It is difficult to say whether any of the treatment worked, because I don’t know what I would have been like had I not received it. For all I know, I could be ten feet under now were it not for the drugs. None of it was visibly useful, though. I was a revolutionary, however, because I was on drugs a decade before it became fashionable. The counsellor usually prescribed me on a dose of antidepressants, sent me away, called me back and then asked whether they'd worked. I’d tell him (or her, of course) that it felt like I'd been walking through a black fog, that I barely felt alive any more. They told me that wasn't their desired effect. No shit. And so they'd take me off that medication and put me on another one that was fundamentally the same but with a different name and then we'd start the process again and have the same conversation in another four weeks. I was a test rat in a laboratory.
My file is big, but then it isn't all about size, is it? I know it is big because I saw it, back before data was transferred onto the computer. The file was A4 and breaking at the seams. I’d received the full works of support; the deluxe package. The group sessions were the worst. The crux of the idea was that I’d be able to converse with other people with similar problems I could relate to. It was just like on the TV. We sat on stained, plastic chairs in a small room with no air. Nearly everybody looked what they were: a victim. There was a specific reason I only attended one session, though. One guy told his story, just like all the others. Unlike all the others, though, his was a success story. He told us that he had been huddled on bare floorboards covered in his own faeces, high on drugs and low on life. And yet he pulled it all around and now he had a home, a job and a wife. The broadness of his smile told you everything you needed to know.
“Do you know how I did it?” he asked the group, glancing around the circle one by one. We each in turn shook our heads. This felt like a monumental moment for me. This guy had it sorted. He was a genie with a bottle. He was going to tell us the secret. He was my way out of this pit of misery. I was on my way back up.
“I found Jesus Christ Our Saviour,” the man announced, beaming.
“Oh for fucks sake,” I muttered.
I thought I said the words under my breath, but clearly I didn’t, for the whole room turned to look at me. I swear the words came out of my mouth involuntarily, that I just couldn’t keep them in.
“You got a problem with that?” the guy asked. I noticed for the first time that he was a large man, much bigger than me.
“Not at all,” I replied. I really didn’t. Horses for courses, that's what I say. This one just wasn’t right for me. “I was just hoping,” I continued, holding my hands up, “that you were going to come up with a practical solution.”
“Practical?”
I never did find out whether I was the first person to be punched in a group session, but it was agreed by both myself and my counsellor that the environment was probably not the best fit for me. I suspect the whole room released a long sigh of relief when they spotted an empty seat at the meeting the following week.
I hadn’t expected much the first appointment with Richard. Previous disappointments had sucked the optimism right out of me. My last counsellor had been a nice lady but she was happy enough to just let me talk and look at me sympathetically as I told her my woes. I'd go into the meeting thinking that maybe my life wasn’t so bad, all things considered, but I’d leave feeling the pits. The letter didn’t give much information. It didn’t explain why they’d decided to change my counsellor.
I liked Richard as soon as I saw him. For one thing, he made me feel a whole lot better about my own appearance. I'm naturally drawn to ugly people for this very reason. He held my gaze as he shook my hand and I noticed that he had one bloodshot eye. Richard was as wide as he was high, but he was mainly comprised of soft cushion. Suddenly I felt tall and I felt lean and I felt beautiful. I knew that he was the right counsellor for me.
I glance over Richard's shoulder now, through the window. A sparrow sits on the branch of one of the trees, eyeing the fish in the pond. I know that the fish are safe, for I have stood by the window and looked outside on many occasions when Richard has gone searching for something or other, and I know that the pond is covered with a green net. The garden is small and shaped like a triangle, narrowing at the tip, but the lawn is flat and the grass is bright, fresh and green. I often think it would be wonderful to sit on the wooden bench in the garden in the middle of the day with a book and a cup of coffee. The magnificent pine bookcase behind me, just a few steps on the wooden floorboards away, always looks like it is
