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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504392327 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Balboa Press |
| Publication date: | 12/12/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 774 KB |
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CHAPTER 1
As soon as I entered the room I felt a sense of calm. I looked at her and it washed over me, warming me right down to my toes. I inwardly congratulated myself for making it through another week of hell. A sigh of relief escaped me as I sat there for a moment and said nothing, taking a couple of deep breaths to prepare myself for what might come into my mind and out of my mouth. It usually surprised me, surprised and horrified me in equal measure. I was undecided which was worse: having these thoughts in my head at all or speaking them aloud. I'd concluded it was the combination that has been my undoing so far. The calmness I savoured quickly disappeared the moment I started talking, eaten by a jumble of words, and the panic that stayed hidden most of the time bubbled to the surface and spilled over.
My chair wasn't the only one in the room; opposite me was an almost identical cream leather one. Mine, however, could swivel, and this gave me something to do while I thought of something, anything, to say. All week I worried about what I would say. What we would talk about. How bad it would be. I went over and over it all in my head from one appointment to the next, but I was incapable of coming up with a plan to save me from the angst. It usually didn't take too long until something random popped into my head, something I didn't even realise I was thinking about. The problem was, once it came out of my mouth it became real and warranted further discussion, and it was this aspect which concerned me most. Judy never actually gave me the answer to any of the deep questions that came out of my mouth but, far more valuably, put my words in a concise order to gently direct me. Without her I was completely unable to make sense of most things.
The walls, like the chairs, were cream and there was a small wooden table just to the side of us. Judy sat opposite me in her chair, not too close as I have a serious issue with space, but she knew that without having to be told. I sat with my back to the door which sent my anxiety levels up another notch if that were even possible. She reassured me that no one would enter, though I can't help but feel extremely uncomfortable. 'There are stairs up to the room, and we would hear if someone was coming,' Judy said. I ignored this, and quickly scrambled to think of an escape route. How could we get out if there was a fire or if, God forbid, someone was to come up the stairs? There was only one exit and it could easily be barred. I was fully aware of my irrational thinking, but I could hardly breathe with the notion of escaping in my head along with everything else.
I took my coat off, made myself comfortable, swivelled in my chair and looked out the window – anywhere but at her until we started talking. I brought a latte with me and took a couple of sips to help settle me. All I really wanted to do was light up but I had a sneaking suspicion she wouldn't approve. The light hurt my eyes as I took off my sunglasses. I couldn't remember the last time I'd slept for more than an hour or two at a time, and I was relying on a steady stream of caffeine and nicotine to keep me going. I glanced again at the window. It was small with stained glass that would be impossible to break if I needed to. For the first time I noticed how much green glass the pattern contained, and it amazed me that it had taken seven long months to notice something so simple. I looked around the room and asked if Judy had got a new picture that I'd also just noticed hanging on the wall. Judy told me it had always been there, and it slowly sank in that I couldn't even see things that were right in front of me. I sipped my coffee and placed my hand on my stomach, inwardly telling it to calm down, to stop jumping. There was nothing to worry about in this room, but even my own stomach didn't believe me. The most familiar thought entered my mind: How? How did this happen to me? How did I end up here? In psychotherapy at a health and well-being centre in my home town in the north-west of Ireland. The only place I left the house to go.
*
This wasn't how I imagined I would spend the last of my twenties. I was in my twenty-ninth year and should have been in London at work, going out, having fun or maybe even planning a holiday – basically continuing to do all the things that came second nature to me before The Terrible Tuesday. I imagined I would come home, settle down and have sense one day! You know – that maybe when I turned thirty I would feel the need for a mortgage, a husband, a horse or something; perhaps my biological clock would start ticking and I would want a baby. That was my aim: to wise up and get a plan when I turned thirty. Probably not the brightest idea but I was just going with the flow. It all went to shit anyway, the lovely non-plan I had for my life. Now my life was consumed with objectives, a daily ritual and agenda. This was necessary to simply get me through the day in one piece. Then there was the plan for the dark hours, it was in a league of its own for they were truly the worst.
Technically, I spent half my twenty-eighth year right here in my home town, although it was a bit like the light was on but nobody was home, so I wasn't sure it counted. Of course, I know how I ended up here, and initially I was grateful. In the beginning I was grateful for everything – overjoyed to be alive and breathing! Grateful He didn't squeeze His hands just that little tighter around my throat because then I wouldn't have had the luxury of complaining about having to sit here at all. It was funny really, because without Judy I would probably be sitting in some nuthouse drugged up on copious amount of Valium, chain-smoking and refusing to wash. I was grateful I wasn't. That's the way it goes though, I heard. It worked in phases, like grief. The grateful phase unfortunately only lasted until the shock wore off. Now here we were firmly in the pissed-off phase and I desperately hoped it wouldn't take too much longer to pass.
How long had I been coming here? Exactly how long was it since The Terrible Tuesday? I stopped counting after the twenty-seventh week. The truth of the matter was that time simply had no meaning for me any more and was pointless to continue counting. My existence revolved around getting through one Tuesday only to make it to the next one. I usually chain-smoked and drank tea until it was time to make the journey to my appointment – all part of the agenda, of course.
By ten o'clock in the morning it was all over and only just beginning. I stared relentlessly at the kitchen clock until it reached one minute past ten and then it was all over for another day. It was difficult to describe what actually happened when I was watching the clock. Everything was in slow motion. Each tick was loud and unmerciful yet necessary as every one brought me a step closer to being free. I tried not to concentrate on the panicked feeling in my stomach and how my breath caught in my dry throat. For the love of God, don't throw up. The only way I could describe it was like walking uphill on a really windy day when you can't get enough air into your lungs, and you know the faster you breathe the worse you make it but it's no use; short, shallow gulps are all you can manage, and you lose the ability to regulate the air in and out of your body. It stuck in my throat making it impossible to breathe out properly, but still all I could focus on was the clock on the wall. I forced myself to try and look at something else but my eyes had a mind of their own and inevitably shifted back to the dreaded clock face. In the end I gave up and just watched the time moving on at a snail's pace until one minute past ten.
Life continued on around me in the kitchen, and to reduce the clockwatching episodes my father attempted small talk. A man of few words usually, my father, so I knew it was difficult for him, but he invariably started with something about my agenda for the day. It was the strangest thing: I could hear him speak to me but his words seemed to bounce back to him without ever reaching me. It was too difficult to even comprehend formulating an appropriate answer in my head never mind speak aloud, and it didn't take him long to realise I do better with yes or no questions. I could manage a yes or a no before reverting to the clock. Ultimately, we watched the clock together, mostly in silence. Then, at ten o'clock, he turned to me asking if I was all right and I said, 'Yes, Daddy.'
My mother, ironically enough, was as regular as clockwork. She tried to entice me into eating breakfast during the nightmare hour of nine to ten, usually suggesting some form of eggs first. When that list was exhausted she expertly progressed on to the more 'bready' type breakfasts, of which there were quite a few variations in our house to go through – Even the neighbours baked bread, sent over in an effort to get me to eat, and although a kind and thoughtful gesture I couldn't eat anything at this time of the morning.
A pattern formed: I couldn't answer her relentless line of enquiry unless it was a simple and direct question. Sometimes even this became too complex for me and I answered at the wrong time. Hiding her frustration, she would declare, 'Well, I haven't even asked you a question yet.' I said no to everything anyway. What a pointless exercise designed to drive me even crazier than I already felt. What would she say if I finally found my voice and told her, 'No, I don't want any bloody breakfast, Mummy. I'm currently trying to push the maximum amount of air possible through the tiniest hole in my throat which seems to have practically closed. Luckily enough, just enough air is going through to stop me passing out at the table. My stomach is about to fall out my arse, and at the moment I can't even possibly entertain the thought of eating because that would require me to chew and swallow. To do that I would need saliva in my mouth, of which there is none, and I'm just trying not to have a nervous breakdown, so thank you very much but I will pass on the breakfast just now if you don't mind!'
Maybe she would have stopped asking sooner if I had said this, but I never said a word other than no, and she eventually stopped asking. Thinking rationally about it, in numerous discussions in my cream chair, I knew Mummy was only trying to engage me in conversation and thought me being angry with her and her suggestions was much better than blankly staring at the clock. She was just trying to get me to feel something, to be something other than the vague, empty, panic-stricken person sitting at the table. I could understand that. A mother's instinct is to feed her child and that was all she was trying to do, feed me.
Once ten o'clock came and went I relaxed a bit. Well, as much as I could under the circumstances. I maybe took a cup of tea outside and always had a well-deserved cigarette or two depending on the size of the cup. The next item on the agenda was to shower. I could cope with not washing and being a bit smelly, but I had become obsessed with my hair. It never felt clean and I had to limit myself to washing it once a day, a difficult task. I worried it was going to fall out and, unsurprisingly enough, I wouldn't have coped well with going bald on top of everything else; I have an unforgivingly large, round head that would simply not lend itself to baldness. It was unbelievable that out of everything clean hair had become my compulsion. Maybe it was because I had a dressing gown tied round my head for an hour while I sweated uncontrollably and struggled to breathe. When I finally got the damn thing off I felt like my head was going to fall off with it. You don't realise how heavy dressing gowns are until you're in a sticky predicament with one. My hair was soaked with sweat and I didn't get to wash it until I had a shower at the clinic six hours later.
So off I went, telling everyone in my path, at least five times, where precisely I was headed in case they walked into the bathroom. I had to leave the door open, and if someone walked in I would probably pass out. For about six months I never looked at myself in the mirror – not when I was getting into the shower, not when I dried myself and certainly not when I dressed. Never. I felt totally detached from my body and only ever looked up when I had finished washing and dressing. I dried my hair and then meticulously checked to see if it was thin or falling out. And then came my favourite part (regardless of the weather, I might add): I put on my treasured sunglasses. I was sure people constantly thought, 'Who does she think she is wearing sunglasses in the rain?' but I honestly didn't care what people thought of me. I had no room in my head for nonsense like that and I needed the sunglasses.
They were my protection from the world, and I felt like people couldn't see me properly when I was wearing them. If you couldn't see my eyes, then you had to believe me when I said I was fine. I avoided looking at my eyes at all times. I thought of that saying: the eyes are the windows to the soul, and I wondered where my soul was when I looked in the mirror. My eyes looked like they belonged to a dead person, like someone had turned off the light behind them and all I could see was a black hole of nothingness. They certainly didn't look like mine. It freaked me out to look in the mirror and see them staring back at me, so I thought it best for me to not see them at all.
It was strange to not want to look in the mirror and to not care about what I looked like. I must have been a bit vain before The Terrible Tuesday – I cared more than I would have cared to admit about what I looked like back then. I got up at five thirty in the morning to walk to my pre-work swim and somehow managed to walk back home after my twelve-hour shift. This meant I didn't get home until around ten o'clock at night but that didn't deter me. If I had to describe myself as I was back then I would use words like confident, bubbly, attractive, kind, carefree and determined. I no longer cared about any of that now; the simple reason was because it had gone, every word was gone, and I didn't ever want it to come back. It was what got me into this mess in the first place, and being confident, attractive and carefree only made it all the more terrible.
I hated afternoon appointments. They gave my mother more time to persuade me to eat, and it was so tiring to continually refuse her. Sometimes I gave in and begrudgingly agreed to eat something. Regardless of what it was it tasted like a block of wood, and I just moved it around my mouth and spat it into kitchen roll when I could stand it in my mouth no longer. I was convinced it might get stuck in my throat and choke me to death if I attempted swallowing, and after having quite a close shave with Dr Death I wasn't in any hurry to repeat the experience. I limited myself to the odd bit of toast and this was only when absolutely necessary. It was strange that I never felt hungry when I used to love my food so much.
I never felt much of anything really, or if I did I don't remember, except the tiredness. I remember feeling constantly exhausted. I prayed for sleep to come but it eluded me. It felt like I had been on night shift for about a year coupled with no sleep during the day. My bones ached with weariness and at times it was an effort even to smoke – to lift my hand to my mouth, breathe in and out and then in again. Still, it was a task I managed to complete at least twenty times a day. The fact that I must have smelled like a giant ashtray completely escaped me. It was a very normal thing to do, was it not – to have a cup of tea and a ciggie? If nothing else, it passed another ten minutes on the clock.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Terrible Tuesday"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Sabrina Barton.
Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
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