God is in your Macbook webcam

(Hell is expired Valium)

us when we finally break out of our human forms

‘I forgive everything’ says an image on my Pinterest board titled ‘yes’. It’s as close as I’ll let myself get to manifestation, the atheist’s version of prayer. But I’m no true believer either, and I don’t think God is a woman though I like the slogan, because I can’t imagine God being much anything at all. Rumi said God is in the look of your eyes, nearer to you than yourself, than the things that have happened to you. When I think of this I suddenly feel claustrophobic.

Still, let it be the womb and not that all-seeing gaze; a father’s contemplation, enveloping you with shame and calling it love. Easier to stare at the sun, to a picture stuck on your wall, repeating for forty days and nights how you know what you’re here for.

I used to practice yoga religiously, particularly when it first all got Bad. In downward dog I’d listen to Jhené Aiko telling me about how she’s on her way to heaven (if she can make it out of this hell), finishing the story in child’s pose to say she’d made it out alive. (And I did too once, dragged myself out by the skin of my own neck, but it feels a little cruel, to ask me to do it again). I really loved that song. I loved it like a promise, pinkies and all, though I’ve grown skeptical of pretty words that make sense. A clear sentence, clean hands, I think there’s more to be claimed than that.

[You know, between us, sometimes the words go completely. I can’t find them anywhere. They sc a tterrr r r rr to places that are not my tongue and all thoughts are a solid block pushed against the backs of my eyebrows, the hollow of my sinuses, so I’m all parts without the function: can’t speak can’t eat can’t can’t see can’t swallow what’s put before me, can’t hear much except some distant ringing that might be the alarm from that other life nudging me to wake up, like a childhood story: and then it was all a dream!]

Should I put on my old clothes? Should I listen to my old favourite songs? Should I hook earrings into the piercings that have now closed up and dye my hair maroon and take the bus to Box Hill, the city line to Richmond, change over to get to Caulfield? Should I run for class and avoid the guy asking me to sponsor a child because I’m only 19 (nineteen!) and apologise for being late and control my breathing to an appropriate indoor decibel as I unravel my scarf?

Should I stop moving? Should I lay still beneath my bed covers, envision my childhood room, the soft body of my not-yet-dead dog beside me moving in the night? Should I have asked him to come back, like someone on the internet said they did when their dog was dying, whose old soul lives in their new pup now?

Well.

My doctor writes a script for Valium that the pharmacists won’t fill before leaving her office for a week, setting me up to have to deny dependence to various doctors who are too tired to deal with my convoluted story: I have panic disorder, I only take it for emergencies, my packet expired, my doctor didn’t send the script correctly, [and I wouldn’t be bothering you right now but I’m actually coming off Valdoxan, and yeah, my psychiatrist told me that gives you no withdrawals but really I haven’t felt this bad in years, in lifetimes, and I don’t need to take the Valium but I need to know it’s there, I need an escape route, I need a lifeboat, I need a plan, I need someone to brush my hair, to feel my cheek, to warm the bath water and hum a familiar tune, I need the Valium, rarararara]. I was raised too good to inconvenience others though, because I’m a knee-slap away from true nonchalance with my no worries, thanks anyway, when I hang up the phone.

And it makes me feel more sick, the way I’ve been taking ownership over the guardians of my illness so easily: my doctor, my therapist, my psychiatrist. I don’t want that type of belonging, in transactional sickness and health. At the very least it could have been funny, being someone like Gwenyth Paltrow, saying things like my reiki masseuse instead.

So, I’m curled up on the couch with my cheek against the leather, wishing I would throw up or cry or be shaken just to get this out of me. Mum puts her hands on my shoulders, in many ways that’s enough.