Are you serious?

“It pays the bills. Some of them, anyway.” The lamp and the Kleenex box haven’t returned to normal. Somebody did this. Somebody angry. Unhappy. Or, it could be a trick. You’re testing me to see what my reaction is, to see if I’m crazy. I don’t know what the right answer is to a question without words. I hate being tested.

“There’s something positive.”

“There was something positive in that?” This lamp-Kleenex scene is beginning to feel like deja-vu, like I’m living in a loop. A mini groundhog day. If I could only figure out what it is I’m doing wrong, I could make it stop.

“Yes. You said you’re able to pay your bills. That’s a life affirming action.”

“Yes. Poverty is awe inspiring. I do hope to spend the rest of my life being grateful that while I may not be able to afford to eat, I can at least keep the telephone company at bay.” You always find my sarcasm amusing. I wasn’t trying to make you laugh. It wasn’t supposed to be a joke. I’m not sure if you’re laughing at me for being cynical and pathetic or if you think I was genuinely trying to be jovial. Nobody has ever laughed at my sarcasm before. People tend to find me abrasive and annoying. I make people unhappy. Yet, you’re laughing.

“There seems to be a habit of all-or-nothing type thinking in your evaluation process of accomplished tasks.”

“I haven’t accomplished anything.” Or maybe none of this is real, with the Kleenex and the lamp. It’s just a dream, but my brain is broken and can’t form the images properly.

“Why is that?”

“Because I never reach my goal. Either a project is abandoned before it is finished or I reset my goals before I’ve reached the original end.” Or it’s a movie, only the prop person made a mistake and didn’t place things where they are supposed to be.

“That’s not all-or-nothing logic?”

“I guess. But I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel accomplished with achieving a goal that I should achieve. All that can ever be is fulfillment of expectation. There’s no pride in behaving as required. I can’t expect to be congratulated for paying a bill or taking out the garbage. Nor do I want to be. These are not things I am proud of. They shouldn’t be difficult and just because I am debilitated doesn’t make them a triumph.” Maybe it was me that disorganised the office accessories. When would I have done this? Not today, I’m sure of that. Last week? But if I did this last week, he should have fixed it by now.

“Any prevalence over a hardship is an accomplishment that merits acknowledgment. This doesn’t mean you can’t keep progressing with other ambitions.”

“It might.”

“It might what?”

“Prevent me from progressing.”

“How’s that?”

“If I am satisfied, I may not want to progress. Satisfaction will lead to complacency. I mean, why continue personal development if I’m already content with simplicity?”

“Isn’t it possible that simplicity and pride might make establishing and reaching your goals easier?”

“Yes. But if I’m happy, I might forget that the person I am isn’t the person I wanted to be.”

“If you’re happy, what difference does it make?”

“It’s a waste of potential. My life is enough of a waste as it is. If I have more character to develop, it would be ridiculous to stop the process in an embryonic phase. You don’t have an abortion because getting pregnant was happiness enough.”

“I think that’s very insightful and your determination is admirable and should be encouraged, but I also think it is important you discover ways to enjoy the simplicity of the life you find abhorring. It’s as if you’re standing on a football field, holding the ball and you can see the goal, but instead of making a bunch of small passes to get the ball from your end of the field to the goal line, you keep trying to throw the ball eighty yards in one pass and so you keep regarding yourself as a failure. You need a new game plan.”

“Is a football field eighty yards?”

“I don’t actually know. My sports analogies aren’t the best.”

“I’m on the wrong team.”

“What do you mean?”

“The end zone is too far away anyway. The defence doesn’t want me to get there. If I even try, all that will happen is I’ll be tackled and they will take the ball away from me.”

“Then you will have to take it back.” It’s just me against a whole team of burly, angry men waiting to take me down. How can I pass the ball if there isn’t anyone on my team to pass it to? Even if Laura and Kayla can play, we’re still outnumbered. Time to change the subject.

“I’m a saint among segmented worms.”

“Is that a line from a poem?”

“No. I am capable of coming up with my own stuff. After it rains and the sidewalk starts to dry and the worms stick to the pavement, I pick them up and put them in the grass so they don’t dry up and die.”

“That’s a gentle demonstration of investment in life.”

“Well, I don’t really place them in the grass. I sort of toss them.”

“It’s still a kindness.” I used to sing to dying fish. When one of the fish in my aquarium became ill and I wasn’t able to treat them, I would take them out of the tank and put them in a glass of water where dying would be a less stressful event. Then I would sit in front of the glass and sing until the tiny tetra had passed. Nothing should have to die alone. It never occurred to me that by putting the fish in a glass I was suffocating them. “It looks like we have to stop for now. Have a good week.”

“Thanks.”

……….

“Where am I?” The kitchen lights were burning with white light that reached into the backs of my eyes, filling up my head with millions of photons that bounced around the inside of my skull, each one eliciting a small pain as it struck bone and all of them working together to fill my head with a dizzying pressure. The bulb was bright, like hospital lights, but I couldn’t look away. The cold, not unlike the cold metal of an operating table, seeped through the floor tiles into my back and legs and still I couldn’t move. My immobility must be a result of anaesthesia, was the thought. There must have been an accident, and a bad one too, because I couldn’t remember anything happening. I searched my memory for any missing time, but I was able to recall every event of the day immediately up to lying on the floor. There had been no accident.

I had woken late and slowly, defiantly refusing to stop dreaming and face reality. It was a morning dream, the content of which was somewhat under my control. That you were in my morning fantasy made confronting wakefulness all the more afflictive because not only did I have to face my life, I had to lose you at the same time.

In the dream it was your birthday and you were having a party. I don’t think I was invited, but I was there, barely noticed by you. You were smoking a joint and asked if anyone else wanted any. I thought if I spoke to you, you would have to notice me, but when I said I would like to partake, you passed the half burnt joint into my hand hardly even looking at me. Figuring I was to be ignored the whole night, I took the joint you gave me and went outside to get high with some guy I didn’t know. You had a beautiful house on the nice side of town. There was a large open room which rose a few stairs to another part of the same room where a black grand piano sat on beige carpet. Your wife, beautifully poised on the bench, was playing for a small group of your friends. Somewhere, I found a note or a card that had ‘I love you, daddy’ written on it. I might have been able to convince you I was worth the house and the wife, but there was no way I could compete with the strength of those words.

Eventually my legs moved to kick the heavy cover off the bed where it would be out of reach of my hands which were threatening to pull the blanket back up to my chin. For a moment, in my lazy slumber, that’s all I was – a pair of legs and a pair of arms. The rest of my body required too much effort to move. Even though I knew it would only take a few seconds to retrieve the blanket from the floor, I remained where I was and held tenaciously to the dream that was quickly fading into reality and out of memory. The discomfort of the cold, damp air biting at my skin finally outweighed the comfort of the tiny remnant of dream still in my head and I forced myself, awkwardly, out of bed.

The extra sleep had the antagonistic effect of increasing my somnolence and I stumbled lazily to the bathroom using the walls for support along the way. Once there, I went through the usual routine – toilet first, teeth second, bath last. The water in the bath was, as always, hot to the point where it turned the skin on my legs red. By the time I pulled the plug to drain the bathwater, the bathroom had filled with a fine mist of steam clouding the mirror above the medicine cabinet.

I towelled myself dry, dizzy from the hot water and still tired from the extended sleep. The cold tiles of the kitchen floor felt refreshing against the soles of my warm feet as I made my way back to the bedroom. Only I didn’t make it back to the bedroom. Instead, I stretched my naked body out on the cold tiles in an effort to bring my body temperature back down to a tolerable level.

So there I was, knowing how I got there, but not knowing where I was. Terrified by my confusion, my body began to tremble and I could feel tears pouring down my cheek and hanging in thick, tentative drops under my chin before falling to the floor. My skin was damp with sweat, despite the cold shivers I was experiencing.

“Where am I,” I repeated, still staring up into the bright white lights.

“You’re with me,” Laura answered. I turned my head to the side to discover the soft features of her face above mine. Her dark hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, as if she had quickly tied it back in a rush. She knelt on the floor sitting back on her heels and she bent down lower to run her long index finger along the side of my cheek. “You’re safe.”

“I can’t move my body,” I said in an almost curious, off-handed tone. I wasn’t afraid anymore because with acceptance comes detachment. I was an invalid and I didn’t care.

“Yes you can.”

“No, I can’t. There was an accident and I was hurt.”

“Yes. But you can walk.” So there was an accident. I was in the hospital. I thought I was in the kitchen. The confusion started all over again and brought with it the accompanying tears. “But I need you to help me. You need to get into bed.” I had thought I was in a bed, or on a table, but I obliged pushing myself up to my knees with great effort and then putting all my wait against the kitchen counter (so I was in the kitchen) to pull myself to my feet. Laura led me as I walked with heavy, slumbersome steps back to the bedroom.

Back, safe, under the heavy blanket on my bed, I stared at the space between where the air met my eyes and where it met the walls. I had no desire to sleep, but I also lacked the energy to so much as roll over. I was comfortable. These moments of comfort never lasted long and I relished the time I had now by slowing my thoughts as much as I could in order to make the moment last longer.

I remembered how nervous you were when you first told me I was pretty. Followed quickly by some insult on the size of my ego and my abuse of beauty over my fellow human beings, I think. What would you think of me if you could see me now, sitting in the same spot on my unkempt bed for hours staring at the mismatched socks strewn about the floor with a filthy curtain shutting out the daylight?

There it was. The end of the moment. No sooner did I recognise it then the space around me tightened, choking and forcing me to breathe harder. Noises became more distinct until they grew into a cacophony that pressed against the inside of my head causing a virtual headache, an excruciating headache without pain, a pressure only slightly relieved by the tears now flowing slowly from the corners of my eyes. And then all of the pain, the confusion, the exhaustion coalesced into a single darkness that seeped into my head and all I could do was hope the shadows would drown out the noise enough that I could get some sleep.