All good things

It is a regular and pleasant occurrence in my life that when I go downstairs in the mornings, there will sometimes be a package waiting for me. I am lucky enough to have a few friends who love me enough to send me regular parcels of good-will and caring, whether they be books or CDs, or just a drawing. They are a nice, understated way of letting me know I’m cared for from afar. I find it ultimately very comforting. So imagine my surprise and bemusement when this morning, these turned up:

Now, I didn’t even know you could deliver flowers by post, so this was an unfamiliar variation on the theme to me. (A side note – they came in a cardboard box – I supplied the vase and arranged them myself). I soon recalled, however, that my lovely friend Brett, who lives in California and seemingly has more money than sense, made some references to having sent me some things in the post. This, presumably, was the culmination of this. Sure enough, I later found a card in the box confirming that they were from Brett. What a darling he is. All was well.

Upon finding them a home (which was a challenge – we don’t get many fresh flowers in, but we eventually settled for the kitchen windowsill), I retired to my room to take a dose of Dexedrine¹, for the first time in my life. I have ingested numerous forms of medication in my time, all of which aspire to cure me of my inability to do anything repetitive for any length of time. While in recent years this has declined in severity, the period of my life between when it would be reasonable to assume memories would start forming and, say, 16 are a complete haze. I can remember not one instance from that decade of what should be at least partial sentience and clarity in any form of sentience or clarity. Every memory is viewed through a gauze of utter disconnectedness and a rampant internal monologue. And I remember – I remember seeing it like that at the time. I was impossible. School was impossible. Wading through my life as a child with what seemed to be a firmer, thicker skull on the outside of my own with a magnetic attraction to anything that wasn’t work was impossible. But I managed, and here I am.

Sometimes, things are still impossible. I tried to put up the chords to all my songs today under my music pages. I had taken the Dexedrine, and I was focused. I was ready. And then the doorbell rang, and -

For the second time in my life, and for the second time that day, somebody had ordered flowers for me through the mail, and they had arrived, beautiful, resplendent and fragrant, but utterly homeless and more than slightly confusing. Eventually, as you can see, we found a place for them on the mantelpiece, but it required some ornament shuffling that I won’t even go into. I went back upstairs, putting the flowers from my mind, and for the second time in my life, and the second time that day, took another Dexedrine, and completely failed to do any work whatsoever for the next eight hours.

The problem with medication of any kind is that it’s pretty blunt and general, and the human body is infinitely complex and detailed, particularly in bits like the brain. Very specific problems can arise in bodies, and the medicines we make have basic functions that can raise or lower things generally, but can never be precise enough to target just the bit that’s wrong. This is why side-effects exist. You can’t not fuck something else up when you fix the thing you’re trying to fix.

I feel cold and empty as I write this. I feel a sort of detachment that isn’t sadness, necessarily – but it’s on the same level as sadness. The drugs have tried to fix whatever’s wrong in my brain, and they have missed. They’ve hit me in a place I’m not sure I entirely understand even though I’m living through it, and if you were to ask me how I feel, I’d say I don’t know. If you asked me what I want to do, I’d say I don’t know either. I’m blank right now. There’s nothing inside me at all.

It’s at low points in a life that the simplest things can make huge differences. Everything we know is relative to everything else, and it’s astonishing how quickly things can change. Happiness is one of the most free-spirited and fleeting things I know. At the start of today, I felt loved and cared for, and in only a few hours I forgot what it even felt like to be loved at all. It’s happened before on other medications, and it’s always horrible.

Now, though, I’m feeling a lot better. I’ve restored the kitchen windowsill and the mantelpiece back to how they were, and now there are two vases of flowers sitting on my desk, surrounding me with tenable proof of what it’s like to have someone love you and care about you, reminding me of how wonderful my friends are, and proving, in their own sedentary, unassuming and sweetly fragrant way, that a little token of happiness will always go miles further than any chemical compound will. I’ll never quite work the way I’m supposed to, but at least for now, I’m happy again.

Tom

¹a.k.a dexamfetamine sulphate. Dexedrine ®UCB Pharma Ltd.