What Even Is Harmony

There were two chairs on a landing in a stairway. A large printed sheet, unlaminated, without colour or images, bright and clean as if it was the victim of regular attack and was often replaced, hung above the seats saying, “Please Wait Here.” I sat.

Each step on the stairs had been covered in vinyl flooring which peeled at the corners and bubbled at the edge stuck into the rise of the step. I wrapped the strap of my handbag around my thigh.1

The day had warmed as it progressed, enough that I now regretted having to have a coat but equally aware I needed it that morning.2 I rested it over my knee which gripped the leather holding my bag just about an inch above the floor. I batted my bag forward with my shin.

My leg wasn’t restless, it was the decisive action of impatience, boredom, play, rather than an anxious hindbrain occupied by what conscious thought couldn’t dare to touch on. The fact I gave into a kicking play arrested me. That I had returned to something so mindless; undirected action; childlike distraction rather than nervous worrying. It was a reflection of impertinence among my very necessary seeking of purpose, determined and fired up, in the state-funded, run-down, helpful advice centre for those who had come in from a path, lost through their own running.

I played with my bag as though I was a cat, cared for and superior. I needed to be more rat-like, industrious and scratching an existence, or at least seeking a way of living among the worn out discards, the recycled lives I would have found myself among if there was anyone but me there.

The hallway stunk of judgment. This was all we, us, its clients were deserving of as decided by mercurial layers of state funding.3

The stairwell held the darkness of a single, high hanging, bare lightbulb not strong enough to illuminate any more than a wash of cool light. There was a breeze from the large door leading onto a street—quiet during business hours—with business being conducted behind all the other doors, sturdy, regularly painted, edged by flower boxes. I was cold, or I at least felt a chill taste against my skin, seep through my fat, and begin to hint at its presence against my joints and bones. It was the type of cold that preceded action. The cold of a long warm night, barely able to sleep, and the chill that eventually comes, finally encouraging you to bed down but you’re roused by a slight distant sun, brittle, breaking through your open window.

I didn’t know what I had let myself in for meeting with a woman to talk about educational possibilities. It was one of the final courses I decided on when I attended the day hospital. Discussing with the nurse my future, my dreams for the future, with her suggestions powerful enough to convince me re-education was what I really wanted.

I didn’t realise I was seeking ordination to a secure living. Yet, it was an imposed decision, coming into my mind from elsewhere, that every choice I made should lead me to growth. I didn’t know forever growth was an impossibility, but I wanted to know, as much as that nurse seemed to know, that I could find my way to stable ground.

I looked at posters around me advertising alternatives to schools and universities and knew this was a slow laying of foundations. Laying a structure that may never support a towering achievement, but instead allow a comforting shelter to rest upon it. I couldn’t begin to fathom that there was a future for me. I wanted but I couldn’t conceive.

A woman stuck her head out a door. “Natalie is it?” she asked. “I’ll be with you in a minute.” She held a salad container in her hand, then, with the other, stretched towards a side-table and turned a radio on. As she went back into her room, door left open, the radio leaked the sounds of a local DJ into the air. They talked of grievances.

The woman’s door could be left open as there was no way I could intrude, left, as I was, a few steps beneath the level she was on.

I tried not to dwell on the familiarity in the tone of the education-woman’s voice. The hint that I needed compassion more than I needed direction. Instead I considered how pressing any complaints could be, real and difficult, to the people who phoned into local radio show programmes. None of my complaints were even that. At most I had concerns, and concerns don’t amount to much more than opportunity of likelihoods, damning or rousing, with circumstance of illness, fading or filling, being brought to bear.4 Earlier that day the doctor confirmed I was well enough to go to three-monthly appointments. I was back in my home, my Disability Allowance income was steady if not abundant, I had long walks by myself knowing I had nowhere to be other than holding the presence of myself to the regular step of health.

A song began that I didn’t know because I was immune to popular music, popular anything. I insulated myself from the comings and goings of daily life because I never felt a part of it. That’s partially why I was waiting in that hallway, waiting for an educational advisor to help me ease back into what was a simple reality of life: that our purpose to ourselves was a purpose to a greater community of others, and only through participation valued could we be true to who we were, or at least our potential. We set ourselves in a world and for too long I had been a world of one.5

Inspecting the posters I knew I should have more an idea of what I needed before I began the meeting. I should have spent time considering my options and that I didn’t revealed to me how I felt all options were closed off. I saw advertisements hung on the wall for flower arranging courses and wondered if I could enjoy that activity in all its quietness, all its mugs of tea and delicate pseudo-artistic release. I imagined myself gossiping, with the flowers a metaphor for the colourful shadows all of us—the women on the course—wear over ourselves to protect us from the attention of those who would use and abuse.

I looked at another poster, for occupational first aid, and wondered if I, a crazy-woman, could gift others a restoration of their life. Attending festivals and applying a caring touch, centring words to those addled by too-powerful drugs and temporarily caught in a madness neighbours to what I had endured. There was a mention on the same poster, in small writing, for art therapy. That put paid to my notions of becoming a carer. For all I was caring, such a career wasn’t for me, the person who took others care, me who needed regular attention, always spending on myself more than I could manage for anyone else.6

The woman came out of her office a second time. “Natalie?” she said. I stood. My eyes were cast from her and scanning the posters of possibilities that had pen marks around certain courses and opportunities. As I rose, taking hold of my coat and bag, I felt a wave of light-headedness dizzying me: a mixture of the heat and thaw I had felt; a coming and going.

I stood like a foal, arm outstretched to the wall for security and tried to reassert myself over the part of me losing itself.

“How are we today?” the woman asked.

“I’m OK,” I said. Although the words felt like gravel, or maybe lumps of soft phlegm rattling through my voice-box. I couldn’t muster the strength to give her the responsorial enquiry of health.7

“My name’s Susan,” she said, and I knew the advantage was hers, having not responded, and with me in her space, in her realm, looking for her guidance.8 I tried to hold onto her name, an important figure that would hopefully guide me through the pit I’d found myself in, another handhold I could pull myself out with. I tried to keep her name in my mind because I would soon be losing my own. It would be going on application forms, bursary requests, government documentation and every piece of officialdom, where it would lose all meaning when sorted through stacks on a nameless administrator's desk. This woman kept meaning throughout that. I sat in the offered chair feeling the nausea turn from my dizzy spell.

“How can I help you?” she asked, now sitting too. She wrote my name on the top of a clean page of printer paper.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I need a course, some stability in my life. Something to ground me.” It was more honesty in a few words than I’d ever given to doctor.9 They were words that came suddenly, immediately. I didn’t know this woman, never having met her before, and I knew her intent was directional rather than oppressive. Both made it easier to open up: to state in unadorned language my desires.

“What age did you leave school?” she asked.

“I finished school,” I said.

She nodded and made a note. “Did you pass all your exams?”

“Enough to get into college.”

“College?” she asked. She placed her pen down on the paper, no longer marking anything.

“I have a degree in computer science,” I said.

“So how do you think I can help you?” I retreated back into the stated purpose of the office, to help people find their way through the myriad courses, offering more than just simple qualifications but a holistic approach to personal fulfilment.10

“I was hoping there’d be a course, a night course, or an all day that’d help me get back to a routine in life,” I said.

“But you finished school?” she said.

“Yes.”

“And you have a degree?”

“I do. With a lot of help from the disability office in the university. I said on the phone I have mental health issues. I don’t feel capable of...” I paused. I needed to give words to my incapability. My lack of determination that couldn’t see me through the rigours of daily life in a job, in an office, working with the pressures that would stress me and strain me and send me to the edge of panic. I had to tell myself it wasn’t a lack of determination. It was simple reality. I had worked before, I couldn’t manage it. I couldn’t deny it. It was a failing but a failing through illness. I couldn’t speak it.

She didn’t say anything as I sat there unable to outline my piece. I felt I had to clarify, to push. I had to put into perspective my troubles, yet how do you do that when the words you will speak are more frightening to others than the illness is to yourself.

“I’m schizophrenic,” I said, ripping away all pretence of a sound mind. “I get panicked with stress. I can’t handle it.” It was more than that. There was the paranoia, sometimes absolute, sometimes, if you were lucky, with just a hint of unreality. There were the stories you told yourself to get through the attacks you saw, entwined with simple conversation, mixed into the core simple actions that were all part of everyday life.

She nodded and wrote something down. I screwed my eyes against the light coming through an old, large, ornate window with wooden struts separating thin plates of glass, in a rickety frame between me and the world shining in on me, beyond me. I wanted to see if she was writing my diagnosis—marking me off forever. I twisted my neck when my eyes weren’t enough but could only make out two short words rather than one long, terrifying word.

“And what would you like to do?” she asked.11

“I don’t know. I don’t know what possibilities there are.”

“What do you need?” she asked. “You’re obviously intelligent, so what do hope to find with me?”

“I need stability—”

“All the courses I can offer began a month ago. I don’t think I can get you into anything until next year.”

“That’s what I need to plan for. I’m fine with that. I can hold out for a year but I thought I’d need to get ready for funding applications, bursaries, grants, that kind of thing.”

“You have a degree already,” she said.

“I know. That’s why I want to start now. I know funding is limited if you’re already further advanced in your education,” I said.

“To be honest, there’s no funding available. Unless you do a master’s.”

“There’s no funding for a master’s,” I said. I’d checked into it many times. Once you had a degree there were no grants unless you were exceptional and no loans for someone with no prospect of holding down a job.12 “And I’m not sure I could handle the stress of more full time education.”

“So you want something easy to manage?” she asked. Her emphasis was on the ‘easy.’ It made me realise that what I wanted in that moment was something I knew she couldn’t provide. A direction, and stability to move into that opening up of space I could only hope would come with action.13

“I need something, low key, not-too-taxing, at least not mentally, to get me into a routine,” I said.

“We’ll see what we can do,” she said. Her demeanour changed from hesitant and resigned, the human shape of a sigh, to a smiling lean-forward. “And there might be one or two things starting in the new year.”

“That’d be great. The new year sounds perfect. A new start, and all.” The new year would give me time to establish myself with the freedom I’d found from escaping ill-health. It would give me a few weeks to ease myself back into days of activity and nights dedicated to rest. My pattern of recovery, recuperation, sleep and occupation—all regularity—had left me since I’d left the day hospital. I was no longer waking early and sleeping easily. My days no longer found themselves filled. The clarity I’d happened upon in my struggle for health had given way to a mind muddled by the lack of purpose in any daily simplicity in the making of living.

“Let’s look at the courses beginning in January,” she said. She pulled a folder out of the drawer in her desk and slowly thumbed through a wad of paper leaflets. She looked to be refreshing her memory but it was only when she pulled out one pamphlet after getting through two and a half inches of more that I realised she was dismissing a literal stack of offerings on my behalf.

I thought on how I could find all this online, if this was the most she could offer me. If she started with the assumption I hadn’t finished school then there would be another assumption that I couldn’t navigate through the often shoddy websites these further education institutes relied on.14

She set two leaflets aside, put the rest away, then picked up the first of them again. She began to read through it. The nurse at the day-hospital assured me that this centre had dealt with all manner of people with mental health issues. That they would be able to help me. Like most of what I was told it amounted to offering hope rather than dealing with reality. A blind optimism delivered with enough force to see me through the most tumultuous time of my illness. Any choice here was only the illusion of choice. That a course could bring me somewhere new was a foolish idea, when I knew, deep down, these courses were mostly designed to corral those who’d lost out on greater prospects. They’d catch the few, unlike me, who hadn’t been to university but could manage a degree, and who would, eventually, bolster national GDP figures. I would only ever be a drain.

Folding the pamphlet back along its three creases she looked up at me. “There’s a gardening class,” she said. “Starting just before the spring. It runs four days a week” She handed it to me and I could see her own notes, just a few words and a phone number, were scribbled across it.

I nodded. I’d often thought of growing something, tomatoes or chilis although I really wanted to grow weed. There was a lot of science in it, along with nurturing and seeing the fruits of your own creation but I knew tomatoes were difficult, we had the wrong climate for chilis and if I grew weed I’d smoke it, which would bring me back to the psychiatric hospital faster than anything else.

I told myself I did want growth. “Gardening sounds interesting,” I said.

“It’s a calm course. I know the person running it. It does a lot of good for people to be out in the open, every day, with something to look after.”

“It sounds perfect,” I said.

She took the leaflet back and took a business card from a holder on her desk. “I’ll write down my number, the website and the code for the course. If you apply give me a call and I’ll let them know you came to me first.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“It must be difficult,” she said. I nodded. I knew she was talking about my illness but I nodded towards the idea of starting my life again. Fresh beginnings weren’t very fresh when you had years of baggage being dragged along with you. Years of unknowable thoughts and mad actions that you couldn’t fully understand.15 “If you have any difficulties with the application give me a call. I’m sorry I can’t help with funding, that’s just the way things are. Not many people have a degree and want to go back to a lower course.”

“It’s what I need,” I said.

“I hope it works out for you.”

I stood and gathered my things all the while she kept her eyes on me as I collected my belongings. I bundled everything into my arms, rather than putting on my coat or hanging my bag across my chest. Her viewing me as I was leaving unsettled me into a rush.

Walking down the stairs I was worried about not dropping anything, still forced to move and get away, and it was only when I pulled back the door to step onto the street that I put myself together.

Outside, a fresh rain had fallen. I walked in the direction of my home, feeling the clammy cling of the atmosphere. Along the way I looked at the hanging baskets leaking droplets to splatter on rain-washed paving, and vines climbing the walls of the buildings. I knew gardening was something I could manage but I felt I had given in. There was only one choice presented to me in the office, gardening or nothing, and that didn’t feel like any choice at all. If the entirety of my return to society was to be pushed down a singular path then my lack of ability to shape my own future stood stark.

I passed a hardware shop that had tools in its window and resisted the urge to go in and look at work-boots, waterproofs and hand tools. I stood before the busy window and tried to imagine myself decked out in the browns and greens of someone kin to the countryside, working the land, in tune with the earth. I didn’t feel attuned to anything in that moment other than inevitabilities and closed-in concrete walkways, cars driving past what should be pedestrianised streets.

I imagined the city overtaken by growth, me walking filthy through it, at one with it. I needed to firm up the value of on-your-knees, in-the-mud work and thought of Maurice in the bar, who had an allotment he worked on year round. I knew he wouldn’t be in the pub. I knew it would be empty at this hour of the day but still I walked towards it. If I went home I’d be straight on the internet looking up the course website, gardening blogs, and Twitter horticulturalists. I knew it’d fill my mind and I’d soon burn out. What I really needed was time to consider the shape of the future I wanted and whether my growth could be reflected by nature’s growth, tended by me.16 That it was pretence enough to be in control of small green shoots rather than myself.

I came to the crusted yellow door that lead to the bar almost without realising it. I could walk in and have a drink. It might have settled the nausea I’d felt since my dizzy spell on the stairway but I knew I’d want another drink after the first, and then another. If I was to begin this venture in my life I’d need to save up for the fees.

I pulled myself away, turning from the door feeling an elastic stretch that would soon return me to my stool by the counter. Defying it, I began my walk home.

As I started my long walk I began to think of costs, savings and sacrifice. I would have to forego to follow this path. It would mean giving up much for only a tenuous hope. I calculated how much I spent on rent, food, heating, electricity, booze, and fags, all the regular expenses without the infrequent concerns like clothes, books, music, electronics, and repairing and replacing my kettle which seemed to fail every five months.

As I walked my step became heavier with each focused thought. What would I give up to be able to answer, “I have an acceptable occupation,” whenever asked? Or at least be able to say, “I have a plan.”

Index - Part 2 Chapter 3