TAKING A HOLIDAY FROM IT ALL; ALL OF IT!

TAKING A HOLIDAY FROM IT ALL; ALL OF IT! (2014)

Thinking of holidays, I want a holiday from my psychiatrist.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with him or that he is grumpy or discourteous or patronising. In fact he seems quite nice; a wee bit rumpled, perhaps a bit tired and anxious and uncertain about how to have a conversation with yet another new patient, but generally a fine guy, someone I could enjoy talking to, while walking besides a river.

But I don’t want to talk to him in his wee consulting room.

It’s not that I dislike psychiatry or even treatment, it’s that I am tired of telling the story. I am tired of people offering to explain schizophrenia to me and my paranoia and I am tired of the dance we do around all the old, old subjects.

It drags me down. I would like a year with no jags in the arm, no appointments, no tribunals, no CPA reviews, no explanations, resolutions, advance statements or named persons or anything that reminds me of illness.

In fact, I am really going to go on holiday!

I will leave my house tomorrow and forget about all work and I will drive down to Wendy and walk into her house and say;

“I have resigned and I am sure you want to too.”

I will give the little twins some chocolate as a bribe and we will have adventures.

We will live in a cave until the weather gets too cold.

We will have a marathon cinema session and watch films for a whole week, sleeping at the back of the cinema and feeding the twins on popcorn and those slush drinks and shielding their eyes from some of the film bits that three year olds shouldn’t see.

We will go on a road trip with the twins; finding fairy glens and fairy hills and scatterings of magic icing sugar. We will sit on toadstools and eat fresh snow packed with lemon and sugar. We will sleep in castles and dine in the middle of meadows where horses swish their tails.

We will go on a sea voyage. I will insist on a sailing boat but Wendy will insist louder and we will go for a ferry with cabins and slot machines and as much food as you want. We will swim in the swimming pool and watch dolphins and each day we will wake at a new port.

When we reach Egypt we will take to the air in a hot air balloon and drift across the endless desert; watching the cloudless sky and the sand being blown below us. At night time, between the roar of the gas burners, we will stare up at the silent stars and gasp while the twins snuggle in, in the corner of the basket.

We will land in Madagascar and turn into an animated movie and have multi-coloured and multicultural adventures and finally we will get onto a train and chug over the steppes of Russia, drinking tea and vodka.

We will arrive back home; drowsy and yearning for our own beds.

We will sleep for two weeks and then I will climb into my car and drive back to my work and in passing, I will tell my, by now very weary psychiatrist, what I have been doing and I will pause for his reaction before resuming my life with schizophrenia again.

(Photo: Bramble leaves; Whitecliff 11 2020)