Blunt Razors and Salted Earth

When the van stopped outside the hospital I was escorted inside to a small room and told to wait for the doctor to assess me.  I was wearing the same clothes I had sweated in for like 30 hours and just sort of sat there waiting again.  The bathroom had different tap handles that ended in conical points - which I later found out was so there was no hanging point on them.

A small doctor came in and asked me the same questions as before and offered me a sandwich and listened to my heart from three different places across my chest.  Then he opened a folder and offered for me to sign a document and I did so and he smiled resignedly and disappeared.  Later, another dude dressed in shorts and converse bouonced in and asked me to follow him, which I did down through corridors and double swinging doors into the belly of the hospital.

We stopped outside a door and he said "well here we are" and with a flourish of his hand I led us through into the locked unit.  The nurse asked if I had anything with me all I could offer was a plastic bag with a sweaty grey t shirt in it.  He took it from me and I never saw it again.

Next, I was shown my room and advisied dinner was at 6pm.  Half an hour.  I asked about a shower and went into the cubicle and let the lukewarm water wash over me, trying to get some foam with a cake of soap the size of two squares of chocolate.


*

I spent the first day and a bit just lying on the bed sweating out all the shit in my body.  Drinking water and pissing clear urine.  And stretching my bum muscle where the nurse had jabbed a big vitamin B6 injection into it - lifting my foot up perpendicular and clenching and unclenching the muscle helped move the injection out of the muscle I was told. 

So I was like a flamingo stretching in the courtyard outside where the sun just peeked over the high walls and the other patients smoked surreptiously like no one could smell the smoke anyway.  And they didn't really talk much because I guess they were either scared of me or just plain fucking crazy and sort of muttering to themselves.

I tried talking to the nurse like I wasn't really supposed to be here and it was sort of a big mistake and I was actually just a drunk and sort of a bit more OK than the rest of the people.  And she suggested we make a mandala with the two big bags of white sand that were piled around the perimeter.  Like hold sand in our hand and let it run out in a pattern on the paving stones.  Peaceful, and sort of symbolic of how time is slipping away, and how transient art and life is.  And I looked around and thought it might be a good idea but seeing the two younger guys with tattoo sleeves and the older guy with the algae teeth I thought it might be a little pretentious.  Just yet, anyway, I had to give a bit more of a neutral impression - like not turn up like some hotshot doing a fucking mandala on his first day in the mental ward.  So I just stretched my butt muscle and ruminated on things a bit more - maybe do a mandala on day three or something.

*

The mental health unit was only months old - the walls were clean and the whole place had the feel of a budget motel.  The first activity class was spirituality or something, and four of us turned up to listen to a triathlete pastor with a military haircut relate some passages from the bible - read in a droll monotone as if even he didn't believe or care what Luke was saying to the Carthaginians or whatever.  And he played some of that lullaby moderate rock religious music and the woman next to me, who turned out really lucid and engaging, had tears in her eyes when she talked about the little faded teddy bear she was cuddling and how she always brought it into the unit when she was admitted.  And how she needed to get home to feed her cats and get registration for her car.

*

It was clear that I was holding onto old crap that had happened in my life and it was making me want to drink and that when I was drinking I was drinking to obliterate and destroy and that this was fucking over.  It is true that when I have conflict it is not simply good enough for me to win or lose - I have to completely annihilate and wipe the adversary from the face of the earth.  And this is not possible - like the Romans going to Hannibal's Carthage and demolishing the city to dust and then covering it with twenty feet of salt.  So it was dead and would never. rise. again.

I have to let go, and let past conflicts and hurts float away and not be a part of my everyday mantra.

*

The next morning I had a cold breakfast and asked for a razor - the razor was so blunt I only shaved half my face - seriously - and there was no foam or anything so it rubbed my cheek raw.  I didn't give a fuck as I had to get out of this place and that would start with giving a good interview with the psychiatrist next time I saw her.  In the meantime I leaned on the doorway of my room with my arms folded and smiled and nodded at the lady with the teddy bear and the cats as she told me stuff about her life.

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Thinking of You

It's been a while and certainly some things have been happening in my life that I ought to share here.

First, I think I hit a new record low rock bottom last week when, after a ten day binge I finally collapsed into medicated slumber under the watchful eye of the emergency department at the local hospital.  Strung up with an intravenous feed with valium and whatever - I spent a fitful night rolling from side to side with the fluorescent lights buzzing all night.  And the ER staff blinking over at me every time I stirred with that look of concern and at the same time resignation that I was sort of dangerous or unpredictable as a mental health admission.
*

So yeah, I have been living the alcoholic dream this last few weeks and it has scared the fuck out of me.  If this doesn't shock me into sobriety, like the psychiatrist said, then I best get used to being admitted and just walking around all day looking through thick glass at the people on the other side.

Anyway, back to the story...
*

When I woke up the morning after, I was all puffy in the face and my body ached from having needles and pads and those sensor things stuck to me.  I tried to get up and a big male nurse came straight over and said I should take it easy, what did I want and he would get it for me.  I just wanted to pee and that was sort of all I could for the rest of the day - walk to and from the toilet and just fumble with the gown and the drip and sit down and piss. 

Other times I just rolled from one side to the other trying to get comfortable.  Or listened to the guy next to me get evaluated.  He had a big toe and three other toes on his left foot - they were webbed or something and that's all I ever saw of him, except for hearing his voice.  Left school in year 10, was from the country, had anger issues and had punched the walls and broken his hands the night before.  He groaned every now and then and they explained he was being scheduled as an involuntary patient.

Then they said it was my turn soon.  In hospital, as I would learn over the next five days, time is something you give freely and the doctors and nurses just flit into see you for moments before flitting away again - like butterflies.  So you have to be ready for when they come with your story. 

My story was that I was a drunk and I wanted help and I wanted to stay for a while so I could detox and whatever.  I repeated this to a few different people and must have let slip last night when I was nearly unconscious from drinking that I had taken some pills too.  That I found.  On the side of the road. Just like ten or so.  I googled them and they were for Obsessive compulsive disorder - can't find the strip anywhere, but somehow this got jumbled into a suicide attempt - or self harm at least.

So, as she sat casually with her legs folded on the edge of the bed, sucking a pen, the social worker said she was tossing up whether to send me back home.

"He hasn't got anywhere to go'" my wife said grimly, "He's not coming back home - that's for sure."

It's funny how stoic and calm and rational I can be at times of sheer crisis - like right now, with my wife throwing me back to the hospital.  At the time I felt that first shiver of fear that I would be going somewhere else - into the endless corridors of the hospital to some locked ward.

A psychiatrist came to assess me and sat there asking the same questions again.  I conceded I was depressed and probably had self harmed.  Said I had 6 or 8 bottles of wine each day for the last 10 days, plus beer and vodka when I got it out.  Almost begging her to let me stay for a while - asking to be a voluntary admission.

By four o'clock I was in a van with security mesh being taken up to the country as there were no beds left in town. 

Meaning of LIfe

So the time has come for some humble acceptance and accountability. 

“One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness.” Camus.

Drinking alcohol again.  Smoking weed like a half-crazed hippy.  Tired and anxious and emotionally scattered like a handful of coins down the drain.

Last week I did a cash job and had a pocketful of cash ($80) that had sort of slipped through the system, and whilst we were on holiday for a week, I bought a bottle of vodka.  My wife was inside the supermarket of some little town and it just happened to be next to a liquorstore, so I nimbly skipped over and soon enough had a bottle of Absolut tucked under my armpit.

And there it stayed until we returned to our accommodation.  Later that night I glugged it straight in raw, eye-watering swallows, like acid down my throat.  I returned to the open fire and our friends as if nothing had happened.
“But your face is all red and you’re slurring?”
“Umm, I just had an antihistamine...?”
*
I have been taking antabuse for a while now.  It is like a sledgehammer of honesty – bringing on waves of nausea, headaches and cramps if I so much as have alcohol in my deodorant.  So you can imagine what 700ml of vodka would do in an hour.  My face, neck and chest went red blotchy like I had some tropical disease and my vision was swirling.

Boldly, with that curious blend of arrogance, ignorance and pure bravado that makes me alcoholic, I maintained my part in the conversation and freely offered my analysis of the local property market, the current trends in the world economy and what to do with your retirement income over the medium term.  By all accounts I was a convincing “drunk-drinking-again.”
*

Next day I woke before everyone else, tried to shit it out but couldn’t, then, returning to the scene of the crime, took a last pull of the vodka (there was about a quarter left in the bottle) and went outside into the frigid winter air for a walk.  I stumbled along the country road, clothes layered right on top of my pyjamas, and ducked under the barbed wire fence to walk towards the cattle.

The four steers just blinked at me, purple tongues busy switching from mouth to nostril and back again, panting fumes into the chill air.  My head throbbed, and I pretended not to cough on a cigarette as I shuddered back the dull blanket of the alcoholic tingle.  There, back again.  Felt sort of normal for a bit.

Is this all there is?  I said to the steers as they shifted from one foot to another, or nodded away a drip from their nose.  Just this interminable peace and quiet for a couple of years before the  blinding chaos of stainless steel and industrial butchery?  The perfect provincial idyll before those  few final hours of sheer terror and finally the quiet nothingness of death.

I started to cry and realised for the four thousand, three hundred and thirty second time that I was wasting my life.  I was alcoholic and hopelessly lost, but there was hope.  I can choose my appointment at the slaughthouse – or keep living with three beautiful daughters, and a gracious, patient and understanding wife.

I know life has no meaning – we are all quietly going about paying mortgages in a kind of quiet desperation thinking that everything is going to be OK.  But it can have a meaning – if you have the courage and energy to give it meaning.  Giving your life meaning through a bottle or a ballgame or a bet makes no difference to me – but does lend you a passion and intrigue so you can briefly lift your gaze from the silent monotony and savour each other and whatever distractions you choose.  But for me, and most of us, it just can’t be alcohol, or drugs or gambling even.
*

I haven’t been accountable for a while – and this blog is a very rude reminder of how long it has been.  Thanks for dropping by and let’s see if I can’t get my shit together – because people are depending on me and I’ve been letting them down.

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