365 Ways With Words

Suddenly Filled With Cement

It was the same yesterday – a thick nebula of opaque suffocation, a darkness beyond the panic of drowning, a flat-line dumping of experience un-piqued by the usual high-voltage shocks of an exciting daily life. Opening the curtains, the sun was about to cross the mountainous horizon, breaking through the light mist of cloying clouds that nightly settle over Hong Kong. He saw the beauty, but it did nothing to raise spirits, to lift the mind, to arouse excitement. All he wanted to do today, like yesterday, was have his mind taken up with something that would mean escape from the intense heaviness of the overwhelming feelings that occupied existence from hour-to-hour.

But the children needed to go to school, there were breakfasts to make and homework to be packed before the bus – who else would do it? The shower was hot. Each rivulet ran down to the plug encouraging the shedding of grease and skin, of sweats of 3 a.m. when eyes wide open he had dived through the silence again. Getting up to check mail, watch TV or just sit reminded him how futile everything was: if he fell, to ease the way beyond, to remove the rock-hard heavy heart, would anyone really care?

Through the day he tried to present the right angle to left and right: "Morning! About that meeting... Call me. What do you think? No, you go to lunch; I'm fine. What are you doing for Christmas? Yes, I know we need to do it. See you tomorrow." With each exchange someone inside, something greater than him, scrunched up his heart into a paper ball ready to be kicked into the bin and left his head stuffed full of nothing. Thinking about what happens next was the greatest, Herculean challenge. He was useless in meetings and merely agreed to whatever was being said.

It had been like this for about a year, as if he was 'suddenly filled with cement'. Movement beyond breathing was tired. Walking, exercising, cycling, swimming and even sitting still was too much. He'd involuntarily given up. He even tried not breathing to see if the body would also give up on that too. Each time his chest refilled he had mixed feelings – perhaps death would have been a welcome release, but perhaps also the end was not downward to the yawning dark chasm of oblivion. Nonetheless, forever hidden behind the never-ending fog sat the light on the peaks. He knew it was there, because he remembered it. All the same, the way there was hidden in a deserted emptiness, let alone signposted.

Days off work cropped up now and again, but the hours sat alone only increased the melancholia. They made it chronic, beyond leaden where an ounce more would have him crashing through the floor, down into the earth, passing right through to the other side of the world. He passed his indolent solitary days in patience, with cards or with the stupid Microsoft version that took up hour after hour after hour. Resolutions to quit came and went, and with each failed deadline another fibre of his spine pinged until the jelly of impotent existence submerged mind, body and soul. Yet he sighed when the kids came home, their cheerful little faces appearing round the door, animated like the cartoons about to blare from Nickelodeon. Epic spousal support helped through the narrowest, darkest times. The ever-pouring love, however, made him ashamed. Why wasn't it enough? Sex was nice, when it could be achieved, eating until beyond-sated dulled the thickness of thoughtless thoughts, even alcohol, beautiful mind-numbing alcohol, transported towards the open sea of calm, but all of these weren't lasting solutions.

Finally, he obtained Prozac. It took a while to dig in, causing further weight gain in the process. It may have enabled a clearer head but also animated the desire for an end. It had to be stopped. St John's Wort helped a little, though it also caused intense reaction to sunlight. Reading Climbing Out of Depression worked, a tiny little book within which the most significant advice was that each day one thing should be attempted. Gradually, after weeks of daily accomplishments of one thing, an arsenal of one thing achievements lay like a buoyant raft beneath his feet, daily lifting. But to where – normalcy? What was that?

For him it was all about feelings. Keeping the spirits up took courage in itself. Sudden crashes of the most simple sort would deflate that raft – missing the bus, not remembering to do something, over-remembering mistakes. It would take days to re-float and move on. Even this stop-start existnace, however, was better than the terrible anchoring to the deep sea bed of before.

Did he see it as it a cure? Was it gone forever? No. It remained a shadow that shortened and lengthened across the landscape according to factors beyond control. Churchill's black dog would insolently creep out of the shadows ever-seeking to nudge him towards the edge of the platform. In the end, he would have to live with it resting on the street between the cars, sitting with the church's gargoyles, staring out from the forest edge, all the time watching him and waiting. Keeping it at bay would involve elaborate scams, motivational distractions, daily walks and lots and lots of friendly help.

 

Churchill and the tři čínští psi

To say that the weather was warmer would be technically accurate, although to the senses it would probably be better to say that it was less cold. The riverside footpaths beneath the old willow trees, soaked from days and nights of rain, were now a slippy trail of cloying mud – not quite Somme-like, but enough to double the weight of the boots.

Not that it worried the doggies, of course. Their hot pads may have welcomed the cool clay that oozed between their toes, but their alfactorily-focused minds were ever-elsewhere. The owner's plugged-in wits were also taken up with the slogging match of the assault on Monte Cassino that followed the beachhead in Anzio during 1944's allied winter attack on the Italian peninsula. The churning sludge beneath lent favourably to Christian Rodska's weighty reading of Churchill's Memoirs of the Second World War.

Looking up a large, shaggy white bear approached, checking the three Chinese dogs in their tracks. Every day, come rain, snow or shine, these animals trod the well-used paths, but on no prior occasion had they seen a white bear.

It stopped; head erect and tail upright, classic signs of bear alertness. What would the dogs do? Flight, rather than fight, seemed the better part of valour. But with fearless determination their owner steadfastly approached leaving the canines quivering by the fast-flowing Moravia River. The white bear remained still and unsure until, one by one the three timid hounds inched forward to discover it was a large member of their own species.

A face peered over the embankment and the mouth moved in command of the bear, remaining stock still as noses arrived at tender parts. Beneath a stripey beany the woman's countenance described a mood somewhere between annoyance and disappointment. She repeated words. Pulling out the connecting earplugs the owner asked the usual embarrassingly poor Czech question:

"Mluvíte anglicky?"

"Yes, I know. You are English. And you have three Chinese dogs."

The owner was at an instant disadvantage but, being English, decided not to risk asking stupid questions. Somewhere, somehow, someone had talked.

"How long will you stay here?"

"About two years or so."

"And do you like Czech Republic?"

"I love it!"

The woman smiled incredulously – who in their right mind would love it here?

With sufficient sniffing and passing-the-time-of-day thus completed, the bear and woman walked off in the opposite direction. The doggies and owner trotted on to complete their perusal of today's edition of Scents of Central Moravia and start on Operation Overlord.