I CAN HOLD IT TOGETHER during the day, most of the time. So what if a few tears inadvertently slip from under my sunglasses on the tram on the way to work; so what if people stare - it will start to kick in soon, downed with the dregs of last night's beer. I catch each teardrop with a fingertip, and stare back at those who would treat the world as a gossip rag, its pages to be turned at will. As they leaf past the laughingstocks to the pointlessly lucky, the ticket inspectors get on, and there's a dash for the machine, leaving me stock still in my iBubble, upon my liar's chair. Is there any way, a man yells into his mobile phone, over background sounds of steel on steel, coins dropping and falling orange peel, of getting through to someone like that?
The next eight hours will be punctuated by the unscrewing of the bottle and the counting of the pills (I can never remember how many are left) and the slow lurch down the narrow corridor from my office, gently bouncing from wall to wall like a pinball, in search of something to offset the soporific effects of the stuff. I never used to care that much for Klonopin, never really noticed it before, it was just a fallback boy during football season; a backrub for my lack of concentration; collecting me at the end of the day and settling me into bed, but alone, always discreetly going home and never pressing for any further involvement. But now that to fall in love with me is a mental illness, and now that I've been pushed out of sight by the out-of-mind, I've fallen in love with K. About 8 mg a day just to sit still and face the screen, more to stop crying. What, you want more? I tip the tablets out of the bottle again, take one, and make a pattern with what remains - if forty-five, then a triangle, if thirty-seven, a hexagon, but now there's only thirty-six, a square. The patterns may proliferate, but the prescription is not a repeat one. K and I are in a relationship with a definite use-by date.And at night, I disappoint myself. At home, alone, I have IDD OCD, which means I roll over repeatedly to ensure that my mobile is switched to silent and that the landline is off the hook. Not that this protects me in any way - voicemail is still there, cupping its ear on my behalf and to ensuring that the words can never be taken back, even if my sleep remains unbroken. Still, it's the memory of being jaggedly hauled out of a dream - and what a dream it turned out to be - by a phone ringing at 3 am that drives my compulsion. Incredible betrayal that it heralded aside, I ask myself if such things will always be distilled and fused into an iconic sound, sight, smell or scene designed to forever haunt me, and demand such accommodating rituals? Why don't my wounds thicken and scar, instead of excoriating me, the auto de flay for the next wrongdoing? I'm a gun, and the whole world is a trigger.
Is there any way of getting through to someone like that?
" ...she said, well, he didn't say exactly those words, but they were having some... some humorous discussion..."
I ran to the bathroom, and sat hunched over on the toilet, not sure whether I needed to throw up or let it out the other end. Eventually I went for the latter. It felt like the bloody bowels of hell had taken up residence inside me, and when I eventually stood up and did the three-year-old's Freudian pirouette, the bowl was full of blood. I vomited and lay down on the cold floor, as the band next door launched into the Ride of the Valkyries, only to fumble and stall after the first few lines. I felt nothing, just sick and tired. Which was good, and I wondered how I could keep it that way.
Enter Mr K.
The heroic sorrower begins by saying, 'You do not love me as I love you', proceeds to saying, 'You did not love me as I loved you' and ends by saying, 'You could never love me as I loved you'. Male supermacy dictates an answer in the affirmative: 'You are quite right. It would be mad to love you as you love me. Keep taking the pills.'
- Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman
Illustration by Edward Monkton.
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