72. i found my mattress & lay down on it, i think i stayed there another twelve hours
my flatmate kept arguing with me in the heroin house, he was threatening to kick me out, because of the night before, he told me to go to my room & shut up, i said that i would go to the police & have him charged, we argued all morning, him threatening all the time, suddenly i felt strange, i thought 'mum', i saw a giant wheel begin to turn slowly sideways in mid-air before my eyes, then i was on the wheel sprawled across it & spinning into a black space, i barely remember my flatmate's voice in the background, different from before, asking me if i was all right, had i swallowed any tablets?, not to do anything stupid, to get up, to stop nodding at him & move, i can't remember what i was doing, i was a long time gone, my flatmate was shaking me saying that he was 'sorry', i found my mattress & lay down on it, i think i stayed there for another twelve hours, someone would find me in a day or two, i was always determined not to give up the struggle, not to let myself sink down below a certain level, i wanted to at least remain capable of taking myself to the toilet, even if eating & showering had become irregular, if i had shit or pissed myself i think i would have lost my grip on something, the further i let myself go the further i would have to come back, but it seemed to take all my concentration to do the most basic things, like washing my hands or putting a jumper on, the light hurt my eyes & the sounds were loud & confusing, movement made me sick, i seemed to be slowing down like a clock with its springs loose, i felt humiliated, but then too sick to care, eddie was there to look after me & this helped, he said i could go mad if i wanted to, this worried me, i didn't want to go mad, later he told me that he had had a fantasy about having a relationship with a schizophrenic woman & healing her back to normal, eddie had had a neurotic dominating mother, had lost his father in a shipping accident, they found the body with a huge chunk out of the torso, from where a shark had bitten it out, since then eddie had had an attraction to the sea, the unconscious sea that was threatening to consume me, all my friends had disappeared, the last time i saw margi & graham, was when my legs were stinging from self-inflicted wounds beneath my trousers, i was coming down off LSD, i can understand why they abandoned me, the last thing that anyone would want was me as their responsibility, i was so fragile i couldn't do anything, i saw visions all day, i had no boundaries, everything was fragmented & i felt dislocated, most of all i felt very ill inside, i could have sunk so low that i walked the streets raving mad & spitting on myself, but that was the next level down, sometimes i went into rages & couldn't remember what i did, but i felt angry & paranoid, i couldn't seem to stop myself, it was as though two people were controlling my voice, body & actions, most of the time i didn't know what was happening, i could have been a threat to the public, could have been dragged away down a narrow corridor with needles up my arse, could have been the best fucking basket weaver this side of glenside hospital, but gerade said i wasn't allowed to contact any conventional doctors, & that there would be a new life for me if i could just hang on, i had to learn responsibility & self discipline, i had to work through many layers of cemetery stone, i walked along like a ball of rock, i didn't know about any new world, i didn't know what had happened to the last one, suddenly i had slipped down an embankment into some kind of nightmare, it happened very quickly, say within twenty-four hours, so i found my mattress & lay down on it |
