I dreamed that I had a nightmare, and when I woke up the nightmare carried on. I reached out to turn on the light, but no light came on, although I was vividly awake. Then I was quickly back into it, into a labyrinth where I lost myself. I ran headlong through dark cavernous hallways into whirlpools of colour and shape, arms flailing, screaming without a sound. I didn’t know whether I was running towards my desire or away from my fear. Then, suddenly, it was over again, but again the light refused to come on, and the nightmare started up again. I was trapped inside a loop, and within the loop was another one. I was racing down a spiral staircase, barely in control, almost tripping up in the half-light, all the time going further down into the darkness. Then, without warning, I was free. I was awake. I turned on the light and the filament glowed. I slipped out from my cocoon and prowled my territory, my nipples alert to the threat of the cold pre-dawn air. The growing light made me realise how flimsy the curtains were, and revealed how dirty the flat was. The vinyl floor of the bathroom stuck to the balls of my feet, pulling slightly against its moorings as I eased my feet free. There was a vague smell of stale piss lingering in the bathroom, not strong enough for me to get the Marigolds out, but just noticeable enough to be mildly disconcerting. I decided I’d have a go at one of the others about it, the next opportunity I got. As I retreated to bed, I tried to slide back under the duvet without creating an opening for the heat to escape. What little warmth that lingered there just confirmed to me how cold my body had become in a short time, as I became conscious of my cold hands, my cold legs rubbing against each other as I tried vainly to regain sleep. No, I was awake now, and I could either lie here unable to do anything beyond feeling a resentful awareness of being awake, or I could get up and try to achieve something. Quite what it was I could achieve at this time of day was unclear. I put on some clothes and went to the kitchen, filled a bowl with cereal, and went to the lounge to eat it, turning on the TV for a bit of background noise. There was one of the cheaper talk shows on, one of the ones that makes you reassess your social class by showing you what real scrubbers are like. It was at the wrong end of the scale on the inverse relation between the brightness of the sets and the contestants, who all seemed to be in competition with each other to see who is the biggest loser. They’re usually pretty good for your self-esteem, because you realise that life could be worse. Some self-help guru with a ludicrous pair of glasses and a bizarre quasi-beard was spouting off about self-image enhancements. I’m always very sceptical about that sort of person. There’s something about them that makes me very uneasy about trusting their advice. I just get the sense that their own lives are probably fucked up, and judging by their dress sense, I’m probably right. I just can’t trust a man who spends too much time sculpting his facial hair: his values are all wrong. For some reason though, on this morning there was something in what he said that stuck with me, burrowed its way into my head and found a home there. He was giving advice to people with low self-esteem, saying that they should write down a list of their good points, their skills, to remind themselves what a good person they are. I expected him to say they should look in the mirror every morning and tell themselves how great they really are, but he wasn’t quite that Californian. It seemed like a good idea at the time, so I got a pen and paper and I followed his advice. I tried to list my good points. The blank sheet stared at me, challenging me to justify my existence, mocking me. I sat there as the sun rose, chewing on the end of my biro, wondering what made me a good person. I’d always been convinced of my superiority, but now I found myself filled with doubt. I just couldn’t see anything that separated me from the people I’d always thought were tossers. At work later that morning I reached a new low. The caffeine was starting to do terrible things to my stomach, but still I couldn’t focus. The figures on the screen danced, wavered, sometimes disappeared altogether, taunting me. It was still only 11. Two more hours until lunch, and then another four this afternoon. I didn’t know how I was going to make it through. A noise was buzzing in my ear like an insistent wasp, or the mild tinnitus you get after dancing too close to the speakers. Anne was wittering on about something, shaking her head. “It’s not right, that.” She was going to talk at me whether I showed an interest or not, so I dutifully asked what it was that wasn’t right. She held up her copy of the Daily Mail. There was a double page spread on some celebrity, talking about HIS DRUG HELL. Apparently he’d become addicted to prescription painkillers, and spent a couple of weeks getting treatment at some expensive celebrity clinic. “Well, I mean, people like him shouldn’t be saying these things.” She was expecting a response. I knew I was going to regret this. Her mouth led the way into the uncharted territory of politics as her brain reluctantly trailed along behind. Anything could happen. “What things are they, then?” “That he’s done all these drugs and he’s all right. It glamorises drugs, encourages young kids to take them.” I held back from pointing out that a third rate semi-somebody like him being associated with drugs was more likely to put kids off taking them than anything else. She was going off on one, and I already knew there was no point in trying to reason with her. As far as I could tell, the thrust of her argument seemed to be that when celebrities had had problems with drugs, it was irresponsible of the newspapers to print pictures of them looking healthy again, because kids on council estates would copy their behaviour, but then be unable to afford to go to expensive rehab clinics. My head already felt as if I’d been bashing it against a wall, so I didn’t try to fathom her logic. People like Anne see things in low resolution. Everything consists of big blocks of colour, polarised rights and wrongs. You could hear the capital letters when she talked about THE MENACE OF DRUGS. Everything to her was DRUGS. Not cocaine, not dope, not heroin. DRUGS, and how the PUSHERS were putting YOUNGSTERS at risk. There was no point in trying to reason with her. For one thing, for me to admit I’d ever even considered having a toke would cast me as the devil in her mind, and make any kind of rational discourse, even on her terms, impossible. For another, my hangover was making any kind of rational discourse impossible. I let her take my silence as agreement for as long as it took for her to get bored enough to go back to her forms. I lumbered from my desk to the sanctuary of a toilet cubicle, where I sat for a while, wanting to be anywhere else but at work. My trousers round my ankles, I held my head in my hands and exhaled. Things weren’t right. I felt as if my skull had been pressed down too hard onto my head. All I could hear was noise. No discernible sounds, just meaningless babble. I nodded and said yes at appropriate times, but it meant nothing. I wanted to scream, to cut through the noise, pierce the mush and shock them into silence. I wanted to put my fist through the window. I wanted to touch someone. I wanted to punch someone. I wanted to tear the flesh off my body, piece by piece. I was scaring myself. I felt like crying.
Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it