500 words a day

541 words 27th July 2009

All he could see was fear. All he could think about was that everything was difficult, or scary or hideous or shitty or likely to be disappointing. Monday morning was often , like this but this Monday seemed extra difficult. He lay awake at 3 in the morning the night before wondering if he could bear to go or cold bear to NOT go and just stay at home hiding. Lately though he’d realised there was nowhere to hide and it left him feeling more and more exposed and more and more threatened by the world and all of its hideous challenges.





He half slept from 4 to 6 before waking before the alarm and deciding to get up, just because he couldn’t imagine anything  good would come of staying there any longer. During the half sleep he’d half-dreamed of disaster at work, a child miniaturised and flicked into the air by a careless gesture of his arm only to disappear and set off a hospital-wide alert and danger and risk and possible trouble for him. He imagined a whole range of potential disasters that were vaguely based on the reality of his job but were enhanced and exaggerated to the point of catastrophe in each case, all seeming to be real and likely to happen. All producing a stomach churning sense of blame and shame and guilt that had become part of his everyday experience in the last few months.


He had thought of killing himself but was scared to and didn’t want to hurt anyone he loved, and he knew they would be very hurt. He’d thought of drugs, on top of the alcohol that he already consumed in ever increasing quantities, heroine maybe or a nice bit of valium. He knew from some previous experiences with lesser drugs though that this always made him feel worse and led to a spiral of excess and utter despair. The last had come from a 2 week long alcohol binge and although he’d managed to go to work during that time, he did very little there, was paranoid the whole time that people would know how much he’d been drinking and could smell it on his clothes and breath. He also found that compared to now, which was pretty awful, pretty hopeless and black and without hope, but compared to this, the 2 week extra excessive drinking had taken him to a whole new level of misery. On top of the usual despair he had to deal with the fact that all his normal routines started to fall apart. He stopped coking, ate crappy expensive take away food, didn’t wash his clothes or wash up or clean his apartment or even other to wash himself by the second week. He knew then that anything stronger like Heroine would be even worse, but it was still tempting. Maybe he wouldn’t go to work and would just lie about in his own filth until he needed to score again, but probably he wouldn’t care. He gathered it was so strong that you didn’t give a shit bout anything – maybe that’s what he wanted. Again though he thought of loved ones and realised it was another solution he’d have to avoid. The trap tightened.











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Steve Wybourn





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