It's At Times Like This I Wish I'd Listened To What My Mother Used To Say.

I don't know what she said unfortunately. I never listened.
But I remember all too well the paranoia of my family; when I encountered mental difficulties back in '92, I lost my job.
I used to get drunk in towns all over England.
I used to imitate-utterly convincingly-all sorts of people who coincidentally spoke a variety of English.
But the money would always run out and I would find myself once more pinned in my pig-pen, unable to move, paralysed by the weight of the unseen malice all around.

I wanted to escape.
Even from myself.

My father was slaughtered by the opinion of a single shrink, one which comforted his prejudices and criticisms of my conduct; mother, ever the victim of authority/trust/masculine role models, fell into obedient place. Hell, she even started going to 'schizophrenic support groups', which wondered what she was doing there when I was described.

I was supposed to forget everything. The drugs were supposed to kill my mind and leave ashen peace.
They didn't. But I am not in difficulty anymore, I grant them that.
In 1999 the shrinks were pressuring me to find a girlfriend.
My employers were pressuring me to take the drugs.
The problem was not that I was delusional.I was, but they didn't know. No. The problem was that I had been to Canada for a whole month, including two days in upstate New York.

My mind had certainly been raging; it had taken longer for me to get to America than it took to put two men on the moon.
I'd sat down in the gardens in the Sun in Niagara(USA) and felt at peace; my aunt was a psychiatrist, and when I was staying with her in Canada she noticed a very sharp improvement in me.
Without drugs.
When I got home?
I more or less told everybody to leave me alone.
Paranoid man-of-action father, he stole my passport.(Paranoia rising).Then one day I came back from the laundry to find three police cars waiting for me.

Responsible adult, did I hear someone say?
The bullshit prejudices saw me locked up for two weeks in hospital.
I simply had to comply; but I was most amused by the shrink lying and saying I'd been talking to myself.
They were not amused when I threatend to sue them for wrongful imprisonment and various other infractions of code.
They let me go.

The 'episode'(theirs, not mine)was funny in parts. I kept asking for an escort so I could go and pick up some music tapes from home; they said they couldn't spare anybody.
So one day I smuggled a dinner knife up my sleeve(just like in Doctor No), and used it to pry off the trunking cover for the electronic fire door lock.
I pulled the wires out, shorted the entire fire system, and went to sleep. At four in the morning I pushed open the door, and went and got my tapes.

I was back before they called the police.
(For some reason the loonies were afraid of me-maybe there was a Dracula thing going on?)

So anyway, I had my music.
And they let me go after two weeks when the standard incarceration was three months.
I went back to work.

Now, back in 1991 I had been unable to distinguish between general outrages and specific persecution, and had felt that people I loved were the targets of this evil, the means to make me suffer.
Compliance would be impossible, since I had been living apart for so long, but the powerful would not be able to comprehend this.
My previous girlfriend had returned to Europe.
Much of the pressure to which I had been subjected was intended to evince the identity of others I knew, potential victims of rape or other violence, people who could be used to hurt me.

In 1991 I could see it coming. I wrote to my friends, telling them to have nothing to do with anyone claiming to know me.
In 1992 I even went to Rotterdam to try and find her. Whether I did or didn't is my secret.
The money ran out. I was deported back to England. I hung around the port for a week then went back to my dissection slab of a flat.

But I found out after they had weened me onto official drugs that she was indeed safe.
The messages(psychological poison) were unconvincing and had the flavour of frustration.

Whether they were real or not, she was out of their reach.

And today, although she is married and busy and unaware of me, I know she is safe.
I know that whatever storm wrecked me did not touch her; fate has been kinder, or my prescience worked, or I'm just an irrelevance.

But the bastards didn't get to anybody else through me.

Ils ne passant pas!