mental health

How To Move A Safe

/ Tash / Leave a comment

When I get in my car, my phone immediately connects to the Bluetooth. Usually, the audiobook I’ve been listening to begins to autoplay. But every now and then something glitches and I receive a random throwback to the iTunes library downloaded on my phone. There is not a lot of music on my phone—only around six hundred songs or so—but they range from Rachmaninoff concertos, musical theatre and TV soundtracks, through to my preferred genre; indie folk. Tonight, instead of my book, the last refrain of Walk Alone began to play.

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For the last two nights, I’ve been outside between 10 pm and midnight with my telescope, waiting. Trying to catch a glimpse of the green comet. But the last two nights have been too cloudy. Tonight, I am back at work, and afraid I will miss the once in 50,000-year event. It will disappear from view tomorrow night and I will again be here, at work. I am trying to not be too distressed about it. Except I am. I want to be one of the relatively few (comparatively) people on earth who get to see the comet with their own eyes. I’ve seen plenty of pictures. But that’s not enough. Armed with new terminology, astronomy would be considered one of my special interests.

I have begun making lists of memories, events, and behaviours that may be relevant to my assessment; you could say autism and its diagnostic criteria have also become a special interest.

Just as G’s CNS lymphoma became a special interest.

In three and a half weeks, he will have an MRI. It’s been a year since his last. I’d like to believe my anxiety about him experiencing a recurrence of the cancer will reduce if the scan is clear. But I’m almost positive it won’t. I want us to have a more normal life. I want us to be able to do things. (Do I?) I want to be able to take my mask off. (I don’t.) But it feels like I should say I want these things. That I should want these things.

One of the guys at work asked me when I would feel safe taking off my P2 mask. And I answered that I would only do it when G’s immune system returned to normal functioning.

In truth, I love this mask. I mean, I love not being sick with anything, that’s great. But what I love more is no-one seeing my face. No-one seeing my mouth move as I run through conversations in my mind. No-one seeing the faces I make when I sit quietly at my desk, processing information in my head. I love it and I never want to take it off.

I have told a few different friends, now, that I might be autistic. And almost all of them have responded with some version of “oh, yeah, that makes sense” which has been validating. So much so, that I have wondered whether seeking a formal (expensive!) diagnosis is necessary—but without it, I don’t feel that I have the right to call myself autistic. Just as without my diagnosis of anorexia, I never felt I could say I had an eating disorder. I fluctuate in my thinking; between not wanting to pathologise the myriad of human behaviour styles and experiences but also in wanting validation that my lack of ability to communicate easily has impacted my life and I’m only now starting to understand why: That there’s not anything wrong with me (though people might say there is) but that I probably just process the world and everything in it differently to others.

What I wonder the most, though, is how I have been able to identify and celebrate these differences in others, while completely missing (and misrepresenting) them in myself? There is a grief in that—in how hard I have been on myself for not understanding, for failing at relationships and communication—that will take time to process.

A few years ago, in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, G was in the family room on his bike trainer about to start a three-hour virtual race on Zwift. He was warming up, pedalling slowly, as the competitors gathered at the on-screen starting line.

“Can we move the safe?” I asked him, having wandered out from our bedroom.

I’d been reorganising our ensuite (master) bathroom and on the floor in a weird little alcove that housed the electrical switchboard was a small safe. The alcove was large enough for a set of shelves where we could store the towels and toilet paper and I wanted to put the safe in the walk-in robe so the space was useable.

He fiddled with his heart rate monitor, glancing occasionally at the race timer countdown on the screen. “Sure.”

I’d already measured the recess and found a set of shelves online that were in stock at a local budget hardware department store that would fit in the space. He would be busy on the bike for hours, enough time for me to run out, buy and build the shelves, install them and clean up. It was perfect.

I went back into the bathroom, pleased I could progress with my project, and began emptying the contents of the safe into a shoebox. Once I had everything out, I attempted to lift the safe but couldn’t. I noticed the problem immediately. It was bolted to the floor. I unscrewed the nuts from the inside of the safe and popped them in the shoebox with everything else.

Again, I tried to lift the safe, and while I could now raise it off the ground, I could not remove it from the alcove. The alcove had a small lip that wrapped approximately a quarter of an inch across the front of the safe, making it so tight that I could not tilt or turn the safe in such a way as to remove it from the space. I marched back into the family room.

“You said we could move the safe!!!” I said, loudly (and completely unaware).

“Yeah, you can,” he replied panting and puffing, the race now in full swing, “do whatever you want with it, it doesn’t worry me.”

“I can’t!” I said, even more loudly than before. “I can lift it, move it up and down, but it doesn’t come out of the alcove. Why did you say we could move it if we can’t actually move it?”

The conversation disintegrated. He was pedalling, racing, and through gasps and huffs, said he was done discussing it. He didn’t want to talk about it while he was trying to race. I didn’t want to do anything except talk about it. I wanted it resolved, and I wanted it resolved now. I felt betrayed. I did not understand why he would say I could move the safe, if I could not, in fact, move it.

I marched back into the bedroom and unleashed my anger in a text to a friend. Before her reply had come through, I already knew what I had to do. I had been using a tool for a few years–a process called “The Work” by Byron Katie. And I began the Judge Your Neighbour worksheet.

By the end of the worksheet, I had calmed.

G has not, nor will ever, intentionally hurt me. He has, on occasion, hurt me accidentally but I know these instances are exactly that; accidental.

And in that same way, by working through the questions Byron Katie has you ask yourself in The Work, I realised that we had been discussing two different questions.

My original question was “can we move the safe?” but what I actually meant was “is it physically possible to move the safe?”

He answered “sure.” An affirmative.

Because the question he heard when I asked “can we move the safe?” was “do you mind if we move the safe?”

One question; two very different interpretations.

That was why I became so distressed when I was unable to move the safe; because I had understood that he said “sure” to my indirect question of “is it physically possible to move the safe?” meaning that when it wasn’t possible, I felt he’d lied.

When he got off the bike some hours later, I explained all of this to him, what I’d worked through and what I believe had happened with our communication. Since then, when we find ourselves in a sticky confusing communication situation, we often look at each other and ask, “are we trying to move a safe?”

And then we start over and clarify exactly what it is we are trying to communicate. It doesn’t solve everything but it has helped having a shorthand signal to suggest we might not be looking at things from the same frame of reference.

I am not sure exactly what G thinks of it all—this autism thing. He says he doesn’t care, that it doesn’t change anything. That I am who I am and he loves me. And that if I am autistic, then that is part of what makes me, me. Of course, it shouldn’t change anything. But I still worry it could. Studies have shown that in cases of serious medical illness there is a significant gender disparity in the rates of separation and divorce (partner abandonment) if the woman within a heteronormative relationship becomes ill. Partner abandonment also occurs in instances of chronic illness. Because caring for a partner with a significant or chronic illness can be exhausting and debilitating. And while autism is not the same as a significant medical or chronic illness, and while I have mostly adjusted to neurotypical ways of life and have found work-arounds for the areas I find difficult (no matter how ineffective or exhausting), it does feed into my anxiety that a formal diagnosis could change the way he sees me and our relationship.

I would like to believe it will make things better; that a more thorough understanding of myself can only improve how we relate, that it will help us both navigate conversations more effectively.

I would like to believe that it will help us move more safes.

NNZDD

/ Tash / Leave a comment

When I work, I tend to go “off-grid” for days—almost a week—at a time. My work pattern consists of 12-hour shifts from seven until seven. These times are for both the night shifts (7pm until 7am) and the day shifts (7am until 7pm) on a 10-day repeating cycle:

night, night, (24 hour break/zombie day), day, day, off, off, off, off, off – repeat

An example roster for February, the pink moon symbols denote night shift, the blue suns denote day shift and the green star is an additional day we need to do once every five weeks to make sure we work the right number of hours in a 10-week cycle.
An example roster for February

While I am off, I can be called for overtime, at any time, for any of the day or night shifts that I’m not already rostered. Our resourcing has been cut to a minimum over the years and with people getting covid or taking summer recreation leave, there is a lot of overtime. I am called for multiple shifts during my break. But I try to only accept one.

I’ve often described what I do as 95% routine and 5% panic but with the plant and equipment now ageing into its 50s, that ratio has changed. It’s more like 80% routine and 20% panic.

To be fair, panic isn’t a great way to describe it, either. In those moments when things are going wrong, or you need to respond to certain plant conditions quickly, or safely shut down a unit, the last thing you must be doing is panicking. But it does require extreme concentration and urgency in decision-making. It’s one of the things I like about the job. Situations that require analysis and reflexive responses under pressure are my catnip. Perhaps it is that I enjoy that low-level of anxious arousal, the flutter of my nervous system, and the adrenaline that’s generated when something happens.

All shift long, I make megawatts of electricity. When I finish, I go home, eat a simple meal, and sleep. Between night shifts, I sleep until approximately 4pm. Then I have about an hour and forty-five minutes before I need to leave for work. On zombie day, I sleep til noon-ish; wash work laundry in the afternoon and finish any other small jobs that need doing. After day shift, I do much of the same, only I try to sleep until 5am. If I’m not working overtime, the first day off after my round is decompression day and I don’t like to do anything. But tomorrow I have scheduled some appointments—a medical screening, a beauty salon appointment, and lunch with a friend. The rest of my time off will be spent decluttering the house, discovering what art supplies I have hidden away in storage boxes under beds, and preparing for my mother to visit. It’s been four years since I’ve seen her, and this will be her first trip to our home since I moved here in 2014. Somehow, despite my best efforts to have everything stored in its place, labelled, and easy to access, entropy always wins. It seems that nothing is where I left it.

I have been searching for days for a mantra I listened to relentlessly in 2020 and still cannot find it. YouTube seems to store history. But not all history. I don’t know why. Did I mention my mother is coming to visit?

The day G was anaesthetised and had his brain biopsy, it was almost 9pm. I put on my noise cancelling headphones, played some music at a supposedly calming frequency and went to visit him. I found him in a dark room that was not, in fact, a room, it was more like the centre of a galaxy. Though it was mostly dark. I grabbed his hand, told him he was safe, and asked him where he wanted to go. Everest, he said, and in milliseconds we were rugged up and standing on the top of the world. At which point, I turned to him and said “What are we doing here? You don’t even like the cold!”

It wasn’t the first time I’d had an out of body experience; the first was when I was 12. I was riding my cousin’s pony and jumping a gate, and on my fourth jump, the saddle slipped around as the pony leapt. I know this because I watched it. The girl slid with the saddle off to the left and I watched from behind. I bounced back into my body at the same time I hit the ground, winded, and gasping for breath.

I think of these things when I’m at work. I think about energy. Enthalpy. Entropy.

Did I mention my mother is coming to visit?

I do not understand any of it.

The generator is a magic box. I rotate a turbine using steam power and at the other end of it, electrons are forced down wires through substations into homes to power televisions. Or computers. Or phones.

Did I mention my mother is coming to visit?

I will not get a decompression day this week. So instead, I’m going to try to play some other music–Grae Moore makes music for ADHD brains. I’m not diagnosed. I don’t think I quite meet the criteria. Nor do I quite meet the criteria for autism. Though the main complaints people have made about me tend to sound like some complaints about autistic traits. There is a family history there. Perhaps my masking is just that good. Or perhaps it’s not, hence the complaints.

Did I mention my mother is coming to visit?

Zombie Day

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The 24 hours between the end of our second night shift and the beginning of our first day shift are a blur. You must sleep enough in the morning so that you can function in the afternoon and evening but not sleep so much that you do not sleep that night and therefore cannot function the following day at work. This is why I refer to this 24 hour period as zombie day.

In the last few years, I have expended considerable effort to improve my night-time sleep as a means of managing and maintaining my mental health. I have had years where I’ve slept as little as three hours per night for months on end and the occasional five hours of sleep seemed a blessed miracle.

It is well-known that shift work is damaging to your health and this is largely due to the fact that shift workers tend to sleep two to three hours less per sleep than their dayworker counterparts. But I was born to be a shift worker! Sleep has always felt better for me during the day than at night; I feel safer sleeping during the day, therefore I wake less and spend more time in deep and REM sleep (so says my fitness watch). On zombie day, I try to go to sleep earlier than I do after my first night shift, around 7.30am, and only sleep for about four to five hours. Without an alarm, I would sleep all day—a full eight hours plus. And if I get more than six hours on zombie day, I’m ruined for the following day as I will not sleep at all that night.

Historically, I’ve had a difficult time sleeping when alone in a house. This dates back to before my teens. I have needed another person in the house to feel secure, and when alone, I’ve sleep with the lights on. But a couple of weeks ago, G went interstate (north, almost 20 hours to Queensland) to look at apartments and holiday homes. I had to stay and work. This would normally cause significant anxiety, further inhibiting my ability to sleep but I was surprised to find that this time, I enjoyed the time. This is not something I’ve ever experienced before and although I was looking forward to G’s return, the week and a half I had on my own was refreshing.

When I feel safe, I rarely wake to even the loudest of noise. The surrogate dog can bark and bark, the hoons can rev engines and do burnouts at the intersection by our house, the person learning to play the drums next door can bang as loud as they like and none of these things will wake me. But when G required full-time care, and I slept in the room next door so as not to contaminate or infect him, he barely had to whisper my name and I was awake, alert, and ready for action. It is remarkable what the body and brain will do when necessary. Now that he is well, I have reverted to more sound sleeping patterns. But I still wake often in the middle of the night. Research shows that sleeping in a solid single block for eight-ish hours is a relatively recent development and may not be as beneficial as the previous bi-modal sleep pattern.

G, on the other hand, is a very light sleeper. The slightest sound, minutest movement, or beam of light will wake him no matter what stage of sleep he is in. And yet, he still seems to sleep more than me.

Today, I did not go to sleep early. I messed around until about 9am after arriving home at 7.15am. And then slept until 1.30pm. Which isn’t a lot of time but it means I rose later than I normally would so now–at 11.15pm–I’m not tired. G has already gone to bed but I often sleep in my bedroom while I’m on shift so that I don’t wake him when I get up to get ready at 5am. Otherwise, if I do, he will not get back to sleep.

A few months ago, we read a book by Olivia Arezzolo about sleep types called Bear, Lion, or Wolf. I am a wolf, and the only positive thing the book said about wolves is that they are pre-disposed to being great shift workers due to their alertness overnight. G is a bear these days but used to be more of a lion. We are practically opposites.

When he was in hospital, and my stress levels were so high I went to the hospital myself to make sure I wasn’t having a heart attack, I tried everything to sleep. I tried listening to special frequency music, I tried herbal sleep teas, I tried meditations, and I tried night noises. Eventually, I settled on a routine where I listened to a meditation mantra and then played 12 hours of “night noises” like crickets chirping by a crackling fire in the forest. Light rain falling, frogs ribbitting. Anything to calm me down.

There are things I want to say about sleep–about dreams–about the places we go in our subconscious. But it is almost midnight and I need to be up in five hours. So it will have to wait.

Music Monday | Suspirium – Thom Yorke

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G says this music is boring. Running errands on the weekend, and listening to this album, he asked if we could change it–put something on that wouldn’t put him to sleep. I could not explain how multi-layered the lyrics were to me, how it was anything but boring. I didn’t change the album.

On Sunday, he went for the first bike ride outside since his illness. Before cancer, he used to cycle hundreds of kilometres per week. Ride for hours at a time. Race. The cancer (PCNSL) attached itself to his cerebellum; the part of the brain that is responsible for coordination, balance, language, attention, your nervous system. Damage to it can make it difficult to judge distances, spatial orientation, and can inhibit motor skills and speech. His balance was ok while he was on the bike, he reported, but he did fall off when he tried to stop.

In the first year after treatment, tapering off the steroids caused many of the typical adrenal problems associated with withdrawal; severe fatigue, weakness, body aches, and loss of appetite. The rehab program provided by the occupational therapist of approximately a half hour a day of both muscular resistance exercises and balance exercises left him exhausted. But in this last year, his endurance, stamina and exercise habits have increased. He’s been riding the bike trainer almost every day, walking every other day, and has been more diligent with his balance training. More of that will be required if he wants to remain upright on the bike. I worry that he will break his other hip, or something else, if he falls.

There are so many ways our bodies can betray us. And so many forms of recovery. It seems, we are all recovering from something. So here I am, thinking about our bodies. And what they mean for our salvation.

Deterioration

/ Tash / 3 Comments

I wrap myself into my quilt like a burrito. I’m sleeping on the couch which, while not overly comfortable, doesn’t induce the same anxiety as having an argument with myself about going to bed. Instead, when I become sleepy, I close Instagram, blow out the candles, turn off the salt lamp and roll over.

I am not sure why going to bed holds such angst for me but it always has. At least, until I met G. For the first time in my life, I looked forward to going to bed because I felt safe. Held. Loved. I try to replicate this feeling now while he’s not with me but the best I can do is to stay awake until it is impossible not to sleep.

In the last week, there has been another infection, two surgeries and blood counts that still aren’t following the predicted path. My OCD has fixated itself on his illness and now intrusive thoughts of blame drive all manner of compulsions, day and night. If I haven’t given him covid, I must have given him cancer.

Life is random and unfair, I tell others. Bad things happen to good people for no reason. And while I almost believe that is true,  intrusive thoughts still swirl that this is somehow my fault. My punishment. For what exactly, I haven’t determined. It could be a range of things and my brain is providing plenty of options. As a result, my anxiety is out of control. Today I had a telehealth appointment with my GP who has recommended blood tests, an ECG to check my heart which has lingering issues from my years of being underweight due to anorexia, and some medication.

“This is the only prescription I will give you for this medication,” he tells me, “due to it having addictive properties. You must be sparing in your use but it will help with the panic attacks and anxiety. I will give you a second prescription for something that you can use long term but the effect won’t be noticeable for two to four weeks.”

It’s been seven years since I took medication for my mental health and while I suspect I need it, a new fear has surfaced during the pandemic and my husband’s illness which will likely prevent me from doing so; I cannot take any medication for fear of the masking of covid symptoms or because I may have a bad reaction requiring treatment. I will no longer even take paracetamol or ibuprofen, pain killers I have taken for years, especially when I have severe cramps during my period but now I am afraid they will mask the symptom of a fever and I will never know if I accidentally acquire covid. I will not take new tablets, not even vitamins, in case they cause some sort of reaction where I have to present to a hospital because the more places I go, the more likely I am to come into contact with someone with covid. My anxiety is pushing me towards never leaving my house again, unless it’s to travel to the hospital where my husband is having treatment. Home. Hospital. Home. Hospital. That is the extent of my world right now.

And all of it seems justified.

Music Monday | Where Do We Go – Desiree Dawson

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The blisters on my cheeks where a face mask pulled tight across them for seven hours a day, twelve days in a row, have healed. It’s been a week since I’ve been allowed into the hospital. My visitorship was revoked as soon as my husband became stable again. It was disheartening for both of us but not unexpected having already happened twice before.

So I wait in anticipation of his return, in this small apartment that does not belong to me, and I have endless amounts of time to fret. Instead, I try to distract myself. I scroll, I clean, I read, I breathe. A circle of friends have organised themselves onto a roster to make sure someone calls me every day. At least once a day. Sometimes twice. Even, occasionally, three times if necessary. And it has been necessary. I am almost always ok until it is time to sleep, like now. It is then that I feel the low hum of anxiety that has been the background to my day start to rise.

And the only thing that helps me then is meditating in Love. Because in Love, I am reminded that we are all One. We are Connected regardless of time or space. In this connection, I can truly see that the Light in me is also the Light in everyone I meet.

It is difficult to focus on Now but it is all we have. And so I stay with it. With the uncomfortable feelings that rise, with the uncertainty of what might happen, and with the knowledge that the only place I can go from here is into Love. Because I am in Love, and Love is in me. And actually, it is all we need.

Where do we go, go from here
The present is cloudy, future filled with fear
The past is something we hold on too dear
So where do we go from here

Where do we go?
Where do we go?

But love is all we wanted
And love is all we need
Deep down in the dark is where we plant our seeds
Plant those seeds

I was given the sweetest treat when I started seeing myself in everyone I meet
You were given the sweetest treat when you see yourself in everyone you meet

Shake It Off and Re-calibrate Your Nervous System

/ Tash / 1 Comment

In recent years, I’ve made many changes to the way I manage my mental health. Early intervention when required, the right tools and resources, and daily management have made a world of difference. But over the last few weeks, my husband’s diagnosis and hospitalisation, has tested all of my new strategies. My nervous system is non-compliant with the new tools under this much stress and my anxiety has landed me in the emergency room. As a result, I’ve been trying additional, more unusual things in an attempt to help me manage it. I can’t say they’ve all been successful and I can’t say I haven’t resorted to some of the old, comfortable coping mechanisms. But one thing that I’ve found that does help is shaking. On purpose. For fun.

I once asked my psychologist why I shivered when I had to have uncomfortable conversations and her response was “stress”. When adrenaline and cortisol are released into your body in huge amounts during a threat, they create neurogenic tremors in addition to speeding up your heart rate, blood pressure and breathing.

Shaking is the body’s natural way to release tension and stress and return to equilibrium. Animals instinctively shake to relieve stress after a life-threatening event. This helps them to discharge the energy of the traumatic event. But when humans are conditioned out of this response we lose the ability to re-calibrate our nervous system. We are supposed to cope. We are supposed to be fine. Unfazed.

Unfortunately, if we can’t shake it off, trauma can get trapped in the body. This impacts our ability to respond to future stressors and can lead to a complicated ripple of life-altering impacts. The brain and nervous system can become stuck. They are rewired in a way that can make healing a challenge as they remain on high alert for threats, continually flooding the body with stress hormones.

So in an attempt to reset my nervous system, I am shaking. On purpose. For fun. It doesn’t work all the time but if I shake for several minutes a day, it definitely helps. A friend calls me on Zoom in the morning, and together we do a shake session. She picks the music, I just show up.

If you want any more information on the science behind shaking, this link has plenty!

And if you need a song, here’s the first one she chose. Obviously.

Fate

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Fate, Federal Court, Moon
by Anne Carson

The fate of the earth. The fate of me. The fate of you. The fate of Faisal. The fate of the court where Faisal will plead his case. The fate of the court’s bias. Every court has a bias. It sifts to the surface gradually. The fate of whomever we drink to after court. The fate of that branch of mathematics that deals with ‘dead-end depth’. The fate of Yemen where Faisal will probably never return. The fate of the engineering job Faisal had in Yemen before the events in question. The fate of the ‘simple random walk’ and its difference from the ‘homesick random walk’, concepts from a mathematics textbook I read once about dead-end depth. The fate of Montreal where Faisal lives now. The fate of his family, the ones still alive, back in Yemen and the fate of the bridal couple, still alive, whose wedding was the target of the drone pilot (a mistake). The fate of the others, not still alive (a mistake). The fate of the moon that rose over us as we drove through the mountains of Pennsylvania to be present at Faisal’s day in court. The fate of the silveriness of the moon that no words can ever describe. The fate of the bright sleepless night. The fate of our phones, which we decide to take to the courthouse at 9 a.m. and relinquish at the door. The fate of two guys doing a job interview in the cafeteria where we stop for coffee on the way to courtroom 31. Been around the block, says one guy. Army does the billing, says the other guy. The fate of so many men in suits and ties. The fate of being lost in marble corridors. The fate of being much too early at courtroom 31. The fate of the knot of lawyers who surround Faisal as he enters in a new suit. The fate of congratulating him on his new suit. The fate of his smile. His smile is great. The fate of the numerous clerks who pour glasses of water for the judges and generally fuss around. The fate of the appellant whose case precedes Faisal’s, which concerns a warrant ‘so lacking in probable cause’ that [something to do with ‘Garcia’] [something to do with gangs and ‘a constitutional path’]. The fate of the pearls worn by Judge Dillard, who sits on the far right of the bench, which curve like teeth below her actual teeth. The fate of straining to hear what Faisal’s lawyer, with his back to us, says to the judges. The fate of him perhaps saying that the government is asking the court to refrain from judging, asking the court to step back without knowing what it is stepping back from. The fate of proportionality, a matter of context. The fate of what is or is not a political question. The fate of the precedent called ‘al Shifa’, with which everyone seems familiar. The fate of a publicly acknowledged programme of targeting people who might be a danger to us. The fate of inscrutable acronyms. The fate of me totally losing the thread of the argument as we distinguish ‘merits’ from ‘standing’. The fate of what Faisal is seeking, which is now given as ‘declaratory relief’ (new phrase to me). The fate of ‘plaintiffs who have no chance of being harmed in the future due to being deceased’, a wording that gives pause. The fate of how all this may depend on her pearls, her teeth. The fate of the sentence, ‘We are really sorry, we made a mistake,’ which Judge Dillard utters in a hypothetical context but still it’s good to hear. The fate of the government lawyer who is blonde and talks too fast, using ‘jurisdictional’ many times and adding ‘as the relief sought is unavailable’. The fate of wondering why it is unavailable to say, ‘Sorry’. The fate of Judge Dillard’s invitation to the government lawyer to tell the plaintiff how he might ‘exhaust all administrative avenues of redress’, as the government claims he should have done before bringing this case. ‘Where would he go?’ Judge Dillard asks with apparent honest curiosity. ‘If you were he, where would you go?’ The fate of our bewildered conversation afterwards about why she said this, whose side she is on, what she expects Faisal’s lawyers to do with it now. The fate of the tuna sandwiches eaten with Faisal while debating this. The fate of his quietness while others talk. The fate of his smile, which seems to invite the soul, centuries ago. Serving tea, let’s say, to guests. The moon above them. Joy. The fate of disinterestedness, of joy, of what would Kant say, of not understanding what kind of thing the law is anyway, for example in its similarity to mathematics, for they both pretend to perfect objectivity but objectivity is a matter of wording and words can be, well, a mistake. The fate of the many thoughts that go on in Faisal when he is quiet, or the few thoughts, how would I know? The fate of the deep sea diver that he resembles, isolated, adrift. The fate of him back in his kitchen in Montreal next week or next year, sitting on a chair or standing at the window, the moon by then perhaps a thin cry, perhaps gone. The fate of simplicity, of randomness, of homesickness, of dead ends, of souls. Who can say how silvery it was? Where would he go? Sorry?

Published in the London Review of Books
Vol. 39 No. 6 · 16 March 2017

I was once given this poem as the introduction to a writing exercise. Write or re-write a paragraph of your work-in-progress beginning every sentence with the fate, our tutor said. Notice how commencing with these words changes the way you shape your story. Notice what impact fate has on your narrative.

I do not like fate. I refuse fate. I want to scream at fate to fuck off.

I do not want to think about the fate of the earth, the fate of me. I especially do not want to think about the fate of you.

I do not like fate having an impact on my narrative.

And yet. Here we are.

The fate of me. The fate of you. The fate of the hospital where you are having your chemo. The fate of the doctors. The fate of the nurses. The fate of the specialists who are administering your treatment. The fate of the apartment in our COVID capital. The fate of the foundation that’s provided our accommodation. The fate of my psychologist who keeps asking “are you eating?” but how could I be eating? The fate of the words intensive protocol, neurotoxicity, and treatment related complications. The fate of having to learn another medical language in the middle of a pandemic after already learning the language of the pandemic. The fate of how all of this depends on limited evidence.

And so, I say.

Fuck fate. Fate will not shape my story. Or yours.