Dear Readers,
I kindly ask that if you have the means, it would mean a great deal if you could support my writing by becoming a paid subscriber, and keep this show on the road.
Your loving writer, Hanif.
Isabella suggested that I shouldn’t write a blog if it was going be too miserable and morbid. But this is how it is.
I left the previous hospital a few days ago. It was such a relief. It was a general hospital and a mad house. I might have said already that I was on a dementia and stroke ward which was noisy if not tragic. I was taken in an ambulance to a hospital fifteen minutes down the road, to a new neurological ward, where they are used to patients like me with spinal injuries.
The room is small, grey and grim. There’s a TV on the wall opposite me which doesn’t work, despite Sachin’s efforts. The view to my left is of the sky and every two minutes a plane passes across the window, on it’s way to Heathrow. I think of the passengers packing up their things and getting ready to disembark. I wonder if I’ll ever go on an airplane again.
I’m still weak and in low spirits. I’m trying to eat despite my nausea. The doctor ordered an abdominal X-ray which demonstrated that I’m full of shit and heavily constipated. A clinical nurse stuck his finger up my ass to try and dislodge some of it, which gave me a tremendous pain which lasted all night and prevented me from sleeping. People pay good money for that. Two of my visitors made the same joke.
I still speak to my analyst on the phone, after years of silences and dreams, we’ve become more intimate. I tell him how much I love him after so long. I wonder whether he’d come here to visit me. He tells me to eat despite my disgust, and seems to believe that I can find some living force within myself, that I will not want to give up, as I so often feel like doing.
I had a visitor here yesterday, a good friend, and we were gossiping away happily when a more or less stranger walked in. I recognised her of course but I barely know her and had no idea what her name was. Luckily she introduced herself. She’s a woman I see in the supermarket and on Brook Green when I am walking my dog. I would usually chat to her a little bit. She found out from a film producer film friend of mine where I was. She went to the previous hospital and was redirected here. We talked about films and politics and not long after she left for a pilates class. It was strange to be visited in such intimate surroundings, in my pyjamas, barely able to speak by someone I hardly know. The friend who was here was annoyed on my behalf and said she should have called or texted but I don’t think she has my number. I wondered whether she was being kind or just inquisitive. She didn’t ask me much about myself. I’m not a kind of show. I’m happy for any company, but wonder if I should be annoyed.
I’m pleased to be out of the last place but my spirits are at rock bottom. It is quiet here. At night it is dead silent. When it gets dark I listen to Radio 4 and take sleeping pills. I try not think about my misfortunes, but they are mounting up. More and more is going wrong with my body. At each examination they find something new which makes me worry. I can’t help wondering if I’m ever going to get out of this, or whether I’m going to die here. Sometimes I think about killing myself, by some kind of overdose. I wonder if it would be a relief. As I said to my friend David the other night, I feel I have been picked on and bullied, that somehow, someone has made a mistake and got the wrong person, that this is an injustice, and that someone will recognise that I have been hard done by, that this farce will end and will I return to my normal state. But on the other hand I realise that this is not a mistake, that this is reality; that this has happened to me.
I have gone through the door and can never return. This is my fate. But at least I’m alive, even though I’m stuck in this small grey room, desperate to not be left alone. Frightened. Injured.
Your loving writer Hanif.
xx
Unlike isabelle i believe in the virtues of your bellyaching. If you can’t complain to us, how can the shit get out? Furthermore, we make jewish jokes all the time about pain and misery. How could we have survived without the words oy vey, which are now on a t-shirt someone gave me. You are facing something we mostly don’t ever seriously try to contemplate, something heidegger called being-toward-death, which, for him, allows us to speak “authentically.” Your complaints are authentic to my ear, and allow me to not simply feel for you but feel that you express thoughts i’d be ashamed to share with my own “belle” and children. You aren’t alone hanif, not even at night in the grey room without tv…. After all, what’s on tv anyway besides crap?
I look forward to reading your posts every day.
And often to your friends’ comments.
Your buddy
Ken
It's really important to write it how it is, AND I just want to tell you that I, who rarely follow social media, read your posts every day and am bowled over by your continued creativity and energy in the face of being dealt such a rubbish blow. I think what you are doing in this writing is important and inspirational.
Many people's thoughts are with you and I and many many others thank you for sharing this blog. You transcend the room
Gayle