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Patient FJ
Recovery Diary 5 (let’s just say it’s 5 anyway, and stop splitting hairs)
I was staring into the mirror and admiring the black eye that Ernest Hemingway gave me when I realised something very strange.
Wait, I’ve got to do the bit about how I’m feeling first. In all the lively confusion as the therapy session broke up, Hatchjaw still managed to remind me about the discipline I have to follow in this diary: before writing anything else, express your feelings, reflect on your progress, etc. I still don’t like Hatchjaw but he can handle himself in a fight. God, that was fun. I’ve been to a few recovery meetings where fights have broken out – having started many of them myself – and it always restores my faith in human nature.
Okay, how do I feel? I feel serene. It’s not just the usual calm that descends on me after a good fight, or the satisfaction of being punched in the face by a very good writer. It’s something else. The part of my brain that should be gibbering with terror as it tries to process what the fuck is going on here seems to have shut down. It reminds me of something that used to happen to me when I was about 12, in bed waiting to go to sleep. I would suddenly be overwhelmed with dread. My mind would try to jump out of itself, like a terrified horse tethered to a tree in a forest fire, as I apprehended the full enormity of the following information:
Time is endless. The universe is infinite. I am going to die.
I would try to imagine what it would feel like to be dead. Try to understand the endlessness of time and space, knowing I would never reach the limits of a limitless void. I would become more and more horrified by the inescapable facts of eternity, infinity and death, willing them not to be true, and despairing because I knew they couldn’t not be true. And then, slowly, a wonderful serenity would begin to spread like rich, warm syrup flowing through a system of pipes inside me. There is nothing I can do. Surrender.
I began to associate all this with the idea of God. I became convinced that what I was experiencing, after the tempest of discombobulation, was ‘the peace which passeth all understanding’. After about a year I seemed to grow out of these attacks, although this cycle of feelings – terror followed by tranquillity – continued to recur in various circumstances, often involving the threat of violence or the promise of sex. And that’s what it feels like now. Whatever’s happening, there’s nothing I can do, so why worry? Once again, I am filled with that
