Unconscious Dreaming

It was the year I spent unconscious, the best year of my life. I
still remember the dreams I had, some of them vividly, others with a
haze of blur. Occassionally I'll confuse the dreams with what actually
happened. The friends who stuck by me over the year ticked the fact or
fiction boxes for me. I told them once of a dream where Princess Diana
had died in a car crash in Paris. They laughed, said it happened years
before I went into hospital. I had a dream my best friends got
divorced. That wasn't a dream either though, they told me in a more
sombre fashion.


Since I regained my consciousness I had an extra spring in my
step. Suddenly i didn't worry about costs - I'd go to the cinema and
buy new clothes whereas before the illness I would have been worried
about costs, convincing myself that the money should be better spent.
That is what comes from having such a frightening near death
experience, the grave suddenly seems so much more tangible. It makes
the values of life I'd always upheld seem far too intense, I learned to
relax, I founded a new doctrine to make up for the year I lost. And
also having a years life savings in a high interest account untouched
for thirteen months helped.


I'd lost so much weight that restaurants were my new passion,
I enjoyed treating my loyal and intensely valuable friends to platters
in seafood restaurants and Roast Dinners in pubs on Sundays. I didn't
like the taste of alcohol any more, it was too much like medicine. I
contmeplated the idea of experiementing with hard drugs but did not
know where to get them from, or what I'd do with them.


The hardest thing was losing my flat. My belongings were in a
couple of cardboard boxes stacked up in the Caretakers Office on the
ground floor, only Post-It Notes distinguishing them as my personal
possessions. The posters that were on my wall had been disposed of and
a few records were missing. The televesion set which blared out in the
corner of the room once belonged to me, and judging by the way the
caretaker shooed me off and didn't open the door fully wide made me
think there were other things in his flat that were mine. I took the
armful of boxes with mock thanks and moved into a hostel full of asylum
seekers who didn't respect the silence of the night which I valued so
much. I was relieved when the agency phoned me after six weeks to tell
me a new flat was available and furnishing it gave me something to do
in the long afternoons; doctors told me I couldn't work again until
they said so.


My brother had got married and moved to Canada, but as the
sibling rivalry we had as children had turned into apathy over the
years hearing the news of his departure did not bother me, I was
grateful to have been unconscious all the way though the wedding. I
used to babsit Prince. I'd walk with home over the fields near his
house at night. I think that's one of the dreams I had, I'm not sure
that it happened.