Crazy draft - opening section

August 2006

I’m sitting in the black Peugeot 307 that I’ve parked badly and am stinking like fried onions in the midday sun. My skin, now a perfectly cooked fried egg, crackles on the leather seats. The smell of burnt rubber floods my nose.

There is a grey, soulless, 1980s building in front of me that appears to lean slightly to one side, as though a heavy load were pushing it out of its roots. A black, cold iron door is positioned straight ahead. It is bolted, secured, protected, as though it were proofed for battle.

He knows. He is keeping me locked out, shut away, out of sight. Just like her; just like before.

The door reminds me of images I’ve seen of sturdy navel war ships. Maybe this is a war; it has certainly become my own, personal war. I laugh out loud at the absurdity of that last thought. The idea of a war five minutes from a leafy suburb of South East London seems insane. There are four famous private schools within ten minutes of each other and enough delicatessens on the high street to supply the armed forces with pastrami for a year.

My eyes begin to twitch uncontrollably; a ‘sign of stress’ the women’s magazines that litter my coffee table would dictate. Stress? The word barely scratches it. My heart has been pushing further and further in an attempt to escape my chest for the last five years. Guilt will eat you up slowly, especially of the repressed kind, salivating over your insides until it spits you out, a mere, crumpled pathetic shell. He made sure I had enough guilt to render me incapable of ever recovering.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and meet wild, red tear stained eyes set back on crinkled skin. I look older than I am.

As I stare at the door ahead I realise that I don’t remember how I got here. My memory does not welcome the journey that followed the sudden departure from my stinking bedroom where I had cawed desperately into the silence. I sit and wait for a sign, for something to push me to the final stage, for the final piece to fit.

___________________________________________________

“It is better this way, this is the right thing. You cannot cope…”

“I…..I….want…..”

“You need to rest, regain your strength. You’ll be fixed soon. Just rest.”

“I…..plea…….her…..want”

“She’s completely out of it. The exhaustion. She doesn’t even know you’re here.”

“She doesn’t know what’s happened?

“She has no idea.”

“Please….Listen to me. I don’t want this.”

“Come back and see her in a day or two. She’ll be as right as rain.”

___________________________________________________

In my youth I had several bouts of crazy behaviour but I was following the natural rights of passage that any teen does. Then I got older and seemingly wiser to the casual observer but events occurred over the years and began to reveal to those closest to me a rusty, tarnished paint job, with the lacquer peeling pityingly off.

There were good things about me, things that gained me my job in events, things that my friends described to others, that I liked to boast by example; my ability to talk to anyone, my laughter, my generosity with money, my being the last one to always leave the pub, the bar, the club. I became high on how I perceived others saw me; a great social disease they could catch by just being around. I started to forget to catch myself. It never occurred to me to put down the drink, to not light another joint, do another line, to climb down from the table and join the real world. I didn’t want to. The real world contained so much throbbing pain that if I let it in I felt I would implode, leaving nothing but the scattered debris of who I used to be. Up there I was untouchable, unreachable, adored.

New Year 2004: a broken nose from falling headfirst into a table of champagne glasses. Blood was running down my cleavage, giving splashes of crimson to my alabaster winter skin. Smiling like a wide-eyed clown I laughed and laughed, pointing at my messed up face, now squashed to one side. Falling over open-mouthed friends, throwing my arms around a disgusted boyfriend’s neck and throwing back my head so the blood flew from my face. And shrieking, shrieking with laughter.
Birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, New Years, the weekenders, the quiet nights at the pub, the trips away, all began to blur into one big showcase for my spiralling irregularity. Each one a bedlam making high, crushed to a pulp by a dark and terrifying low.

At some point it had to end. But, to make it end I had to find the beginning.