Chapter 10

Full novel for sale at Lulu.

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.

Chapter 9

Full novel for sale at Lulu.

Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, hraka that must be passed, holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept. Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.

“So how are you?” Terrified.
“I read a poem.”
“What was the poem?”
“You want me to recite it?”
“Sure. If you can.” Of course I can. I couldn’t forget it now if I wanted to.
“My spirit is too weak; mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.”
“I’m impressed you can recite Keats.” I’m impressed you’re impressed, but you missed the point. “It’s a good sign you’re memory is improving.”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“What wasn’t easy?”
“To remember. It was a lot of effort.”
“Memory is like a muscle, it has to be worked out in order for it to get stronger. When it becomes asthenic, you have to start working it out with small exercises, so as not to cause injury, like with reciting short poems. Gradually, as it becomes stronger, you can add on more and more weight, until before you know it, you’re lifting cars.” Asthe-what? I used to know these things, definitions of words, and I know they’re still in my brain somewhere because every once in a while they slip out when I’m talking. I don’t know if I’m using them correctly. I’m not entirely confident they’re real words. But nonetheless, there they are. I have no idea what that word you just said means, but your use of it excites me, in a less than appropriate way. I could listen to you talk incomprehensibly all day and not at all care about my ignorance. But I would rather impress you.
“I was reading about some research that was recently done, about how speaking the name of an emotion lessens the impact of the emotional response of the amygdala to the stimulus.”
“I saw that,” you reply on top of the end of my sentence. I like that you’re eager to share something in common with me. I like that I’ve become a little bit like you without trying.
“I’ve always sort of known that. That’s why I don’t talk about the things that are most important to me.”
“You’re afraid your feelings will be lessened?” I am seeing everything in clarifying detail today. Orange-red triangles outlined by dirtied white lines tracing the edge of your deep yellow rug. The red second hand on the clock tracing out endless circles. The ink spot on your finger. The brown of your eyes. The way the hum from the computer fills this tiny room without being intrusive. The black lines of the digital numbers on the other clock. Quiet. The smell of something unpleasant. Colours of books on shelves and the irregular pattern of the angle of their leaning. Motion constant or stalled. The length of a week and the shortness of an hour. Distractions.
“I’m afraid I will lose them. It’s why I don’t like saying ‘I love you’ to anyone. It’s not the sort of thing should be said everyday.” It’s like that in therapy too. I’m afraid you will take my words, and with them my feelings and when you’ve taken everything, you will send me away. And then I will have nothing. “I don’t like hearing it either. It makes me suspicious of the person saying it, like they’re trying to hide something.”
“Were there people who told you they loved you everyday?”
“Just my ex-boyfriend.” A guy I had met during my first semester at university. He wasn’t anything special, but he was one of those distractions I was looking for. So I let him love me. “I hated it. He would say it and then look at me expectantly, waiting for me to return the gesture. He would get angry at me when I didn’t.” And sometimes hit me. “Of course, in that case, I didn’t really love him.” I’ve never really loved anyone. But I want to.
“I think it’s just the opposite, that declaring your feelings directly and repeatedly can have the effect of building stronger emotion. Certainly, if the feeling is unwanted or not reciprocated, I imagine it could be a burden.” I wonder how often you tell your wife you love her.
“It will be an interesting experience if someone I love ever tells me they love me. I’m not holding out for it though.”
“I think it’s highly likely you will encounter that situation. You are creative, intelligent, resourceful.” I’m not beautiful anymore? Or was that a lie? “There are plenty of reasons for someone to fall in love with you.”
“I’m also prone to frequent, unpredictable, and dramatic mood swings. I cut myself. I’m obsessed with death. And I am incapable of discerning reality from fantasy.”
“Those could all be viewed as aspects which augment your other traits in order to create a comprehensive personality.”
“Your optimism is incredibly imaginative.” Your friendly laughter betrays you as one who knows he has been caught trying to catch a fish with a lure too colourful to be trusted. “It’s the same with compliments.”
“What’s the same?”
“Feelings being lessened with declaration. Compliments shouldn’t be given frequently. It makes the person giving them look insecure.” There was a girl in one of my classes who was always telling me what nice hair I had, what great shoes I had, how pretty my shirt was. Every time she complimented me, she was actually telling me what she hated about herself. She had nothing to gain from me, so her behaviour was obviously selfishly motivated. What she wanted was to be complimented in return. It wasn’t a game I was going to play, so I said my polite, disinterested thank-you and went on to ignore her.
“Can you give a specific example?”
“I was talking to a man and he complimented me a few times throughout the conversation. Our previous discussions had been more relaxed, but then it was like he was trying to trick me into liking him. It made me distrustful.”
“I could see how a possible ulterior motive would be unsatisfying.”
“It’s just not necessary. He didn’t have to compliment me to get me to sleep with him.” If people would just say what they mean it would make the world a lot less confusing place.
“You believe his motivation for complimenting you was in order to lure you into bed with him?”
“What other reason would he have?”
“Maybe he was being genuine.”
“He didn’t even know me.”
“So?”
“So how can I accept any of his compliments as sincere when he has no basis on which to be making compliments in the first place?”
“Maybe he was just trying to be nice.”
“I know you know that’s not true. Why are you trying to brainwash me into believing a lie? People use people. They manipulate each other for personal gain.”
“You don’t think people can genuinely care for each other?”
“Of course they can. But it’s secondary.”
“That’s awfully cynical.”
“It’s the truth. And it sure as hell beats setting yourself up for disappointment by ignoring the truth to believe a lie just because the lie is prettier.”
“I think you’ve had more than your share of disappointments in your relationships, but that doesn’t mean you have to use your past experiences as a template for all future encounters.” Instinct is built on experience. You can’t change instinct.
“I am making an educated prediction based on previous evidence and have concluded with ninety-nine percent certainty that I will always be alone. Plus or minus one percent to account for errors.” You didn’t think that last bit was as funny as I did, apparently, by your continued seriousness.
“How can you be so sure? What instrument are you using to verify your hypothesis?”
“I’m already dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“People see me and move on. I’m a ghost – invisible to most and to the others, frightening, disgusting, and unwanted.”
“Some spirits are viewed as comforting presences.”
“I can be a comforting presence. I’ve been told as much. But the dead are easily disposed of. There’s no guilt associated with forgetting the deceased.”
“Except you’re not dead.”
“No.” Not yet.
“Anyway, time is up for today. I hope you have a good week. Enjoy the sun.”
“Thanks.”

……….


Motivated by hunger and the desire to keep a roof over my head, I began the agonising search for employment. In recent weeks, I had single-handedly provided conclusive evidence that it was possible to survive on caffeine and potatoes. And peanut butter. However, after substituting peanut-butter for butter-butter on my potatoes, the cuisine had become unfavourable.

No longer capable of working in academics, mathematics, research, or any other area to which my long-sought after degree was supposed to entitle me, I was subjugated to minimum wage, minimum challenge, and minimum stimulation labour. However, this neatly coincided with my progressive dispassion and laziness. It was because of these two ill effects that my search for occupation was limited to a five-block radius from my apartment, wherein I encountered a pessimistically high number of businesses employing the more desperate of the population willing to work for anything.

My resume needed to be modified though. It wouldn’t do to go around touting proficient skills in Mathematica and fluency in both C++ and Java. Nor would my abilities to reduce complicated proofs into more eloquent and concise arguments warrant employment in an establishment where having a high school diploma guarantees you a managerial position.

I was lacking real world experience, but a quick internet search for sample resumes with a few address and name changes quickly provided me with an extensive resume in customer service, cash handling, and beverage preparation. At the bottom of the page listing my falsified work experiences, I noted ‘References Available Upon Request.’ I made sure to fill the page with plenty of skills in the fields of accurately counting change and pushing buttons with pictures of burgers on them, so that this missing criteria could easily be justified as a lack of space rather than a lack of truth. With all my ‘experience’, it didn’t seem likely they would need to check references, but should the occasion arise, I could provide them with a couple of my email addresses (not under my name, of course) and offer assurance, from myself, that I was an outstanding employee more than happy to darn a purple uniform and hairnet.

Two days later, I a received a phone call from a well known coffee shop asking if I would be available for an interview the next day. They wanted me to be there for nine AM and, even though the store was only a three block walk, it would mean I would have to be out of bed by eight-thirty at the latest, earlier if I wanted to groom myself first. I didn’t much like the idea of getting out of bed at all, but realising without this job, I wouldn’t have a bed to sleep in much longer, I was able to fandangle a comprise for later in the afternoon by stating I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning.

It was raining, again, the next day. Even after years of living in this city, I had refused to purchase an umbrella. I rarely went outdoors anyway. And all those people carrying all those black umbrellas (seriously, in Vancouver?), annoyed me to the point that I would rather be soaking wet than associate myself with the new yuppie-goth clique.

But the rain had let up early enough that the sidewalks were nearly dried by the time I left for my interview. It was a good sign, I thought.

It was in this interval between wet and dry when worms splayed themselves about the pavement in a desperate attempt to avoid drowning in their underground holes. This was my favourite time. It was easy to distinguish the live worms which were attempting to wriggle their way back towards the safety of soil, from the dead ones which were either bloated and sallow or crusty and black. The weather often changed so quickly that any worm that didn’t drown in a down pour found itself stuck and drying to the pavement.

It had always been a habit of mine to pick up those worms drying on the sidewalk after a rain and put them in the grass where they could find the moisture they needed for survival. This morning, I saw a worm struggling. He had already begun to turn brown and one end of his body was stuck to the sidewalk while the remainder pathetically wriggled in attempt to loosen himself from the cement, the grass, and relief, only inches away.

I stepped over him, my foot casting a shadow or his dying body, an appropriate darkness for the humiliation the worm was experiencing. Three steps further down the sidewalk, I stopped, feeling a sudden empathy for the androgynous annelid. A worm and a woman. The two of us there on the sidewalk, dying and dismissed. If ignorance and neglect were the price of normality, I would rather be thought crazy for handling worms typically regarded as litter. So, in an act of contrition to prevent my identity from amalgamating with a generic population, I picked up the worm by his tail and placed him among the shade of moist, grass blades where he would at least have a fighting chance at survival.

I had been cutting on myself only an hour previous to the interview. The sting of the wound still lingered on my arm. I enjoyed that part of cutting. A secret written in flesh. A secret so easily discovered if anyone bothered to look.
I thought I was sorry, about what I had done, but I wasn’t. In order for me to be apologetic there would have had to have been a caring recipient to the atonement, but there was no one around, no one who knew what I’d done, no one who could understand it in a way would make them capable of accepting the apology at all. Besides, I was damaged anyways, so there could be no consequence in adding one more fault to the ever expanding list.

I was right. Nothing changed. Nobody loved me any more or less than before I maimed my body. But I felt better. This must be how addicts feel, achieving pleasure and relief through self-destruction. Waiting, waiting, waiting, wanting. It was the deepest cut I had made to date. Drops of haunting red liquid released from the veins defined my actuality. I tasted it to be sure I wasn’t imaging the whole thing, but I couldn’t detect any flavour. It was pretty though. My favourite shade of red. Now I know why.

The manager who was to interview me offered me a coffee. I should have declined. I was still shaking from the despairing languish that preceded and the intoxicating high that followed any episode of cutting. But I didn’t. My concentration wavered as a result and my shaking hands become impossible to still.

The interview was a difficult event despite the fact that the questions were anticipated and should have been easy to answer (‘What makes you a team player?’ To which the truth, ‘I don’t really like people so I keep my mouth shut and do as I’m told,’ didn’t seem an appropriate answer). It required forced concentration to remember even what the question was that had just been posed to me. More than once, I was afraid I was answering a question that hadn’t been asked and quickly had to resort to a generic statement that could have answered any question he was likely to ask me.

It was an effort to talk to someone in such plain terms. The conversation didn’t make any sense to me. I was led to believe there was truth in sanity. But there we were, two people claiming normalcy as our default personality, having a conversation where neither of us said what we really meant.

The manager repeated throughout the interview how overwhelming the work would be. I restrained my laughter. People don’t take too kindly to you demeaning the position they have built up for themselves. But it was only coffee. He told me a story about a girl who had worked there and been robbed at gunpoint. So the worst that could happen to me had already happened. But I didn’t tell him that. Instead, I just pretended to look scared.

Chapter 8

Full novel for sale at Lulu.

Rabbits do not name the stars…

“So how are you?” You’re going to miss the point.
“I’ve been walking this week.”
“How was that?”
“At sunrise.”
“Did you walk somewhere specific?”
“No. Just around the neighbourhood.” The rabbit hasn’t returned. Expected, but disappointing. Its disappearance is an event both marked and indistinct, significant and forgettable, like the death of an idea that was never born and now will never be realised. I can’t understand what any of it means, so instead I smile at you.
“Is there anything particular you would like to talk about today?”
“Today I came across a plaque or book or magnet or something in a bookstore and printed on it were the words, ‘Shoot for the moon. At least if you miss you’ll land among the stars.’ The generic nature of the statement aside, I was appalled by the inaccuracy. The moon is much closer to the Earth than even the nearest star. Best case scenario, if you shoot for the moon with lofty dreams and miss because you failed to account for all sorts of physics, you will become trapped in a low earth orbit where you might be rescued, though survival is highly unlikely. Worst case scenario, you will plummet back the Earth and greet Death over a breakfast of pancakes or you will float aimlessly through the dark void of space between stars until you die of asphyxiation. And technically, we are already among the stars, so why risk shooting for the moon in the first place?” There’s a hint of a simper betraying itself at the upturned corners of your not too thin lips. I shouldn’t be looking at your lips.
“Maybe the point then is since there’s nothing to lose, as no matter where you are you will be among the stars, then it can’t hurt to challenge yourself to do something new.”
“It can hurt. If you miss, like I said.” I saw you, today, and turned away. You were walking down the hospital hallway towards the clinic as I was headed towards the washroom. I had hoped this would happen, that you would see me and smile. Instead, I turned around and walked the other way, not able to bring myself to hope for the smallest sign of recognition from you. The pain of rejection would have been far too great to even consider the possibility you would acknowledge me with even artificial fondness. There was no way to avoid you seeing me, but I did my best to relieve you of the obligation of exchanging empty pleasantries with me. My fear now is that I made the wrong decision, that you saw me see, you saw me turn away, that you did want to see me and I rejected you. I rejected you.
“There is something to be gained from every life event, even the ones perceived to be failures.” If I fail, I die. You’re right. There is something to be gained.
“At any rate, it upset me.” I had to leave the store since, once I noticed the plaque, I became inundated, in a hostile manner, by sentimental banalities decorating every calendar and notebook in the store. If this is the world I am supposed to conform to in order to survive, I look forward to my eventual death.
“Has anything else been upsetting you this week?” Everything upsets me all of the time.
“Nothing specific. I tried to read a book.”
“Which book?” What difference does it make?
“The Plague.”
“An interesting, existential choice of a story. What did you think of it?”
“I couldn’t really read it. I recognised the words, and it shouldn’t have been difficult to read, but I didn’t understand them. I remember there was a lot of blood. I liked that. And somebody said something about death being ‘the right to disappear definitively.’ I don’t understand why I can remember that.”
“Death continues to play a significant role in your life. The statement most likely resonated with your attempts to withdraw yourself from life, literally and socially.”
“It is appealing.”
“What is appealing?”
“That not only can I disappear, but that it’s a right.” Instead of a conviction of insanity.
“It is your right. There’s nothing to prevent you from doing something like moving to the woods to live as a hermit.”
“I’ve actually thought about that.”
“And?”
“There are things preventing me.”
“What things.”
“Finances. I need to be able to buy a cabin and food and other supplies. I wouldn’t be able to go to school, not that I can now anyway.”
“So there are particular comforts you desire that would be less easily attained by living in isolation?”
“It’s not about the comforts. It’s that I wouldn’t be able to be the person that I want to be out in the middle of nowhere. Yet, here where I’m surrounded by people I detest, I don’t want to be the person I want to be.”
“What type of person do you want to be?” Someone more like you.
“I don’t know anymore. I’m very confused. All I ever wanted to do was go to school and work.”
“Isn’t that what you are doing?”
“No. School is over. Forever. I failed so miserably I can’t continue. Same with work.”
“But there are other options available to you in both work and education. The local colleges offer all sorts of professional certificates.”
“I thought about working in a morgue, but at the level I could get a job at, I would be bored within six months. That’s sad.”
“What’s sad?”
“That even death could bore me.”
“What do you think is limiting you in achieving the previous ideals you set for yourself?”
“I can’t do math anymore. I cut myself. I talk to myself. I see things that aren’t really there.”
“Those are all symptoms. You may have to do some reorganising of your professional life, but these are all limitations that can be overcome.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.” The damage is permanent. This is what I have amounted to, an illiterate, uselessly educated, and decrepit semblance of a person.
“Once you start doing the things you want to be doing, you will start to feel it. It may take some time. In the beginning, you might not feel anything at all. But the more you work at it, the more it will come, until you won’t have to work at it at all in order to recognise the achievability of your goals.”
“So where do I start?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. All I’ve ever wanted to do is work.”
“So get a job.”
“But I’m not qualified anymore for the jobs I want.”
“Then start somewhere else while you work on re-building your qualifications.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Can’t what?”
“What if I can’t go back to being what I was?”
“Then you’ll be something else.” I’m not sure I want to be anything else.
“Can I be a rodeo star?”
“There might be some special skills involved with that you would need to develop. Do you know how to wrangle a calf?”
“My speciality will be a new game. I’ll call it, ‘Pimp My Pig.’”
“You’ll have to fill me in on the details of that next time. I hope this week offers you opportunities to pursue your farming sport dreams.”
“I’m sure it will. Thanks.”

……….


I was lying in bed. I wasn’t tired, but it was ten o’clock at night and since I usually wait all day for ten o’clock to come, as this seemed the earliest normal hour I could retire, I excitedly dressed myself in my pyjamas and crawled into bed. Given that I wasn’t the least bit sleepy, I tried to read myself to sleep, but I found I was reading too fast and missing words and paragraphs. The story just couldn’t move fast enough to keep up with me. When I started erratically flipping the pages and then tearing them out, it occurred to me to put the book away.

I thought I heard a noise in the kitchen. It was probably just my cat or I fabricated the sound to give myself an excuse to get out of bed. Of course, by the time I got to the kitchen, I had forgotten all about the mysterious noise. Since I was out of bed anyway, it only made sense to turn on the stereo. Something mellow, I told myself, to help me sleep. But before that, a little bit of fun music. I told myself, just one song, then I’ll change the music to Chopin, which always helps me sleep.

One favourite pop song, accompanied by singing and dancing, became another favourite and another with more singing and more dancing. This went on well into the middle of the night, with periodic breaks of lying on the floor, my heart beating too fast from the dancing and my throat too sore from the singing.

It was during one of these rests, which were not remotely restful but only slowed the movement of my body to a shake, that I remembered I was supposed to be in bed reading (I thought I was supposed to be reading; I had completely forgotten about Chopin). Since I wasn’t able to focus my attention on taping the few pages back into the book I had been reading in proper numerical order (the thought of the mundane task of counting whole numbers was insufficient to hold my attention. And, I was slightly afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it, 1-2-?), I retrieved a new book from the shelf in the living room.

There were a lot of books on the shelf, a lot of choices, a lot of decisions to be made, and I couldn’t make one. So, I closed my eyes, turned myself around in three circles, and fell down. Once I had finished laughing at myself, I pushed myself up off the floor and stood, again, in front of the bookshelf. I closed my eyes, didn’t spin, reached out my hand and pulled out a book.

It was a book of poetry. Thinking this would be ideal, stanzas short enough I could read an entire poem, I opened the book to somewhere in the middle. Two lines into the first poem, I grew bored, so I closed the book and opened it to another random page. This time, my attention was captured.
I read the poem aloud over and over while pacing through the house. I was determined to remember it. Doubting my capacity to recall a single word later, despite my constant and often dramatic recitations, I concluded it had to be written down. Only it had to written in a place where I would notice it, because not only might I forget the poem, I might forget I had read it and recorded it.

I opened my purse with the intention of retrieving for a pen. My purse was as chaotic and disorganised as my mind, filled mostly with old tissues and candy wrappers, and the difficulty of a methodical search was testing my patience. Dumping the contents onto the floor, the first object my eyes landed on was a lipstick. I uncapped the tube and twisted the bottom to determine what shade it was. Red. Perfect.

Then I began writing. I nearly ran out of lipstick before I had filled the large mirror above my couch with the lyrics. But it was done and it was beautiful. I had saved myself from forgetting. This calmed me enough that at three am, I could at least lie in bed with my eyes closed, even if I couldn’t sleep.

I finally did fall asleep as the sky outside my bedroom window began to lighten with the rising of the sun. A few hours later, I rose, and in my groggy state I hadn’t yet recalled the events of the previous night. However, when I walked into the living room to be confronted with Keats scribbled in large, red letters on my mirror, I couldn’t not remember. That had been the point, to not be allowed to forget.

Reading the words, I began to cry. This wasn’t a happy poem. But I was happy when I wrote it, wasn’t I? I had woken up to a mysterious poem written by a mysterious person who I wasn’t entirely sure was me. It was like staring at a message left by some time traveller from the future. Maybe it was a warning. Or a prediction. Whatever it was, it was important. It was important enough that I felt obliged to let it remain inscribed on the mirror instead of washing it off.

Three days I spent in the company of Keats. I analysed every word, every combination of words, every punctuation, every pause. When I was certain the poem had been ingrained in my memory and fully conceived, I washed the lipstick off the mirror, because I wasn’t crazy and only crazy people write cryptic messages to themselves on household objects. I would wash myself of insanity with Windex and paper towels. It was that simple.

Except it wasn’t that simple. Most days during that week, I oscillated between exhilarating highs and debilitating lows, with no less then four mood shifts each day. At times, I would swing from one polar extreme to the other within minutes. There I was, one minute, running laps around the outside of the house, barefoot, unable to contain my ecstasy at every sensation passing through my body. Chilled grass lawn, bumpy cement sidewalk, pumping muscled legs. And in the next minute, I was back in the house lying crumpled on the floor, crying with such viciousness I was soon dry heaving from the effort.

With each sudden drop in mood, I folded into myself, bringing my knees up to my chest in anticipation of the imminent crash. It doesn’t matter how I prepare myself, the impact is always devastating. There is no object, real or imaginary, I have found to brace myself against that can withstand the force of the shadows moving into me, coursing through my bones in a chain reaction of invisible pain. When it happens suddenly like this, not even Laura can reach me. She and Kayla and everything cease to exist, replaced by the blinding darkness that lives in my head.

Eventually, my body exhausts itself, drained of energy, and I fall into a disturbed sleep wherever I lie, incapable even of lifting my body off the floor and walking to bed. After a few hours of rest, just enough to keep me from slipping into complete exhaustion, the uncontrollable cycle begins again. After a few days, the enjoyment of the highs wears off completely as I have learned, but will forget again, that each one will be followed by a major depressive episode, the end of which, unlike the mania, is always unforeseeable.

Chapter 7

Full novel for sale at Lulu.

We are not conscious of daylight as that which replaces the darkness.

“So how are you?” You might have been in one of my dreams last night. I don’t recall it, but we were laughing.

“I cut myself.” I cut myself more than once, but I doubt we will have time to discuss it all.

“Why did you do that?”

“It was too bright, the lamp. It made the room too bright. I didn’t recognize my house. Or. I did. But. I don’t know. It was different somehow, like I didn’t fit in it anymore.” I was scared. The light sharpened the corners of the room and altered the colour of the paint on the walls. It looked like my house. I remembered unlocking the front door and coming into my house, and it was my house then. The lamp had somehow taken my house, my real house, and replaced it with a substitute. I didn’t know where I was, but I knew I wasn’t in my house so, like a child seeking comfort from monsters beneath the covers, I threw the lamp across room in order to produce an anodynic darkness. The lamp hit the wall with enough force to cause the bulb to shatter. It was darker now, but I could still feel the house changing, moving. The broken glass caught my attention and I went to it. It said it had a secret it wanted to tell me. My body wasn’t mine any more, it was owned by whatever force also possessed the house. My body sat on the floor in front of the broken lamp. I thought I saw Kayla standing in the darkness, but I couldn’t be sure. My right hand reached into the glass and retrieved a large piece. My left hand turned itself over offering the soft skin of its underside. My right hand used the piece of frosted glass that had once contained light, to release blood from my left forearm. There was no fear, no crying, no confusion. It was seductive and enticing. Only, when the bleeding stopped, so too did the possession. The involuntary exorcism was shocking. Like recovering from anaesthetic, my body needed to be purged. Crouched over the toilet, I slid my two longest fingers down my throat. It was tighter than I expected and I could feel the ridges along the back of my throat as my fingers moved past them. After vomiting, my body settled itself, exhausted by the ordeal, and, with some concentrated effort, I was able to clean myself of the blood and vomit before retiring to bed, still in my clothes.

“When I was young, there was a building on the corner of our block. It was a four story brick building, which to me at that time was gigantic. Everyday I would walk by it on the way to school and no matter how many times I saw it and no matter how much I expected to see it, it always appeared unfamiliar to me.” You’re not looking at me as you speak, as if you are shy and trying to hide, so I figure you are telling the truth. I watch you though, so that when you do look towards me, you will know I have been listening. I try to get inside your memory with you, to see you as a boy contemplating the novelty in the familiar, viewing your world as paradisiacally absurd.

“Did this building make you cut yourself?”

“No, but that’s the point. You can exist in a strange, sometimes awkward environment without having to injure yourself.”

“I’m not sure I want to. I like bleeding.”

“In ancient times blood-letting was a common practice for curing many different kinds of ailments. Maybe you’re re-living your mythological, medical ancestry and your cutting is an attempt to purge yourself of some illness.”

“Are you supposed to be encouraging me?” You’re laughing. You understood my joke, laughed, and didn’t take offence. Maybe I was mistaken in categorising you as the stereotypical psychiatrist. You simply want someone to play with.

“In order to eliminate undesirable and physically harmful behaviours, it often helps if one doesn’t view the behaviour in question as associated with the self negatively. It’s not uncommon for one struggling with such behaviours to view the act as a part of their identity and inseparable from the self. I think it is more helpful to consider, in your case, cutting as an addiction. Much like a heroin addict will continually use in order to achieve a heightened sense of elation and comfort, so do you use your cutting, and it’s easy to believe that such a habit, especially if it is a first exposure, is the only way to achieve this nirvanic state. But this is a misconception.” When you talk like this, invested and confident in your opinion, you project an attractive quality which is, curiously, not at all lessened by your nervous habits of playing with your fingers and avoiding eye contact.

“But I liked it. I want the urge.”

“Then you would be in what is called the pre-contemplative stage of your recovery. Are you having any other symptoms this week?” Emotional instability. Crying. Laughing. Dancing. Thinking. Reading. Writing. Inspiration. Beauty. Loss. Movies. Poorly perceived realities.

“Nothing new.”

“Is there anything causing you concern?”

“I’m tired. A lot.”

“How have you been sleeping?”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t ever sleep?”

“Maybe a few hours each night, but even that is broken up.”

“Why aren’t you sleeping?” I don’t like blue-pill-sleep, sleep without rest. Sometimes it’s just easier to be awake.

“There’s too much going on inside my head. Sometimes, it’s ok. I have a lot of energy and I can get things done during the night. Other times, it feels like my thoughts have paralysed me and even though I might spend days in bed, my thoughts won’t let me sleep.”

“There is a way to encourage circadian rhythm stability by taking a walk each morning at sunrise.”

“Are you aware of what time the sun gets up?”

“Even if you go back to bed afterwards, a short walk exposing yourself to sunlight first thing in the morning is helpful.”

“There is no way I will ever get out of bed that early, not for anything.”

“It’s an option.”

“I did go for a walk the other day.”

“Good.”

“It wasn’t at sunrise though.”

“At least you were out getting some exercise. How was the walk for you?”

“It was ok.” I thought if I left my house and went out into the world where normal people were doing normal things, I could make the shadows in my head disappear and be more normal myself. It didn’t quite happen, though.

“Where did you walk to?” Once I was out onto the street, I saw a man about half a block away wearing a yellow jacket. The yellow fascinated me, so I started following the man. He walked quickly, however, and my short legs couldn’t move fast enough to keep up with his long strides, but by this time we had neared a busy street and a woman with a yellow purse walked by me, so I followed her. Then there was a woman with yellow flowers on her shirt. And then an old man with a yellow cap. This colour jumping went on until I reached a corner near the industrial part of town where there were fewer people and I ran out of yellow.

“I was just walking. It was the afternoon and I thought I should leave the house, but I couldn’t think of anywhere to go, so I just stopped thinking, put on my shoes and left. I saw a chicken.”

“You saw a chicken in the city?” I actually did see a chicken. After I ran out of yellow, I started walking back home, taking the back roads. One of the buildings I passed was a chicken slaughterhouse. They transported live chickens from rural farms to the city to be processed there. One of the chickens had escaped.

“Yes. It crossed the road. I thought that was amusing. I didn’t smile, but I was interested.”

“What interested you about it?”

“A chicken crossed the road.”

“So?”

“So all of a sudden, after a lifetime of hearing the joke, which was never even funny, I actually wanted to know why.”

“Did you ask the chicken why he crossed the road?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He was walking away from me. Besides, even if he knew he wouldn’t have been able to answer.”

“Why not?”

“Because chickens can’t talk. Are we really having this conversation? I don’t want to talk about chickens anymore.”

“So what would you like to talk about then?”

“It’s time for me to go.”

“So it is. I hope you have a good week with your walks.”

“Yeah. Right. Thanks.”

……….

My alarm was set to rouse me at the same time the sun rose. Since I had no intention of parting with my mattress, I figured it couldn’t hurt to set the alarm. At least that way, I could say I made an honest effort.

When the alarm started beeping incessantly, I rose out of bed, dressed myself, pulled my hair back, put on my shoes and opened my front door. I stood there, on the doorstep. The cold morning air didn’t chill me, it was invigorating.

I saw a light in the kitchen window of the house behind mine and the silhouette of a woman. For a moment, I wondered if she could see me. But the living don’t see the dead.

I looked down. In the two inches from the doorstep to the ground, I could see clouds and through them to the streets below. I felt like a god, but a god condemned for some past sin, left here to live an eternity of pain.

I closed my eyes. I listened to the cars. I believed I could fly. Or at least fall with serenity. So I fell. I jumped from the ledge of my doorstep which had become the ledge of some tall, imaginary building, but the deadly pavement never came. The floor of the porch did though. Followed shortly by an irritating pain in the arch of my right foot from falling too heavily. I was still in my body.

So I walked around the block. Then I walked around another. Then I walked around the hospital. I thought if I kept moving eventually the crying, which had started shortly into the walk, would stop. It wasn’t that I was unhappy. It was just everything looked so different, softer, and I never would have seen it if it weren’t for you.

Not everything I saw was so grounded in reality. Along the streets, angry leprechauns disguised as fire hydrants stalked me. ‘We’re coming for you,’ they would say, plainly, because their threat didn’t need angry undertones, it had truth. There were also yawning tigers lounging in the giant arms of chestnut trees and giggling nymphs who followed me, laughing and playing. The nymphs were friendly so I played along, letting them chase me a small distance while I giggled back over my shoulders.

The area around the hospital had small green spaces around it. Nothing that could be called a park, but areas with grass and some with trees and bushes. In one of these patches, I came across a bird lying on the grass beneath one of the cherry trees. It was a Starling, a noisy and invasive species that Eugene Schieffelin would have done better to have left in Europe. But lying on its side, its whole body moving with laboured breaths, it wasn’t so offensive as it was fragile. I held its soft body in my right palm while covering its head with my left, hoping to decrease its level of stress by covering its eyes.

Two minutes later, the starling expired. I moved my left hand so that I could witness this passing, because nothing should die alone. There was something in the way the small bird was lying in my palm, something in the way the softness and warmth of its feathers played against my skin, something in the way the shine still lingered in its eyes. Alive. Dead. Alive. Dead. Alive. Dead. These two words circled through my head as if through repetition I could reconcile the difference between them.

It wasn’t a dead bird. It was a bird that a few minutes previous had had life. If it had had a life and now it didn’t, where did that life go? Dissipated into the ether increasing the entropy of the universe? What strange shift occurred in the fabric of space-time in the instant of its death, that fraction of time, when the smallest of tremours coursed through its body as its heart seized and a life ended?

……….

It happened again. It feels tight, sort of stretched where the skin broke, where I broke the skin. The skin pulls as little cells frantically work to produce scar tissue as though they believed I was worth saving. But it has nothing to do with me. They are only trying to save themselves.

The cutting gets deeper and easier every time. I thought my unstable mood was the result of a caffeine withdrawal. An optimistic and evasive guess at what I knew was happening. Surely enough, the depression crawled, seeped into me, more and more until it filled my body. There was no defence. There never is. But I tried. I tried all the things I was told to do when I felt I was losing control - took a bath, drank fragrant tea, distracted myself by washing dishes, but I couldn’t stop the crying.

Too exhausted to distract myself with further futile activities, I lied on the couch. The tv was on. The sounds of people engaged in some drama, or comedy, moved past my ears, but I couldn’t hear them, or I wasn’t listening. My body was paralysed, unable to respond to the simplest of stimuli.

Eventually, I rose from my stagnant position, where I was curled on black fabric staring into the back of the couch trying to fade into the darkness of the colour. There didn’t seem to be a reason for my movement. It wasn’t through any will of mine, but more like sleep-walking. My body moved and I followed it because I could not escape it.

I watched my feet, first on dark wood floors and then on beige coloured linoleum, enter the room I knew was the bathroom. The goal had been to retrieve a hairbrush. An innocent, healthy objective.

My razor was in the bathroom as well, sitting next to the hairbrush. I wanted it. My hair didn’t need to be groomed, but my veins needed to be bled. I could hear Laura, and even Kayla, distant, trying to dissuade me from wrapping my hands around the yellow plastic casing of the razor.

I didn’t really want to do this. I wanted to be good. I wanted to be normal so people would like me and I wouldn’t have to feel so lonely all the time. But I did want to. The razor offered me immediate relief from my alienation, relief a hairbrush could never guarantee. I held the brush in my right hand and the razor in my left. Choices, and as simple as a blue hairbrush or a yellow razor.

I brushed my hair. No relief. Then I cut myself, a strategic cut that, as always, could be covered with a bracelet or long sleeves the next day to prevent interfering eyes from witnessing my self destruction.

It was dark in the small bathroom, there were no windows and the light in the adjacent kitchen hadn’t been turned on, but I could see little bits of blood slowly pooling on my wrist. The gratification was instantaneous, but the assuaged darkness was momentary.

I returned to the living room where the window framed the sky outside. Since it was so dark inside my apartment, I had assumed it was early evening. I hadn’t done anything during the day, but it wasn’t unusual for me to forget hours. I was surprised to find the sky a pretty, yet unreal, light blue. I walked, hypnotised, to the window and put my palms against the cool, thin glass trying to touch the sky. I wanted to go to where it was, or have it come to me, to be a part of its lightness, but a single paned barrier prevented any such crossing or amalgamation. So, I went to bed and slept.

The day before had been one of my good days, with good being defined as not having made a noticeable public display of my anxieties. I left the house, eventually, and made my way to a coffee shop. When the cashier said hello to me, I repeated the greeting back to her. When she asked me how I was, I replied ‘Fine, thank you.’ Luckily I was in a place where greetings are expected to be insincere, so the girl behind the counter with her black tattoos and orange-streaked hair didn’t notice the strain in my voice when I lied to her.

She stood at the register, trying to maintain an appearance of patience even though I could see her body tensing and knew she wanted to process me as quickly as possible so that she could deliver more perfidiousness to the people lined up behind me.

It required more mental and physical effort than I would like to admit to count out the change I poured onto the counter. My hands couldn’t find the coins I needed and the extra pressure of being watched and waited for caused my hands to tremble so that all I could do was hope my finger landed on a coin when I plunged it into the pile spread over the counter. Eventually, I was able to gather together the two-sixteen for my double espresso. By the time I received my drink, my anxiety had decreased to a nervous tremble which was further eased by the caffeine entering my bloodstream. I didn’t leave a tip.

It wasn’t until I returned home that the shadows came. At first, it wasn’t all that terrible. Having grown accustomed to the shifts in my moods, I knew what to expect and, judging by the flaccid appearance of the shadows, I figured this declivity in emotional state wouldn’t be overly dramatic. There were little fits of episodes, brief bouts of crying. These minor distresses exhausted me quickly though, probably because of the effort of my outing earlier.

Laura was there to help me relax and sleep. I was still in my clothes, curled in the foetal position at the foot of the bed, lying on top of the red quilt with my head in her lap. She stroked my hair and whispered to me to sleep. For over an hour, I was calmed by her company. “Sarah,” she said gently, not wanting to disturb me now that I was finally resting, “I need to move you so you can get changed and properly into bed.” That was when my composure disintegrated. Terrified any movement would cause Laura to disappear, I began crying vicious tears and writhing.

“It will only be for a moment,” she said. “Once you’re into your nightclothes I will give you something to help you sleep. I’ll be with you the entire time, even after you fall asleep. I promise.” It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her. She was gentle and protective, and I knew she would not have left me alone with the shadows of her own will.

But, the shadows. They worked, as relentlessly as always, to cloud my mind and as such drive Laura away. Not that they were overly concerned with Laura. She was a minor obstruction to them, a weak defence. Laura was no more than an annoyance to the shadows. It was me they wanted.

Each time I was near to falling asleep, I would wake up screaming, afraid Laura wouldn’t be there. Twice she wasn’t. But Kayla was there in her place. The shadows tolerated Kayla better than they did Laura since they believed her behaviours were more likely to help them reach me than to protect me from them.

This night though, there was no bleeding. Kayla sat with me as Laura usually did, rocking me back to sleep before kissing me on the forehead. She was like a lullaby, a lullaby without words or music. She was the essence of calm and she gave pieces of herself, her calm, to pacify me. I loved her. I loved them both.

Chapter 6

Full novel for sale at Lulu.

…-he took her seriously and talked to her as he would to a grown-up person. To ask his advice about a damaged rabbit and to discuss it with him would be very grown-up.

“So how are you?” Laura. Kayla. You wouldn’t believe me.

“I’ve lied to you.”

“Why?”

“Because there are things I can’t tell you.” There are things I can’t tell you, that I don’t have time to tell you, but I’ve never lied to you. Except for right now. Sometimes, my thoughts come out twisted in speech and lose their context, but that’s not lying. Other times, the truth is spoken when it should have been left hidden in silence. So I tell you I lie to protect myself from the things I could say that might lower your opinion of me.

“I hope you don’t feel you have to censor yourself here.”

“I do.”

“You do what?”

“I do have to censor myself here.”

“You certainly don’t have to on my account.” That’s exactly why I have to. Because you don’t care what I say. Nothing I will ever say will have an impact on you and I can’t stand to see my thoughts, my feelings, dissolved by your indifference. “So what would you like to talk about?”

“I can’t remember if I’ve been eating enough. I know I ate, but I don’t know how much everyday. Time goes so quick. I can’t catch up. It’s too fast. And I forget.”

“What do you eat in a typical day?”

“Coffee. Peanut butter.”

“That’s all?” There is kindness in your voice.

“Sometimes potatoes.”

“Why such a limited diet?”

“Limited culinary skills. And limited funds.” And limited appetite.

“Even a person who can’t cook a meal can prepare a bowl of cereal for breakfast.” I can’t. Besides, I usually sleep past breakfast.

“That’s a good idea. But I told you, I forget.”

“You forget to eat?”

“Yes. And I forget what food is. I walk around the grocery store and I don’t comprehend that all the products laid out before me are edible, so I leave.”

“You must get hungry.”

“No. That’s why I forget to eat. There’s nothing to remind me.”

“Then maybe you need to set some reminders for yourself, like an alarm that goes off three times a day as an indicator that it is time for a meal.” Like Pavlov’s dogs. “It would be a sort of Pavlov experiment on the human digestive system. Eventually, you won’t even need the alarm, your body will respond naturally. In order for it to work effectively though, you need to have the alarm set at the same time for each meal and you have to eat something each time the alarm goes off.” I close my eyes and let the sound of your voice roll over me, not hearing the words, only the gentle rhythm as your vocal cords contract and release. Your voice is pale yellow, with specks and lines of dark green interwoven. Your voice reminds me of unwatered grass, drying in the blazing heat of the sun.

“I don’t have an alarm clock.” I open my eyes again because you have stopped speaking.

“You don’t have a clock?”

“No.” The fact that I don’t have a timepiece in my house can’t be that unusual.

“How do you get up in the morning?”

“When I had to get up in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“I used my cell phone.”

“So use that.”

“Except I hardly ever use my phone. It’s not like anyone is calling me. Sometimes I forget to turn it on for days.”

“What about a little clock like this one?” You reach into one of your desk drawers and retrieve a small, grey travel clock. You move your chair closer to mine to properly exhibit all the functions of the timepiece. I’m wondering how many clocks you could need in one office; there are already two on display, one facing me and the other facing you. “This one is probably fancier than you need. It’s linked by satellite to an atomic clock so that it always displays the correct time, even if you change time zones.” You are so close. Both of our hands our on the little clock, our fingers separated by mere centimetres. I could sit like this all day, listening, watching you proudly showing off the different functions of the buttons. Your simple enthusiasm is a light reprieve from my own confusion. “It even has a light. Though I don’t think you should be waking yourself in the middle of the night to eat. But it would be useful for winter mornings.” Now that you’ve surfaced from your prideful display of your toy, you are retreating from me, re-establishing the three foot barrier of air between us.

“Lights startle me.”

“You don’t have to use the light.” If I buy a clock, will you like me? Will you like me because I remind you of yourself? If I become you, what will happen when I falter and you see the real ugliness that I am? It might be safer to not eat. You’re waiting for me to talk. There isn’t enough time.

“It’s too late.”

“Too late?”

“It’s too late to start another conversation.” You will only ask me to leave in the middle of it, happy to be rid of me and the obligation of listening.

“We still have eight minutes.”

“I know.” I know exactly how many minutes are left during every minute of these sessions.

“How are you finding your medications?”

“Why? Is something wrong?”

“No. I just like to check in every once and a while.”

“I guess they’re ok. I thought they were helping, but I don’t seem to be getting any better.”

“What do you think about increasing the dosage?” I don’t think anything about it. You’re the doctor.

“Sure. But I don’t think it will help.”

“I could also prescribe lithium which is used as a mood stabiliser and as an augmentation to anti-depressant therapy.”

“Fine.” I’m not depressed.

“Here you go then,” you hand me the prescription, a tiny piece of white paper that will deliver me from my insanity. You still handwrite your prescriptions. I like that. It’s classic. Though, your penmanship looks forced, like you were concentrating very hard on making the letters. Maybe you had a learning disability when you were younger. “It looks like we need to stop for now.”

“The rabbit is gone.”

“Excuse me.”

“There used to be a rabbit in here. A white rabbit, with long floppy ears. I found it amusing that a psychiatrist would have a white rabbit in his office.” You laugh a trivial laugh at my observation probably wondering how you missed something so obvious yourself. Are you paying attention at all?

“Maybe I should bring it back.” You missed the point. The rabbit will never return. Your whole sentence is dispassionate, in both words and delivery. If that weren’t convincing enough on its own, there are the worn shoes and unpainted wall to exemplify the noncommittal quality of your character. But I want to be wrong. I want to walk through the door next week and see the rabbit sitting contentedly on top of the filing cabinet, a guardian to the souls buried there. I want to know that this exception of a person sitting across from me is capable of enacting the potential I see in him. I need you to.

“Maybe.” You open the door to show me out. It feels less chivalrous on the way out than on the way in, as if you want me to leave.

“Have a good week.”

“Thanks.”

……….

I haven’t been at the top of my game lately. I drove drunk. Last night, at a school acquaintance’s (not a friend’s) end of semester party, I began to feel lonesome and decided his house was not where I wanted to be. This occurred sometime around four in the morning when almost everybody else had left and the host had gone to bed. Frank came out of his bedroom to make sure I was ok to drive. I wasn’t, but I convinced him I had only had three beers when it was probably closer to six. I can handle my liquor, but that many are going to make a dent, even in me.

He gave me a hug goodbye and I fought back the tears that threatened to pour out at such a kindness. I hardly knew him. Mostly, I ignored my colleagues, working on a speak-only-when-spoken-to agenda.

As soon as I walked out the door, though, the crying started. It was fierce, as if I had found out that someone I loved had been brutally mauled to death by a grizzly bear and they were still trying to locate all the pieces of his dismembered body. I cried all the way to my car and while driving. However, I forced myself stop crying when I passed a police car on the side of the road as I didn’t think I was sober enough to drive and cry at the same time.

When I arrived home, I didn’t go straight to bed like I was expecting. Instead I went to the bathroom to relieve myself of the large number of beer filling my bladder. I washed my hands, avoiding my reflection in the mirror above me. I dried my hands. Then my hand reached out, without consulting me, and found the razor sitting above the sink.

I didn’t try to cry. I didn’t try to stop it. I was exhausted and already familiar with the new routine. I wouldn’t win even if I did try to stop it. It was easier to submit. There was no pain, no sensation at all, when the razor broke through my skin.

I was lying on my side on the bathmat, crying now that the cutting was over and I had been returned to my damaged body. I saw the white piles of cotton of the bathmat as though they were bleached blades of grass. I saw the light in the other room, shimmering mythically, through my tears. I saw my body, pieces of my body – fingers, a wrist, part of a knee – not moving and this calmed me.

I stopped crying and relished the peace I had been delivered into. If this was to be my death, I could not have imagined it more halcyonic. My breath slowed, my eyes closed and I let myself slip away into what I hoped would be oblivion.

It was naïve to think the wound was lethal. I didn’t die, I wasn’t anywhere near death. But it did relax me enough to put me to sleep.

Laura didn’t want to wake me, now that I was finally asleep. She sat on the bathmat next to me and held my head in her lap, her attention completely fixed on me. But it was time to take my meds, one of the red pills to help drive the sadness from my brain and one of the blue pills to induce unconsciousness. I didn’t understand why blue-pill-sleep was better than beer-sleep or razor-sleep, but it was Laura and I wasn’t going to question her.

Only, when I woke to take the pills, I began crying again, more intensely than previously. I still had the razor in my hand. “Give me the razor,” Laura gently demanded. I wanted to hold something real, to touch something, to feel my body and know that I existed. The razor promised me these things and I was reluctant to relinquish that gratification, even to Laura. “I can’t take it from you,” she said, “You have to give it to me.” So I did. Because I was too tired and confused to decipher what was best for me, I let her decide. There was no reason to believe she didn’t have my best interests in her pretty, red heart pumping life and beauty through the rest of her body.

“I’m going to put you to bed now, but I need your help,” Laura said as she pulled off my socks, my own body immobilised by the invasion of shadows in my mind. “I’m going to take care of you. I’m right here.” I used her voice as an anchor to keep me from being pulled into that unrelenting darkness. Then I cried at the relief of knowing I wouldn’t be left alone, even if she couldn’t make the shadows go away.

Laura removed my jeans, tank top, bra, and underwear. She pulled a clean pair of underwear from the dresser and pulled them up my legs and then dressed me in a pair of cotton pants and t-shirt to sleep in. She pulled the blanket up to my chin and carefully lifted my head so she could move the pillow underneath it. When she had finished making me comfortable, she crawled in underneath the covers with me her head resting on top of my shoulder and her arm lying across my stomach. I could feel the weight of her extremity pressing against my breath. Tangible.

I was dizzy when I woke in the morning. My left side was weak and numb giving me a slight limp, a side effect of blue-pill-sleep. After eating my breakfast of toast and peanut butter and coffee, proud of myself for remembering to eat, I looked at the clock on my phone and realised it was already one in the afternoon. I hadn’t even done anything and the day was practically over. The laundry pile in the corner of the bathroom over-filled the black plastic basket, but I knew it wouldn’t get washed that day. There were still at least three pairs of clean underwear left in the dresser, plus my emergency underwear, which is what I called the pink thong I detested wearing but meant I could extend not going to the laundromat for another day.

I hate the laundromat. Among the numerous ways I waste my days, my life, laundry day always is by far the most tormenting. If I could afford to, I would have someone pick up my dirty laundry each week and bring it back clean and folded without me ever having to endure fighting the welfare moms with their six kids and thirty loads of laundry for a washing machine.

It was for that reason, the laundromat being crowded, that I began washing my laundry on weekdays when most regular people were at work. Still, the florescent lights gave the room a surreal feeling, like I’m sleeping but not resting, and it wearies me quickly. I’ve tried to fight the weariness with caffeine, but all that does is accentuate my awareness of the waving air and increase my nausea from watching the machines turn circles of fabric and colours and soap over and over and over.

I also tried going at different times of the day, thinking if I left the house before my daily confusion and hazed reality set in, I would not only succeed in washing my laundry without ill effects, but I might also make it through the rest of the day without encountering any trouble. It didn’t work. The confusion and haziness only began earlier and I had a longer day of it to endure.

I tried going in the afternoon, when I was emotionally numb, usually after a nap. That didn’t work either. Instead, it roused me from my comfortable lethargy into a world of bright lights, loud noises, and malodorous people.

As there was no conceivable solution to make being at the laundromat a tolerable experience, I went shopping and bought myself enough underwear so that I wouldn’t have to go to that retched place more than twice a month.