Angie

‘Trigeminal Neuralgia’ one doctor called it.

‘TRIGEMINAL NEURALGIA’ one doctor called it. Until I asked what that was and, when he told me, I had to remind him the pain was all over, not just on my face. So he said it was ‘perhaps just Neuralgia then.’ Another doctor said ‘Causalgia’, until I asked what that was and I had to explain there was nothing wrong with my skin, it’s what’s underneath that’s the problem. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Would you like to see for yourself?’, ‘No’, he said.

Another diagnosed it as ‘dystonia’, saying my brain was sending the wrong signals to the rest of my body, causing the spasms and the pain. It’s the fear that can be worst, waiting for the pain to happen. When I’m driving Katie to school or making her dinner or lying in bed. They say this causes the panic, which they prescribe the Beta Blockers for, and that the exhaustion from the panic and the weariness from the pain cause the depression, which they prescribe the Sertraline for.

They never seem to take on board that the panic and the dark came before the pain. I can’t really remember them not being there at all. When I mention this, they nod, not looking up from their sheets full of boxes to be ticked. ‘In the last seven days have you… felt like hurting yourself? Felt alone? Taken risks with your health? Felt like there is nothing to live for? Felt like you were to blame for your problems? Felt affection towards another person? Felt like ending it all? Made plans to end it all?’ And it goes on that way for forty-two questions.

The answers – they give you those too – are ‘Not at all’ – which means a zero – ‘Occasionally’ – a one – ‘Often’ – two points – ‘Most of the time’ – three – or ‘All of the time’ – which gets you four points but no cuddly toy. They don’t let you tick your own boxes, you tell them and they do the ticking. Then they add up your mark and compare it with how dangerous you were the last time you took the test. And it’s funny how they say have you felt like there’s nothing to live for, have you felt like you are alone, have you felt like you are to blame – as if it’s not possible that you actually could have nothing to live for, that you are alone and that you are to blame. They mean well though, it’s just that they have so many fuck-ups like me sitting at the edge of their desks every day, rocking this way and that, talking balls, they probably get tired of it all. Tell me about it, I think.

They tell me not to drink because of my mood and the tablets. Usually, I don’t. But I can’t sit at home all the time. When I get a bit giddy on it, I go out with the girls. Leave Katie with my daddy for the night. Sometimes, I wake up in a cell. Other times, I have to try to remember what pub I’ve been barred from. The last time it happened, they suggested alternative forms of treatment because they can’t up the dose on the medication any more than they already have. Cognitive therapy, it’s called. So I go to anger management classes, anxiety management classes, dealing with depression classes. When I’m not too crippled with the pain.

We sit in a circle and share. Names. Biscuits. Shyness. Glances. Experiences. Coping mechanisms. Fear. Most of the others are sound, but some people really get off on the whole thing. They can’t wait to get their bits of advice in or make it obvious just how bad they really are. There’s this young fella – Jim – who arrives every week dressed as if he might need to nip out to massacre a high school class. Black boots, black jeans, knee-length black coat, black sunglasses. And he always has this massive rucksack with him, even though he doesn’t go anywhere apart from the hospital and the dole to sign-on. Says he’s afraid of travelling, so he can’t work or usually even leave the house. No matter what’s suggested by the doctors in the circle, he will assure them this doesn’t apply to him or that it didn’t work or that it made him worse. The reason he goes to the sessions I’m in is his panic attacks, but he says he’s been told if he relaxes too much, he will die. His heart will just stop working. Which rules out meditation. He tells us he has a girlfriend but that they haven’t met in real life as yet – they’re keeping it strictly virtual at this point in time, he explains. 

I’ve this dream I keep having. A man – I’ve no idea who – dumps a load of branches, scrub, leaves, twigs on my daddy’s bed. I spot one, two, three, four, five ladybirds emerging from the undergrowth. I swat, swoop, brush, scuttle them towards the door, but every time I go back there are more crawling on the sheets. But they’re so gorgeous, the sparkle of their red casing and the black polka dots are so clean and fresh that it stops me being disgusted by them. Then as I start to move the branches and scrub, the flood comes. One, two, three, four, five hundred, maybe a thousand, ladybirds rush all at once from the undergrowth, over the sheets and their speed creates this invisible slide which they swoop down onto the floor and away towards the door. This flood happens twice or maybe more before I call my daddy’s attention to it. And then, as quick as they left the bed, they disappear down a drain in the hall, which we can never decide to dig out or leave be. Maybe we’ll make up our minds, one of these nights. I keep meaning to give them that in one of the sessions, but I can never work myself up to it.

What I mostly share is how I always let Katie down. I’m usually so wound up, so focused on trying to hold it together that I don’t pay enough attention to her, to what she might be thinking, what she might want to talk about, what wee joke she might want to share with me. I try, but not hard enough. So I sit and tell this room full of – mostly nice – strangers how Katie has to make her own breakfast, how I can never do anything with her because of the pain and how she has to sit watching cartoons all weekend most weekends.

‘It’s not so bad,’ they assure me, ‘You’re obviously a good mother.’

And I was. But not anymore. ‘Push yourself to make plans,’ they say. ‘Just you and her.’ And then they have a group discussion about where’s nice at weekends for families. And cheap. And I smile and wrap my hands around my calves because they’ve started to ache. They finally settle on a forest park not far up the road from us. ‘It’s lovely at this time of year,’ they insist. Then the next week, they all sit gawping, waiting for my report. I feel like I’ve let them down more than I did Katie when I tell them I couldn’t do it. The pain was too bad and I shouted at Katie and she cried and I grounded her – ha! – so she watched more cartoons and I lay on my bed and I cried. 

‘What about the father?’ one asks after a few weeks when they’ve got the courage up. ‘He’s a Born Again,’ I sigh as if that explains everything, which it doesn’t. What I really mean is that he discovered Jesus so he could cover up what a lousy human being he is. He’ll phone me now and again and read tracks from the psalms down the phone, ‘Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and the deadly pestilence,’ is one of his favourites. And all I can do is laugh. I mean, this is the fella who brings his two pit-bulls badger baiting in a National Trust forest park. Sometimes he’ll read something out about abominations and Sodom and Gomorrah and the sin of Adam and Steve and I can’t help myself asking ‘Would Pastor What’s His Face consider it a deadly sin that you used to beg your girlfriend to stick her vibrator up your hole?’ He’ll hang up after that – probably away to have a wank thinking about it, he probably cleans the mess with one of his prayer leaflets when he’s done, ‘Why Jesus Christ is the only way to God,’ or something.

When we were together, he usually came home smelling of drink and blow – didn’t matter what day it was, unless it was the weekend, in which case he didn’t make it home at all a lot of the time. I’d stick it. We all have our weaknesses I thought. But when he started coming in smelling like a whore’s handbag, it became too much. ‘You’ve been with someone else, don’t lie to me,’ I accused him. ‘I haven’t. I swear over my child’s grave.’ And then I hit him. How fucking dare he, like. For words like that to mean so little to him. And her standing listening to it. And then he hit me. And Katie watched. ‘You fucking started it,’ he said and left. He never really came back after that. When I told them that, that’s all they wanted to talk about every week.

Have you ever noticed that our relationships with most people consist of one long conversation? It might go off in a few different directions now and again, we might spend a while – even years – talking about other stuff before we get to what we really want to talk about. But once we get there, that’s it – the relationship revolves around that discussion as long as it lasts past that moment. And it’s never about the relationship itself. It’s about how we relate to something else – a concept, a person, a book, a drug, a fetish – and have been quietly looking for someone who relates to the same thing to allow this discussion for ever and ever. A mirror, if you like. 

When I was nine or ten, my daddy took us all to the Boyne as a treat. It was July and the three-hundredth anniversary of the battle was coming up, so he wanted to see where it all went down before he walked with his lodge on the big day, but the real treat was the beach. Bettystown. We got the train early, with sandwiches and towels in our plastic bags and my daddy struck up with this businessman on the way down who bought him stout in the refreshment car, so that was him happy. About halfway there, the train was stopped by soldiers who used ladders to clamber up on top of it. They brought this dog into our carriage to have a good sniff at everyone’s luggage and our Mark got a clip round the ear from the handler for trying to offer the dog some of his crisps. We all laughed when the soldiers left. When we got to Bettystown, we were straight into the water, the heat on the train had been stifling but the water was freezing. Then we had our ham sandwiches and daddy bought us ice cream and we had a go on the dodgems, which ended with Mark banging his head off the steering wheel. For hours afterwards, he said all he could see were stars, so my daddy had to carry him.

The Boyne was really just a big field, and a river. We walked around it and through it, us kids pretending to play the flute as we walked in step behind one another and Mark was feeling better by this time so he was using a stick he’d found by the side of the road as a baton, twirling it behind his back and throwing it into the air and catching it as it fell. In the middle of this field were these massive purple flowers swaying back and forth in the breeze. Bridewort, my daddy said they were called, and then he thought about it and said they might be orchids instead. He grew up in the countryside.

There’s this old fella on our street who lends me books. It helps to kill the time now that I’m off on the sick. I was, kind of still am, a care assistant in a nursery school. I used to love it. You’d get them reading their first words then muck about with them in the sandpit all day. It sounds stupid, but it was like being on holiday because I was always finding grains of sand in my hair and shoes and pockets, which was great in the winter – you could just put your hand in your pocket and close your eyes and finger the sand and imagine summertime. And Bettystown. But the pain got too much.

So this fella, Bill, is always getting me to read this or that. He used to work with my daddy in the aircraft factory. They still go drinking together sometimes. He doesn’t know I know his name’s not really Bill. It’s Liam. I saw it on a letter lying in his hall one day. My daddy says he called himself Bill in the factory as well. The better not to have any trouble. What’s in a name? Ha, a whole fucking lot, if you have the wrong one in the wrong place at the wrong time. My daddy says he thinks he told him it was grand one night, that he didn’t need to worry, but they were both so pissed he’s not sure. One of these days I’ll tell him I know as well, just to reassure him like.

Bill worked all over the place, so he’s full of stories about wrecking sports cars and going out with Swedish airhostesses. I think some of them are true though. He used to live in Istanbul, working in another aircraft factory, so he really likes this Turkish writer called Pamuk, says reading him reminds him of his glory days. He got me to read a couple of his books. One was all about Istanbul – Memories and the City, he called it – but I’ve never been there and I’m never likely to go and I’ve never met Pamuk and I wouldn’t be too fussed on meeting him so it didn’t make much of an impression on me. The other one was called My Name Is Red. It’s set in Istanbul as well, but about five hundred years ago. It’s supposed to be a murder mystery about this artist who goes missing and is found with his head bashed in. But then it’s really supposed to be about how we see things. The problem was I didn’t doubt any of the suspects could’ve done it, and if they were all thinking about doing it or glad that it happened, then it doesn’t really matter who actually bashed his head in. Some of the descriptions in it are desperate. Especially when it comes to sex. There’s this artist who talks about his intelligent wife clinging to the reed of his manhood. She couldn’t be that intelligent if she married a fella who refers to his cock as the reed of his fucking manhood. But still, I persevered with it because I knew Bill would interrogate me about the story when I gave the book back to him. He’s big into how we interpret stuff. He didn’t ask me did I like it, he asked me did I care about it by the time I’d finished it. The two of us with too much time on our hands sitting in our own wee book club talking absolute shit. I didn’t see that coming.

I asked him one day when we were sitting in his living room drinking tea did he ever think about what it really meant to be comfortable in your own skin. What it felt like? ‘Sit on your hands,’ he said. ‘What?’ ‘Put your tea down and sit on top of your hands, go on.’ So I did. ‘I’m going out to make us a fresh cup, don’t be moving until I come back.’ And I didn’t. When he told me to take my hands out from under my thighs, he said to touch my face with them. ‘What do you feel?’ he asked. ‘Nothing. They’re dead.’ ‘That would be about it,’ he said and left it at that.

I’m supposed to have another hospital session tomorrow. Coping mechanisms. I don’t think I’m going to go. No point sitting there telling them all about how I’ve made no progress. It’d be like I’m saying it’s their fault. I think I’m going to go for a walk down by the river instead and daydream about that other one over the border.  

Oh and by the way, my name’s Angie. But it hardly matters at this point, does it? Perhaps it never did.