become a now or never thing. I expected something to happen – maybe the sky would split in two and all the answers would fall upon my head. Maybe someone would listen – maybe now, after all this Therapy I could actually START. I had not been talking about what really mattered, I realised. Maybe this would be the beginning of it that I had been looking for. My last session was with the young woman who I mentioned earlier. She heard me tell this story at the end of it. I waited for some momentous epiphany. She just said, well, this is the last session. I hope it has helped. I am surprised she did not add And You Are Now Cured. She handed me an appointment for six months time, so that they could check my progress and see if I was still Mad Or Not. I did not keep the appointment. I am Still Here.

I even had ten sessions of hypnotherapy but I found it impossible to get into the state I was meant to get in to. I kept thinking of rubbish stage hypnotists making people eat onions and fall in love with chairs.

I am spending too much time at work in the crap job. I am getting indoctrinated. I know this because when I went in my own bathroom and turned on the taps, I pressed them as if they were those automatic push-down ones you get in public loos. I came home and thought I was on a break, using the toilet. I might as well sleep in the uniform.

My marriage fell apart three years ago. Nobody but us need the details on that. Why do we stay together? So many reasons. He did not want to go when I asked him to. We have a child together, we have my stepson that I adore. What would happen to them? My little boy came home from school last year telling me about one of his friends whose parents had split up. He was terribly upset and told me that this was his greatest fear. I would happily trade my life for his, any day of the week. Because I often think about the early days and how we were back then. Because it cannot have been easy living with me. Because I don’t think I have the strength to start again. Besides which, I couldn’t possibly inflict myself on anyone else.

My lower arms have surface scars on them like raspberry smears. They are a source of shame – not because I am ashamed I did them but because it proves what a chicken-shit I am. I am frustrated that I never managed to find the nerve to go deeper when I desperately wanted to. I made a friend over the last couple of years – this friend has them on his arms and I am so envious of them. Can envious be the right word? Of course it cannot. I look and look at them – I fantasise about them, being able to touch them, as if I could read something indecipherable in them. This makes me A Dreadful Person. When I am agitated, my lower arms itch and I could rag the skin off with my nails.

pathetic pathetic faker who you trying to kid faker pathetic faker who you faker pathetic kid trying you

I will never be completely well. I think now, that it is something that I have accepted will always be there and I do my best to live alongside of it. I have never had a point in my life when I was not without it. I am learning to handle myself – I have learned to spot the dark moments, mostly. It is not often that one crops up and claims me without warning. There are signals and I have learned to recognise them – the pulsing of stress in my head, the way the room can be full of people but you are on my own – they are all laughing, chatting, making plans, plotting to exclude you. The room is starting to feel airless, full of sonic boom. Get out, get out, get out. Sometimes I have just made it out of a building when the hole has opened up in front of me and I have fallen right into it. Sometimes it happens when I am at home and I have to miss a social occasion. So be it.

I stopped taking Fluoxetine, weaned myself off it, bit by bit. When I was on it, it was like being conscious and unconscious at the same time. I knew All Was Not Right but I found it hard to care. Then I knew I should be worrying about this but couldn’t access the tools to do this. I felt trapped inside of myself.

A blanket on top of a blanket, on top of a blanket,

same as when I was a child, with dining chairs

and long mop handles tenting myself a den.

The world outside muffled by woollen threads –

I can hear the opinions of the room, but under

this silencer I am careless in my acknowledgement

of them. The urge to hunker down, a busy scrubber

fades; new skin coats the callouses on my kneecaps.

 

Touching my face when I see magpies – one for sorrow,

two for joy. Arranging pillows, hovering a palm above

the nose of my sleeping son – little beats of fear

until he snouts a dreamy sigh; usually takes three

or four breaths. He is alive! I will check again, later.

 

You are a headache of longing, a bad pixie on my shoulder.

I do not like your fuzz – I hate my blinking upwards

from this underwater world. I want my madness - I am so

used to pain, so defined by the grating of its sharpness

against my hideous soft that I forever seek it out, beg

for it to hurt me. I hate to pretend that I do not.

My obsessive cleaning did get better – I can happily announce that my home is a regular tip. I often miss how spick and span it used to look but I do not miss the sad woman who was wasting her life with bleach. I have never shaken the obsessive behaviour, though I have managed to channel it into more productive directions – I now write and paint with unstoppable drive. And words and pictures fall out of me head onto paper as if they were waterfalls. I cannot stop them – I do not want to stop them. I have found that I have a lot to say – the backlog is massive.

Sometimes it hurts so bad that it feels as if lights and spume are bursting out from my ears, eyes, nose, mouth, chest and it hurts – it is an actual physical pain. Remember how I talked about fixations? Well, I have one of those for every situation. I sound like a business card – A Fixation For Every Occasion. When this happens to me I picture another particular friend – I picture his mouth on mine – not in a kissing way – but in a way as if he can plug me by putting his mouth on mine, stop all the spurting. When he greets me with the polite one on the cheek I want to yell keep going! I imagine the feelings I have taste of seawater. Of course this does not happen because we actually live in Reality. Imagine what these people would think if they actually knew what was going on in my mind? So I suffer and ache, stay home. I will show the monster – I will swallow it up and spit rainbows.

I am splitting a bale of hay – all the faded yellows and greens of last year’s autumn trapped in the layers. Parchment buttercups, even the occasional pressed mouse. A whole season, trapped in the clouds of dust that rise as I shake it – I have a desire to taste it. The rain is beating down on the corrugated roof but inside the barn, I have this block of preserved sun. The horses will eat it with dreamy relish. I wish I was young again. I am waiting for a break in the weather before I go outside.