4.48 Psychosis - B
C: a solo symphany
U: at 4.48 the happy hour when clarity visits L: warm darkness which soaks my eyes
C: You can look. But don't touch.
L: (Looks) And you don't think you're ill?
SCENE 20
L: 100 93 86 79 72 65 58 51 44 37 30 23 16 9 2
C: watch me vanish
L: watch me vanish
C: ...cut off my limbs but leave my love
L: I would rather have lost my legs pulled out my teeth gouged out my eyes than lost my love flash flicker slash burn...flash flicker burn (see script)
C: Just a word on a page and there is the drama
L: I write for the dead the unborn U: After 4.48 I shall not speak again L: I have reached the end of this dreary and repugnant tale of a sense interned in an alien carcass and lumpen by the malignant spirit of the moral majority
C: It wouldn't work. You'd start to feel sleepy from the overdose and wouldn't have the energy to cut your wrists.
L: I'd be standing on a chair with a noose around my neck.
C: No.
L: I'd like to look, to see if it's infected.
C: If you were alone do you think you might harm yourself?
L: I'm scared I might.
C: It's not my fault.
L: I'm sorry, that was a mistake.
C: You know, I really feel like I'm being manipulated. (Silence.)
L: I've never in my life had a problem giving another person what they want. But no one's been able to do that for me. No one touches me, no one gets near me. But now you've touched me somewhere so ****ing deep I can't believe and I can't be that for you. U: Because I can't find you.
C: ...and ye shall be driven to darkness
L: If there is blasting
C: Unpleasant, unacceptable, uninspiring, impenetrable
L: Irrelevant, irreverent, irreligious, unrepentant
C: All those things together?
L: It couldn't possible be misconstrued as a cry for help.
C: ...38, 37, 28, 21, 12, 7
L: It wasn't long, I wasn't there long. But drinking bitter black coffee I catch that medicinal smell in a cloud of ancient tobacco and something touches me in that still sobbing place and a wound from two years ago opens like a cadaver and a long buried shame roars its foul decaying grief.
C: That's a metaphor, not reality.
L: It's a simile.
C: That's not reality.
L: It's not a metaphor, it's a simile, but even if it were, the defining feature of a metaphor is that it's real.
C: No. It's not your fault.
L: It's not your fault, that's all I ever hear, it's not your fault, it's an illness, it's not your fault, I know it's not my fault. You've told me that so often I'm beginning to think it's my fault.
C: It's all right.
L: LOOK AWAY FROM ME
Citalopram, 20mg. Morning tremors. No other reaction.
L: Lofepramine and Citalopram discontinued after patient got pissed off with side affects and lack of obvious improvement. Discontinuation symptoms: Dizziness and confusion. Patient kept falling over, fainting, and walking out in front of cars. Delusional ideas -- believes consultant is the antichrist.
C: It's all right. I'm here.
L: Look away from me U: We are anathema the pariahs of reason
C: ...Paranoid thoughts -- believes the hospital staff are attempting to poison her.
L: Melleril, 50mg. Co-operative.
C: And who are you blaming?
L: Myself.
C: I know nothing of you.
L: No.
C: No?
L: No. I'm depressed. Depression is anger. It's what you did, who was there and who you're blaming.
C: It is not my fault.
L: No. It's not your fault. I'm sorry. (Silence.) I was trying to explain--
C: I don't feel contempt.
L: No?
C: My legs are empty
L: Nothing to say U: and this is the rhythm of madness L: I gassed the Jews, I killed the Kurds, I bombed the Arabs, I ****ed small children while they begged for mercy, the killing fields are mine, everyone left the party because of me, I'll suck your ****ing eyes out send them to your mother in a box and when I die I'm going to be reincarnated as your child only fifty times worse and as mad as all **** I'm going to make your life a living ****ing hell I REFUSE I REFUSE I REFUSE LOOK AWAY FROM ME
C: It wouldn't work.
L: Of course it would.
C: ...Dizziness, low blood pressure, headaches. No other reactions. Discontinued.
L: Patient declined Seroxat. Hypochondria -- cites spasmodic blinking and severe memory loss as evidence of tardive dyskinesia and tardive dementia. U: Refused all further treatment.
C: the only alternative to murder
L: Please don't cut me up to find out how I died U: I'll tell you how I died One hundred Lofepramine, forty five Zopiclone, twenty five Temazepam, and twenty Melleril Everything I had
C: My love, my love, why have you forsaken me?
L: She is the couching place where I never shall lie and there's no meaning to life in the light of my loss
C: Swallowed
L: Slit U: Hung It is done L: behold the Eunuch of castrated thought
C: Speak
L: Speak U: Speak L: ten yard ring of failure look away from me U: My final stand
C: Hatch opens
L: Stark light
C: Hatch opens
L: Stark light U: a table two chairs and no windows L: Here am I
C: Have you made any plans?
L: Take an overdose, slash my wrists then hang myself.
C: I cut it.
L: That's a very immature, attention seeking thing to do. Did it give you relief?
C: ...the Lord's house on the horizon of the soul that eternally recedes
L: The head is sick, the heart's caul torn Tread the ground on which wisdom walks Embrace beautiful lies -- U: the chronic insanity of the sane the wrenching begins At 4.48 when sanity visits
C: (a time honored tradition)
L: Theft is the holy act On a twisted path to expression
C: Yes.
L: Then tell me.
C: Stalling between two fools
L: They know nothing -- U: I have always walked free L: Last in a long line of literary kleptomaniacs
C: ...were covering your arse too. Like every other stupid mortal ****.
L: To my mind that's betrayal. U: And my mind is the subject of these bewildered fragments.
C: No one speaks
L: Validate me Witness me
C: watch me
L: watch me U: watch It is myself I have never met, whose face is pasted on the underside of my mind please open the curtains
C: horror in repose
U: I can fill my space fill my time but nothing can fill this void in my heart The vital need for which I would die Breakdown
C: I shall hang myself to the sound of my lover's breathing
U: I do not want to die
C: the rupture begins
U: I don't know where to look any more L: Tired of crowd searching Telepathy and hope
C: When he wakes he will envy my sleepless night of thought and speech unslurred by medication
U: I have resigned myself to death this year
C: Back to my roots
U: I sing without hope on the boundary RSVP ASAP
C: I wish you hadn't I wish you hadn't
U: I wish you'd left me alone
C: and now I am so afraid
U: I'm seeing things I'm hearing things I don't know who I am L: tongue out thought stalled
C: ...the flux of her heart, the splash of her smile
U: In ten years time she'll still be dead. L: When I'm living with it, dealing with it, when a few days pass when I don't even think of it, she'll still be dead.
C: ...homicidal thoughts towards several doctors and drug manufacturers. Discontinued
U: Mood: ****ing angry. Affect: Very angry L: Thorazine, 100mg. Slept. Calmer.
C: Severe stomach pain
U: No other reaction. L: Hatch opens
(A silence.)
U: Or are you?
C: ...treachery after which she shaved her head and cut her arms with a razor blade
U: Patient discharged into the care of the community L: on arrival of acutely psychotic patient in emergency clinic in greater need of a hospital bed.
C: THIS WILL KILL ME AND CRUSH ME AND
U: SEND ME TO HELL L: I beg you to save me from this madness that eats me a sub-intentional death
SCENE 21
U: Sanity is found at the centre of convulsion, where madness is scorched from the bisected soul I know myself. I see myself.
(A long silence.)
U: What do you offer your friends to make them so supportive?
C: ... I cannot touch my essential self
U: Why do you believe me then and not now? Remember the light and believe the light. Nothing matters more. Stop judging by appearances and make a right judgement. L: It's all right. You will get better.
C: You allow this state of desperate absurdity. (Silence.)
U: You allow it. (Silence.) L: I won't be able to think. I won't be able to work.
C: ...What came before was just the beginning
U: a cyclical fear that's not the moon it's the earth A revolution L: Dear God, dear God, what shall I do?
C:every last one of them
U: and they knew my name as I scuttled like a beetle along the backs of their chairs L: Remember the light and believe the light An instant of clarity before eternal night
C: a blanket of roaches
U: cease this war
C: True Right Correct Anyone or anybody Each every all
U: drowning in a sea of logic this monstrous state of palsy still ill Symptoms: Not eating, not sleeping, not speaking, no sex drive, in despair, wants to die. Diagnosis: Pathological grief. L: Sertraline, 50mg. Insomnia worsened, severe anxiety, anorexia, (weight loss 17kgs,) increase in suicidal thoughts, plans, and intention. Discontinued following hospitalization.
C: I will drown in dysphoria
U: in the cold black pond of my self L: the pit of my immaterial mind U: How can I return to form now my formal thought is gone L: Not a life that I could countenance. They will love me for that which destroys me
C:When I'm an old lady living on the street forgetting my name she'll be dead, she'll still be dead,
U: it's just ****ing over and I must stand alone
C: See me Love me
U: my final submission my final defeat L: the chicken's still dancing the chicken won't stop
C: in death you hold me
U: never free I have no desire for death no suicide ever had
C: I think that you think of me the way I'd have you think of me
U: the final period the final full stop
C: Watch the stars predict the past and change the world with a silver eclipse
U: the only thing that's permanent is destruction we're all going to disappear trying to leave a mark more permanent than myself
C: ...Some will know the simple fact of pain
U: this is becoming my normality
C: to form mutually enjoyable, enduring, cooperating and reciprocating relationship with Other, with an equal
U: to be forgiven to be loved to be free
C: to receive attention
U: to be seen and heard L: to excite, amaze, fascinate, shock, intrigue, amuse, entertain, or entice others
C: to defend myself
U: to defend my psychological space L: to vindicate the ego
C: to communicate, to converse
U: to laugh and make jokes L: to win affection of desired Other
C: I'm dying for one who doesn't know
U: you're breaking me
C: Have you ever done it?
L: ... No,. Far too ****ing sane and sensible. I don't know where you read that, but it does not relieve the tension.
C: No. (Silence.)
L: I thought you might do this. Lots of people do. It relieves the tension.
C: I don't imagine
L: (clearly)
C: **** you.
L: **** you for rejecting me by never being there, **** you for making me feel shit about myself, **** you for bleeding the ****ing love and life out of me, **** my father for ****ing up my life for good and **** my mother for not leaving him,
C: ... a blanket of roaches on which we dance this infernal state of siege
L: All this shall come to pass all the words of my noisome breath Remember the light and believe the light Christ is dead and the monks are in ecstasy U: We are the abjects who depose our leaders and burn incense unto Baal
C: Every compliment takes a piece of my soul
L: An expressionist nag
C: What does she look like?
L: And how will I know her when I see her? U: She'll die, she'll die, she'll only ****ing die.
C: Nothing can extinguish my anger.
L: And nothing can restore my faith. U: This is not a world in which I wish to live.
C: Are you? (A silence.)
L: Are you?
C: look after your mum now look after your mum
L: Black snow falls
C: You are so wrong.
L: But you have friends. (A long silence.) You have a lot of friends. What do you offer your friends to make them so supportive? U: What do you offer your friends to make them so supportive?
C: Because it feels ****ing great. Because it feels ****ing amazing.
L: Can I look?
C: No.
L: Did it give you relief? (Silence.) Did it give you relief?
C: No.
L: Did it relieve the tension?
C: Then ask.
L: Did it relieve the tension? (A long silence.) Can I look?
(A long silence.)
L: Do you despise all unhappy people or is it just me specifically?
C: Do you think it's possible for a person to be born in the wrong body? (Silence.)
L: Do you think it's possible for a person to be born in the wrong era? (Silence.) U: **** you.
C: A room of expressionless faces staring blankly at my pain, so devoid of meaning there must be evil intent.
L: Dr This and Dr That and Dr Whatsit who's just passing and thought he'd pop in to take the piss as well. Burning in a hot tunnel of dismay, my humiliation complete as I shake without reason and stumble over words and have nothing to say about my 'illness' which anyway amounts only to knowing that there's no point in anything because I'm going to die. And I am deadlocked by that smooth psychiatric voice of reason which tells me there is an objective reality in which my body and mind are one. But I am not here and never have been. Dr This writes it down and Dr That attempts a sympathetic murmur. Watching me, judging me, smelling the crippling failure oozing from my skin, my desperation clawing and all-consuming panic drenching me as I gape in horror at the world and wonder why everyone is smiling and looking at me with secret knowledge of my aching shame.
C: ...and it shall come to pass
L: Gird yourselves for ye shall be broken in pieces it shall come to pass
C: ...my mind is torn by lightning as it flies from the thunder behind
L: Hatch opens Stark light and Nothing U: Nothing see Nothing
C: Where do I stop?
L: How do I start?
C: (As I mean to go on)
L: How do I stop? How do I stop? How do I stop? How do I stop? How do I stop? How do stop? How do stop? How do I stop? U: I'll die, not yet, but it's there L: Please... Money... Wife...
C: It's not your fault.
L: I KNOW.
C: I feel that the future is hopeless and that things cannot improve
L: I am bored and dissatisfied with everything
C: I am a complete failure as a person
L: I am guilty, I am being punished U: I would like to kill myself
C: don't let me forget
L: I am sad
C: I am fat
L: I cannot write I cannot love My brother is dying,
C: No ifs or buts.
L: I didn't say if or but, I said no.
C: I have become so depressed by the fact of my mortality that I have decided to commit suicide
L: I do not want to live
C: No.
L: I do. It's not your fault. But you have to take responsibility for your own actions. Please don't do it again.
C: I don't despise you. It's not your fault. You're ill.
L: I don't think so.
C: No.
L: I don't understand why you did that.
C: Nothing will interfere with your work like suicide. (Silence.)
L: I dreamt I went to the doctor's and she gave me eight minutes to live. I'd been sitting in the ****ing waiting room half an hour. (A long silence.) Okay, let's do it, let's do the drugs, let's do the chemical lobotomy, let's shut down the higher functions of my brain and perhaps I'll be a bit more ****ing capable of living . Let's do it. U: abstraction to the point of
C: ...as the cockroaches comprise a truth which no one ever utters
L: I had a night in which everything revealed to me. How can I speak again? U: the broken hermaphrodite
C: I used to be able to cry but now I am beyond tears
L: I have lost interest in other people U: I can't make decisions I can't eat I can't sleep I can't think
C: irrespective
L: I know what I'm doing all too well
C: I like you
L: I like you
C: But I like you.
L: I like you.
C: I gnaw my tongue which to her I can never speak
L: I miss a woman who was never born
C: Body and soul can never be married
L: I need to become who I already am and will bellow forever at this incongruity which has committed me to hell
C: ...as still as my heart when your voice is gone
L: I shall freeze in hell of course I love you U: you saved my life
C: ...those brutal hands this will end me
L: I thought it was silent till it went silent how have you inspired this pain?
C: What do you offer?
L: We have a professional relationship. I think we have a good relationship. But it's professional. (Silence.) I feel your pain but I cannot hold your life in my hands. (Silence.) You'll be all right. You're strong. I know you'll be okay because I like you and you can't like someone who doesn't like themself. The people I fear for are the ones I don't like because they hate themselves so much they won't let anyone else like them either. But I do like you. I'll miss you. And I know you'll be okay. (Silence.) Most of my clients want to kill me. When I walk out of here at the end of the day I need to go home to my lover and relax. I need to be with my friends and relax. I need my friends to really be together. (Silence.) I ****ing hate this job and I need my friends to be sane. (Silence.) I'm sorry.
C: ...I've always loved you even when I hated you
L: What am I like? just like my father oh no oh no oh no
C: You have a lot of friends.
L: What do you offer your friends to make them so supportive?
C: for one hour and twelve minutes I am in my right mind.
L: When it has passed I shall be gone again, a fragmented puppet, a grotesque fool.
C: the piecemeal crumple of my mind
L: Where do I start?
C: ASK. ME. WHY. (A long silence.)
L: Why did you cut your arm?
C: Why don't you ask me why? Why did I cut my arm?
L: Would you like to tell me?
C: You've seen the worst of me.
L: Yes.
C: Could that be protective?
L: Yes. It's fear that keeps me away from the train tracks. I just hope to God that death is the ****ing end. I feel like I'm eighty years old. I'm tired of life and my mind wants to die.
C: You're my last hope.
L: You don't need a friend you need a doctor.
C: In accident time where there are no accidents
L: You have no choice the choice comes after
C: ...but your bare-faced ****ing falsehoods that masquerade as medical notes.
L: Your truth, your lies, not mine.
C: perhaps it will kill me
L: a dismal whistle that is the cry of heartbreak around the hellish bowl at the ceiling of my mind
C: All I know is snow
L: and black despair Nowhere left to turn an ineffectual moral spasm
C: that a single soul could, would, should, or will
L: and if they did I don't think
C: ...room in reality teeming and begs never to wake from the nightmare
L: and they were all there
C: and there is my body
L: dancing on glass
C: disembody
L: deconstruct
C: irrational, irreducible, irredeemable, unrecognisable
L: derailed, deranged, deform, free form U: obscure to the point of
C: dislike
L: dislocate
C: I dread the loss of her I've never touched
L: love keeps me a slave in a cage of tears
C: my body decompensates my body flies apart
L: no way to reach out beyond the reaching out I've already done
C: What am I like? the child of negation
L: out of one torture chamber into another a vile succession of errors without remission every step of the way I've fallen U: Despair propels me to suicide L: Anguish for which doctors can find no cure Nor care to understand I hope you never understand Because I like you
C: I thought I should never speak again but now I know there is something blacker than desire
L: perhaps it will save me
C: (cleary)
L: that another soul a soul like mine could, would, should, or will
C: skull unwound
L: the capture the rapture the rupture of a soul
C: the sword in my dreams
L: the dust of my thoughts U: the sickness that breeds in the folds of my mind
C: (there shall be blasting)
L: the names of offenders shall be shouted from the rooftops U: Fear God and his wicked convocation
C: Stark light
L: the television talks full of eyes the spirits of sight
C: But you allow it? (Silence.) Don't you?
L: there's not a drug on earth can make life meaningful.
C: I know no sin
L: this is the sickness of becoming great U: this vital need for which I would die to be loved L: I'm dying for one who doesn't care
C: ... And I am your proselyte to sanity.
L: to achieve goals and ambitions
C: to belong
L: to be accepted
C: to draw close and enjoyably reciprocate with another
L: to converse in a friendly manner, to tell stories, exchange sentiments, ideas, secrets
C: to be independent and act according to desire
L: to defy convention U: to avoid pain
C: ...to enjoy sensuous experiences with cathected Other
L: to feed, help, protect, comfort, console, support, nurse or heal to be fed, helped, protected, comforted, consoled, supported, nursed or healed
C: to overcome opposition
L: to have control and influence over others
C: to overcome obstacles and attain a high standard
L: to increase self-regard by the successful exercise of talent
C: to avoid shame
L: to obliterate past humiliation by resumed action
C: to maintain self-respect
L: to repress fear U: to overcome weakness
C: to be free from social restrictions
L: to resist coercion and constriction
C: Can't must never have-to always won't should shan't. The unnegotiables. Not todays. (Silence.)
Please. Don't switch iff my mind by attempting to straighten me out. Listen and understand, and when you fell contempt don't express it, at least not verbally, at least not to me.
C: I am charging towards my death
U: I am terrified of medication L: I cannot make love I cannot **** U: I cannot be alone I cannot be with others
C: 100 aspirin and one bottle of Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon, 1986. Patient woke up in a pool of vomit and said
U: 'Sleep with a dog and rise fill of fleas.'
C: but most of all,
U: **** you God for making me love a person who does not exist, **** YOU **** YOU **** YOU. L: Oh dear, what's happened to your arm?
C: Every act is a symbol the weight of which crushes me
U: A dotted line on the throat, CUT HERE L: DON'T LET THIS KILLS ME
C: My life is caught in a web of reason spun by a doctor to augment the sane.
U: At 4.48 L: I shall sleep
C: I dislike my genitals
U: At 4.48 L: when desperation visits
C: Shame shame shame
U: Drown in your ****ing shame.
C: I kiss a woman across the years that say we shall never meet
U: Everything passes Everything perishes Everything palls L: my thought walks away with a killing smile leaving discordant anxiety U: which roars in my soul No hope No hope No hope No hope No hope L: No hope
C: I know. I'm angry because I understand, not because I don't.
U: Fattened up Shored up Shoved out
C: Built to be lonely to love the absent
U: Find me Free me from this L: corrosive doubt futile despair
C: my lover is dying,
U: I am killing them both