Visiting
By markbrown
- 2477 reads
Visiting. Adventures in the Otherworld IV.
Everything is dirty, second hand. Walls the colour of eggshell, covered
with old blue tac and black fingerprints. The water dispenser sits
nearly empty of plastic cups. Institutional beige carpet is covered in
stains that are picked up by the sunlight that comes through the
grilles at the window. The air is flat and lifeless like all waiting
rooms, like dishwater.
So I sit uncomfortably in the waiting room, waiting. As ever I am on
time, but I know that there's always a wait involved when concerned
with mental illness. What were the giant institutions but places where
the unfortunates were serviced while they waited to die? Waiting
without anticipation is stasis, limbo, emptiness.
A man with a white wad of tissue rings the buzzer of the entryphone,
his finger protected by the paper in his hand. He pushes repeatedly
against the reinforced glass of the door before it clicks open and he
strides confidently in. I notice he uses the tissue to push the
handle.
Of medium height he has a rigorously neat beard comprised of a thin
line of grey hairs and tidily combed and gelled hair pulled back from
his forehead. He exudes the air of comfortableness with the world that
only middle-aged people have, a certainty of the world and one's place
in it. The tissue paper seems incongruous. Surely, I think, it must
just be a handkerchief to dab at the sweat on his forehead, which does
look shiny, and after all it is warm outside, despite being late
September. As a detail the eye is draw to, it seems impossibly white in
the dull light.
I look on as he jauntily walks up to the counter, the plump
receptionist looking up in greeting, telling him that he needed to push
the door hard, a laugh in her voice.
"I was, oh I was!" His voice is penetrating and jovial, the words
rolling out of him like a happy rumble. At this point I am prepared to
believe him to be on the other side of the divide, maybe a carer or
caseworker. There is something in his gait, his easy confidence that
reminds me of fellow workers, back in my other life, striding the
corridors and hallways while the clients slept, contentedly jangling a
big set of keys, breathing in the ordered air of the institution. I
overlook the wad of tissue, remembering entryphones covered with spit
at the bottom of grey towerblocks, door handles coated with shit. Just
cautious, I think.
It is only when he goes to get a drink of water from the water cooler
that I revise my view. The cooler is the type where you have to bend
your knees to place your plastic cup under the tap, flicking the valve
open with the triangular tab above it. The man uses his tissue again,
holding the tab with the tissue between the plastic and his fingers.
Watching him, her rubs the fake leather of the black institutional
chair, of which there are about ten lining the walls, before sitting
down, spreading himself out like a dog basking in sunshine.
Sitting waiting it is impossible not to become more aware of your
surroundings, the eyes moving listlessly, looking for something to rest
on. The remaining senses are the same. I am acutely aware of the
texture of my T-shirt on my damp, nervous back, the harsh weave of my
bag in my hands. I am certain that I can smell my own musk, rising in
clouds from my body. I become aware of an undulating low hum that seems
to come form the building itself. Is it like The Chief's fog in 'One
Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', I wonder. Do they pump out mollifying
waves of sound to placate and sedate the clients, a room in the
basement full of arcane resonating machinery and electronics, whirring
to itself? I have to admit to myself that it's probably air
conditioning, but it is an arresting idea. Certain frequencies of sound
can have actual mental and physical effects, many of them
surprising.
Like the senses, the mind also roves listlessly. Maybe this is the
purpose of the waiting room, to make the patient consider his sins,
like the cells on death row, like penance.
I think of my own condition, of a way of putting it into words so that
the psychiatrist will understand. The best I can do is 'incontinent
nostalgia', a warm flowing gush of memory, completely overwhelming and
beyond control, a liquid rush just as stigmatising and as much
disabling and yet unspoken as a real stream of piss, an embarrassment,
a sign of decay and loss of control, warm as the damp spreading flower
and just as unhidable.
Once it begins everything becomes focused upon it, the feelings of
shame and guilt at the inability to stem the flow, the horror at
something private and taboo happening in full view of others, the fear
that people will know, will smell, the knowledge that everyone can hold
in, can keep within their power, is overwhelming and beyond you.
Once the leaking starts there is a horrible knowledge that it must
continue until it is finished, the well spring run dry, and then comes
the shame at the weakness and embarrassment. Once it has begun, there
are no stages. Here is only okay and not okay.
It is a literal feeling of engulfment, of being washed away by a tide
of sadness, of sad images, sad experiences. Sometimes even a simple
word will exude the most deep despair, a wave of pain, poignant and
aching, erasing the present like a chalk drawing sluiced from a
pavement, replaced only with thick, oily dampness, only the ghosts of
an outline remaining.
When it begins the sadness wells and bubbles up between the cracks of
my life, slowly spreading out, carrying things away or submerging
others totally. Daily I drown in myself.
It becomes the worst fear, the breakdown in public, everything that can
be done to avoid it is done. Anything that can make those emotions
seeping out in public remain private is attempted. Anything that can
fill the well further is avoided. Just as the real incontinent avoids
drinking fluids, I avoid emotion, avoid anything that will start the
flow of sadness. The fear of it happening in public means that public
life is avoided, no one is allowed between me and the place I must run
whenever it begins.
The horrible thing is that I cannot do a thing about it. When the
sadness takes me there is nothing I can do to fight it.
How can I explain all of this, and what can the psychiatrist do to
help? I begin playing out conversations in my head as I stand to get a
drink of water from the cooler myself, thinking at first it is empty
because the water is perfectly still. It is only when I bend my knees
and push the tab that the water moves, bubbles of air making an odd,
thick sound as the water runs into my outstretched plastic cup. I
realise that the high ceiling of the waiting room has an odd effect on
sound, bending it out of shape, making it strange and unfamiliar, much
the same way as the air in the room seems to trap light and make it
stale and lifeless.
People come and go through the waiting room as I sit and sip my cold
water, all wrestling with the door. Behind the counter members of staff
come and go, chatting, photocopying, picking up files. The receptionist
answers constant phonecalls whilst complaining of 'fighting with the
stapler'. Occasionally the locked door to the rest of the building
clicks open and one of the people waiting is called, making the short
journey across the stained carpet, usually with head bowed, the door
swinging shut behind them.
I think of what it feels like when I am overcome. It's like a
transport, like slipping into another world. Slow motion, lugubrious I
become weightless, slipping through memory within me, warm and slimy,
tiny bubbles escape as I am slowly absorbed and submerged. There is
always the final struggle, the last reflex fighting, then the surrender
as the lungs are filled, the final air of the normal world expunged and
purged.
The water is not cold and sharp but warm and slippery like amniotic
fluid, shadowy and unclear. Nothing would mix with this water but would
simply hang like a frozen cloud, like sperm in water, forever.
A tall woman wearing ill-fitting blue jeans sits next to the man with
the tissue and they begin to talk with familiarity. Again my conclusion
wavers, the woman seeming uncomfortable and awkward while the man sits,
feet firmly planted on the floor, a hand on each knee, conversing with
satisfaction. The woman looks tired, there are finger smudges on her
old looking glasses, her voice wavers as she talks, she clings to her
to her hand bag on her lap with pale fingers. The man with the tissue,
in contrast, sits completely at ease. Again I think maybe he is just
cautious.
A man appears from behind the locked door, and the man with the tissue
stands. When my name is announced, he sits back down with a
good-natured shrug. I walk over and have my hand shaken as he guides me
into the rest of the building.
"Hello, I'm Paul, I'm a psychologist."
He has grey hair and glasses, plump and round with a Scottish brogue. I
follow him down the corridor, the light dim and yellow turning the
walls the colour of old newspaper. The floor is grey lino, taped down
in places with black and yellow diagonally striped tape like crime
scene barriers.
He first goes into a room to find it occupied, then chooses the room
next to it with a 'do not disturb' sign on the door. I pull the door
shut behind me dismayed to find that there is only a desk and three
black institutional chairs like the ones in the foyer. The blinds are
closed, making the room dark like a prison cell. Paul motions to the
seat that he has just placed at the end of the desk nearest the door
and then fiddles with the blinds, letting in light through the vertical
hangings that, despite the warm heat of the sun outside, is cold and
hazy through the reinforced glass like an overcast morning.
He opens a manila folder and begins to ask questions and I am overcome
with a self conscious fear, lost and awkward in the chair, elbow on the
desk, the rest of my limbs splayed out like a spider crawling over the
edge of a table. My hands are clammy and my throat constricted and I
start to pick at my thumbnail.
Not knowing where to look, I focus on the painting on the wall opposite
me. It is an abstract mixture of bright colours, of the kind that can
be seen in waiting rooms and consulting suites, cheerful and placid but
horribly empty.
Paul asks me what I like to be called.
I repeat the question, not understanding what he meant. I cough trying
to clear my throat, my voice sounding odd and congealed. "My name", I
answer after a pause that seems eternal. "Mark, Mark." I'm not used to
using my name anymore and the word seems unwieldy and misshapen. He
writes it down.
"Mark, right." The words roll off of his tongue and seem to collect in
pools on the desk between us.
We discuss my address and living arrangements and then he begins to
read off my letter of referral from Dr. McFarlane.
"Right Mark, I'll start by reading back your letter of referral. Your
first contact was a Laurie Grove Medical Centre in November, nineteen
ninety-eight where you were diagnosed with depressive condition and
depressed mood."
I nod, not knowing what else to do.
"You were then prescribed Seroxat which you discontinued after a few
weeks because you couldn't tolerate the side effects. Is that
right?"
"Yes."
"You were next prescribed Prozac in February nineteen ninety-nine which
you also discontinued."
"Yes." I begin to feel like a petty criminal being read his charge
sheets. Great black waves start to slowly roll over me.
"You were next prescribed Prozac again in December nineteen ninety
-nine which you discontinued after three days due to serious adverse
side-effects. You were next prescribed Citalopram, which you remain on
up to this date. Is this all correct?
"Yes. That is all correct." The room feels like it has filled with
water. Paul begins to talk again but the sound is far off. Guilty as
charged your honour. My voice sounds far away too as it comes from my
mouth. We talk.
When I'm back outside, the waiting room is empty. Stepping back into
the outside world I feel like I'm floating, all of the details
magnified and sharp. Above me thousands of sparrows circle like a
thunderhead, darkening the sky.
I don't know what to do now. I roll a cigarette and set off again.
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