Can’t Do This Anymore

am overwhelmed by fear. There. Just had to get that out. I haven’t spoken properly to another human being, apart from a chat with Nobby on Thursday, since I got back from hospital! Binged yesterday and today. Slowly expanding. A huge and ugly scar on the landscape! Unproductive, carefree (or semi-carefree, you know what I’m like!) days rule. Today was pretty much in that category.

and the voice it says
you are not possessed
By demons
You are the demon
and you should jump
before you are pushed

I cannot swim
So I am cut adrift
On the whim
Of some carelessly capricious
Medical examiner

But I couldn’t stay there. Going into hospital is like being cast out. The hospital is like a leper colony, far removed from the city. Far removed from sane, civilized people. My mind had slowed and congealed through lack of use. I could not articulate my kind of hunger. Beyond food, beyond warmth, beyond anything worldly. A need that would never be met.

And now I emerge to see I am being targeted by the powers that be b/c I can’t work full time. The politics of distraction drives me to well, distraction except its not its fiction. You may have encountered this concept before unpopular governments adore a common enemy. And that’s usually okay as long as that common enemy is not you.

when I am not on medication I spent my days doing everything I can to prevent myself from spontaneously combusting.

I don’t think I can do this anymore.

Mismatched?

What are Doug (92 year old war veteran) and I to do on these long, dark nights when I pop across the expanse of lawn that separates his flat from mine? Doug was known as Nubby throughout his time in the RAF and then the army. Apparently, everyone with the name ‘Clarke’ in the army is automatically known as ‘Nobby’. No one thinks to ask why,. Well, we sit, we watch TV, we talk, we reminisce. Sometimes I think that some supernatural force has pushed us together. Often I picture us as two helpless, stranded sailors cut adrift from our nation’s territorial waters and everything we once knew. Because the alliance of two people as different as we are is unacceptable in conventional circles. And it is those circles that squeeze the world by throat. So we delicately sidestep the demands made upon us by those who have never been where he has, who have never been where I have and, please God, with a cherry on top, see to it that they never do.

And, yes, another Remembrance Sunday has passed without a remark from Doug. He is more than a war veteran is his constant refrain but nothing can change the fact that when he closes his eyes at night, he sees things that most of us could never even conceive of.