What Even Is Harmony

She’d taken the over-packaged box that contained my injection; needle, vial, plunger, instructions. Hundreds, if not over a thousand quids worth of medication. She brought it into the room I’d soon be going to. A room in which I’d spend—maybe—four or five minutes, at most, getting stabbed in my upper arm (always the other side to the last time) with the raw mixture of what kept me sane, or so they said. I don’t know why she couldn’t mix it in front of me when I was with her. I don’t know why, when it was just a vial to be pulled from, I couldn’t watch her do it. Maybe it was a test. Let’s find out how paranoid you are by taking something we’re going to inject straight into your muscle and see if you’re OK with it being prepared out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind. I was far from out of my mind but I was tired. I hadn’t slept the night before. Or the night before that. I had slept for about five hours in between those two nights. This wasn’t something to tell the doctors. It might be a challenge to them but mostly it would challenge the idea that I was in control of the one thing I was supposed to be managing: myself.

If I was insane, which I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be at the appointment. I’d be out living my own insane life. What I was, in that moment, was worried. The totality of the situation was that for one month, or two, or three at a push I’d been contesting with upsets to my day. It was probably more like one month, or maybe two. I’d been sleeping awfully. The heat had kept me awake at night and my days were lethargic. I’d settled into a routine of doing nothing. I’d play stupid web browser games for a few minutes at a time after spending forty minutes looking for the most entertaining browser game to load. I’d spend hours googling things I could buy knowing I didn’t have the cash to buy them because I’d been keeping up with my debts since Christmas. That it was the middle of summer and I should, almost instantly, begin saving for the next Christmas payments didn’t seem to matter. The idea I could ever afford a holiday was ludicrous. My days were mostly about wasting the hours while keeping in check the things that had piled up to pressure me. I had no purpose, no goal, other than navigating my way towards a time when purpose could be found, a time I couldn’t see.1

The doctor wouldn’t understand any of the struggle I’d found myself in. I could tell them my sleep had been off, and they’d think I’m angling for sleeping pills. “They’re not the best,” they’d say. “Sleep hygiene is the key.”2 Asking for something seems all kinds of out of place, so instead you have to tick off the few keywords that’ll light a fire in their mind. Never mind the fact that you don’t really want to add more medication to your routine.

I was supposed to be at the doctor’s at 9.30, I was there at 9.15, and now it was 10.35. With health services overworked there’s no point in complaining. The doctors can’t do anything, the nurses are doing their own thing, and as someone sat on a conveyor belt your opinion has as much potential to impact matters as a cardboard box being filled with air-blistered packing.

The nurse poked her head out of her room and called me in. At least this would be out of the way. I hadn’t missed an injection appointment since I started taking my current, new-ish medication. I had no desire to do so, I could still feel the twangs in my mind, often when I couldn’t sleep, of trying to keep up with the world as my psychosis roared. I didn’t want to return to it. I sat in the chair with the arm supports for blood taking and injecting.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s been three months,” the nurse, whose name I didn’t know, said.

“The days keep rolling past.” Although it was more like slipping past.

“How long have you been on this injection?”

“A year, at this point.”

“It’s working for you?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty great. I don’t really notice it,” I said, which wasn’t quite true. Walking away from the hospital later that day I knew I’d feel a quelling layer over me. And over the next few days I’d be examining my own mind for the effects, real or not, of a new dose of anti-psychotic. It was probably more noticeable in those immediate hours, my mind that is. Me looking at it knowing there was a medication having an outside effect. That looking inwards was what caused most thoughts, though, not the medication.

“Other patients have been saying it works really well for them. It’s great to see. Right arm this time.”

I pulled up the sleeve on my top. The nurse was a small woman and it’s only on reflection that I wondered if a more imposing person, towering over me, would make me feel differently about getting stabbed and filled with an unknown substance.

“Alright,” she said as the needle pierced my skin. I knew tiredness made the pinprick more apparent and I felt my arm muscle tighten as she plunged the liquid into me.

“There we go.” She placed a little plaster over the small hole. “Do you have an appointment card?”

“Not on me,” I said. And out came the big tower of business cards from the pharmaceutical company she would write on to indicate my next appointed time.

“Twelve weeks until I see you again,” she said. “I’m sure it’ll fly.”

“Thanks,” I said, gathering all my belongings. I walked out to the hallway to let the nurse get back to injecting yet another living cardboard box. It was an insignificant amount of time in my day, less than five minutes, but it was, pretty much, the whole of my existence. What my star signs indicated, amongst other things, was that every twelve weeks I get dosed up on a small fluid that would ensure I didn’t take my star signs too seriously. That I didn’t fly off into the world loaded up on Mercury in retrograde and announcing to anyone I could find that I’d solved domestic abuse.

Then the key to my health was over.

I did have to meet the psychiatrist but the foundational part of my life had been dealt with so casually that it might as well have been an offhand conversation while I was buying a lighter.

As I arrived out to the corridor a doctor was standing before me with a file inches thick. I knew it was mine.

“Natalie,” she said. I nodded and followed her. Sitting down I felt pushed back by the sudden meeting with her. I had no time, after the injection, to prepare myself for what I wanted to say and when the doctor asked me how I was all I could manage to blurt out was that, “I’m fine.”

“That’s good,” she said.

“Any problems with hearing voices?” she asked, straight to the routine.

“No, nothing like that. Just sleep,” I said, finally managing to collect even a little of myself.

“The nights are very sticky,” she said, each consonant of her words pronounced precisely. It didn’t occur to me that her hijab would make any humidity worse, especially with no sun, just layers of clouds and a close heat. At least the hospital was cool.

“It’s more like my mind is sharp and acute when I lie down. I know I’m tired, I feel tired but I can’t switch off.”

“Are you avoiding electronic devices? You should give yourself at least an hour with no blue light before you try to sleep.” I didn’t want to tell her about colour temperature changing software, not that it had ever made a difference for me.

“I get away from the computer,” I said. It wasn’t quite a lie. I did try all the bedtime routines ever suggested to me at one point, but they’d never worked. Even the last time I tried it, when I’d read for forty minutes or so in bed, I’d feel my arms straining with the awkward position I held myself in, I’d lie back feeling my eyes close as much as my head fell, and then, with the world of sleep awaiting me, I’d feel my mind piercing whatever veil it was I could imagine laying over me. Me staring out at a dead world, my mind running on pure hateful instinct like a zombified corpse.

“The heat is very bad,” she said. “If it keeps being a problem for the next few weeks go to your GP, or you can always make another appointment here.” That seemed to be the standard of this place, defer all problems, wait until they manifest as a crisis. “How’s your mood? Are you socialising?”

“Not really,” I said, although it was more of a mumble. I cleared my throat but it was thick and grimy from an entire night of coffee and cigarettes. “With the sleep issues I’m awake all night and sleeping whenever I’d normally see people.”

“Try keeping yourself awake, go out for a walk, meet people, then go to bed at a regular time.” It was all very easy. “Socialising is important. See your friends once a week.”

I nodded. I grappled with the strap from my bag in my hands.

“Have you been looking after yourself? Diet, washing?”

I hadn’t had a shower in over a week, but then again I hadn’t seen anyone or been anywhere, and my diet mostly consisted of noodles and crisps. “Yeah, that’s all fine. If I get to the shops today I’ll stock up on healthy food,” I said. I meant it. Cooking, as in the art form, the relaxation, the effort, the results, could be managed at any time of the day. It might be a small pleasure for me, something I’d created, and something to tease the senses. I batted away the thought I’d fuck it up, or just let the ingredients rot. I held onto the disappointment of a failed meal.

“Have you heard of the Hearing Voices groups?” she asked. She wrote a few lines in my file.

“Sort of,” I said. “I haven’t paid much attention to them.”

“They’re groups who feel their voices provide them with insight. That if you manage your own thoughts you can provide yourself with greater understanding.”

“It was terrifying, when it happened to me,” I said. “I didn’t exactly hear voices, I’m fairly sure I always knew it was my own but I didn’t feel like I was in control at the time.”

“It’s something we’ve heard about here. These movements,” she said. I didn’t know if she was testing me. If she was probing me to see if I’d been taken in by a cause that celebrated what was normally the looked-down-upon, pathologised aspects of my illness.

“Maybe in the future I’ll think about it, but not right now. I can’t deal with what it did to me so soon again.”3

“It’s just something that’s in the conversation now, but you seem to be doing well at the moment so stick with that.” She nodded at me, then stopped her nodding and stayed looking at me. I smiled feeling I had to give her something. It was more of a grimace. “Is they’re anything you want to say to me?” she asked.

“No, nothing I can think of.” The pile of thoughts I had for doctors seemed like a small hill at that moment, insignificant in comparison to a properly tall peak of worries, and mostly buried.

“We’ll see you again in four months.” she said.

“Could we make it three?” I asked. “I have my appointment for my injection on that day.” I thought on how my injection was what kept those voices quiet, or at least the medication aided my own health. I didn’t know if the mounting failures that lead to psychosis came from personal mistakes or if it was a rollercoaster that brought you down an inevitable track of circumstances, conspiring against you as though madness was always your due.

“Three months is fine,” she said. “You won’t see me again. I’m moving on next week but if you have any issues there’ll always be a doctor here to see you.”

I nodded. Doctors came and went. Patients were always. Illness was mine. I rarely saw the same psychiatrist twice and getting an appointment at the last minute, while it wasn’t something I’d needed, seemed about as likely as the doctors spending time working over what was really troubling you. I’d asked to see a therapist before, someone to talk to, someone I could trust, all I’d gotten was a brush off.

“OK. Three months,” she said, already turned to fold over my file and put it on the pile of other patients she’d seen.

After scheduling my next appointment, tucking the letter into my bag I walked out of the hospital door and looked over towards the building I’d been going to a year before. The building that hosted those in the midst of a crisis and brought them back towards societal acceptability. It seemed like I’d never been in there. It was a small, two story granite building, with meeting rooms squeezed in along one corridor, a waiting room between them and two large group activity rooms wrapped around the rest. The staff rooms on the second level I’d never been to and I wondered if any of the staff would even remember me. If my file was even still stored there. I could barely remember my time attending the daily meetings, let alone the peoples’ names.4

It was strange how my days had purpose while I was fighting off madness. Really I was indulging the tail ends of its effects. Maybe that’s what that building was, a runway to bring the insane into land. Part of me wanted to still be flying.

Walking away from the hospital’s outlying buildings towards the city centre I remembered my meditation sessions. How my imagination was gripped by true insight. I could almost literally see what I wanted from life being conjured before me. A house of my own, an office space, or a reading space with a comfortable armchair next to a hifi and bookshelf, and a desk next to it with my computer. It would be a space where I could escape the worries of sleep, where I could forgo the mind-loosening mindless watching Netflix on the TV. I could be active within myself. I could be bettering myself. I could be at peace, all by myself. Such realisations seemed so important at the time but now they felt like a grain of sand worrying against the statue I’d built of who I was to be: a nothing. I needed to be more directional, now. I needed more control of my situation. I needed to build more and that began with a desire.

I knew there was a supermarket with affordable raw ingredients along a little detour I could make, so I followed that route instead of my typical journey home.

The morning opened up before me, with birds flitting through the sky and the breeze offsetting the summer morning’s growing heat.5 Despite being tired I knew I would make it through the day to sleep at an appropriate time. The question was what to do with my day. How not to waste it. The doctor’s comment about not socialising stood out to me. Apart from my parents, and the people at the hospital I hadn’t talked to anyone in three weeks. It didn’t bother me. What bothered me more was thinking on the times I went out every second day for two weeks, spending money I didn’t have in an orgy of sociability. It was always full or fallow for me. I’d riotously indulge in something I hadn’t quite denied myself, more didn’t see the need for, and then as I slowly burned out on activities—drinking—I’d long for that solitude to take me over again.

I stood at the entranceway to the supermarket and considered cooking in my house. How hot it would be? How wasteful it would be if I didn’t eat all the food? The day wasn’t for wasting, it was for finding new possibilities. Yet those opportunities weren’t presenting themselves to me. I knew all I needed was time. Time alone to think, considering I didn’t have anywhere to think in my home, or maybe I needed time teasing out possibilities with another person. Even just watching other people contend with themselves.

I turned to walk towards the beer garden I knew opened at 11am. It was hot enough, summer enough, and I had a book, so it all meant a drink was suitable for a day like today. A day for hope. A day for forcing myself to find hope. The pub was cool as I walked in. No-one was there, not even a barman. I stood at the bar and inspected the taps. There was a locally produced craft beer on offer, €4.50 a pint or three for €11. Three pints would just about ease me into my day. Eventually the barman loped in behind the counter and I put in my order.

I sat in the sun at the back and looked at my drink. I had no paper but my book had blank pages at its end. I pulled it from my bag and went searching for a pen.

I wrote a single word on the last seven blank pages, “Construction.” I drew an arrow from that, downwards, as though leading to another paragraph and didn’t know how I could create anything. My mind was empty. I wondered if this was the drugs.

I reached for my pint and took a drink. The cool tang of the bitter hops offset the buzzing in my mind at the possibility of a medicative effect slowing me. I took another drink. I felt my breath change from a harangued mop doused in ash-filled coffee to a boozy, breathalyser blowing aerosol.

I set the pint and book down and looked around the beer garden. It was empty except for me. The seats were empty. The tables were empty without even beer mats or ashtrays set out. The high sun created hard-lined shadows everywhere and a breeze blew through the wide open space, light mottled with dried up dust floating from the summer’s baked in concrete ground just beginning to warm.

I rejected the idea I was out of place, out of society with an 11.35am beer and took another drink. I realised my pint was two-thirds gone and resigned myself to quickly getting another beer so appeasing was the first. I knew if this rate kept up I’d be going for a second burst of 3-for-11 pints. I began to count my finances in my mind, engaging with sacrifices.

I took another drink leaving half an inch resting in the bottom of the glass. I picked up my book and looked at the word I’d written. “Construction,” it said. “Space,” I wrote next to the arrow I’d drawn. I wanted to write, “Booze.” It would be more truthful than anything else I could write but it would seem pitiful that I had taken such triumph from a desolate beer garden, me the solitary figure filling it out.

I went and picked up my second pint. The barman didn’t say a word, just set it in front of me. As I walked back out I felt the wind whip around me after blowing through the open space. I felt the medication settle down on me. I saw the remnants of myself spread out all alone. I was alone and I didn’t know if that was enough for me.

I sat and took the book in my hands, wrote the word, “Alone,” and circled if over and over. I wrote the words, “Space to be alone,” and, “Contentment,” beneath that.

I started into my second pint and decided against the second set of three. I would splash out but it’d be to follow through on my plans to cook. Three pints and a hearty meal I’d made for myself. That was a good day all on my own. It was a good day I’d made for myself.6

The wind rattled the awning above, scattering a new haze of dust onto all I had set out.

Index - Part 3 Chapter 2