Diary of an Agoraphobic Misanthrope - Entry One

Diary of an Agoraphobic Misanthrope

Entry One

I am lying on a luscious, green grassy bank beside a beautiful crystal clear lake which sparkles beneath the ice-capped mountains sitting on the horizon. I feel the warmth of a sunny day while I lay in the shade beneath two draping willow trees. My eyes are half-closed and I feel so relaxed with my hands behind my head, thinking of nothing in particular, other than perhaps I will climb the mountains in the distance tommorow.

Suddenly, I feel something warm, wet and rough touching my face with quite some pressure. I open my eyes to see the face of a Friesian cow. The intruder which has invaded my personal space continues to lick and slurp all around my chin, mouth and nose.

After a few moments, the bovine face gradually transforms itself into the face of a human. A female. She gradually appears familiar to me. It is my girlfriend. I am awake. I have been dreaming. She pulls away from me after having kissed me.

'I have left you a cup of coffee. I am off to work now' She says.
I thank her for the coffee and say 'bye'. I try to hide my irritation through being polite. It's 6am in the morning and I hate it when she kisses me when I am asleep. I've told her over and over not to make me coffee at this time in the morning, although the effort is appreciated, but wasted. It's too early for me and I do not rise until 7.30am for when I need to get ready for work myself. The coffee is stone cold by then.

I roll over in the bed and hear Jayne, my girlfriend walk down the stairs and out through the front door. I fidget a bit and then get out of bed to switch on the small television which is mounted on the wall opposite the bed. I get back into bed and shut my eyes while listening to the BBC morning news. I doze off, half-consciously listening out for the time which is announced by the newsreaders at regular intervals during the news programme.

7.30am finally arrives. I know this because I have semi-consciously heard it from the BBC main news broadcast. The headlines report more bombings and people being killed in wars, but my priority is to keep an ear out for the time. I am aware of a feeling of guilt and unease because of my priority taking first place over something which is far more serious, but I decide to have an extra ten minutes in bed and then ten more minutes after that.

It is 7.50am and I drag myself out of bed.

'What do I have to do today?' I think to myself. Oh yes, finish the second fix electrical installation at the barn conversion just outside of Evergrove, then I have an appointment to meet a counselor at the surgery in Brimpton for 4pm. I wonder what that will be like? It's my first appointment of a batch of six sessions. I don't think the counselor is going to be equipped to work out what goes on inside of my head.

I've been having these strange sensations recently. I don't know what they are, which is the reason I have arranged to see a counselor on my doctor's recommendation. When the sensations decide to 'come on', I feel like I am going mad - whatever that feels like? The feelings are very strange and I feel disconnected from my surroundings. My heart beats really fast and all I want to do is escape. It feels pretty scary. Actually, I feel totally fucking petrified when these sensations decide to to come over me and I plead with God to help me. He doesn't seem to want to help or intervene. Perhaps He is punishing me for something or punishing me for something I did in a previous life. I hope I wasn't Adolf Hitler in a previous life because I am going to be in for the punishment of all punishments in this life.

I drink my cup of cold coffee which Jayne put on the bedside cabinet earlier, beside my side of the bed. I drink the whole cup swiftly and then go into the bathroom to wash and brush my teeth. I put on my work clothes which consist of  a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a Van Halen t-shirt which I acquired from a Van Halen live concert at the Birmingham NEC from the early nineties.

I go downstairs, put on a pair of trainers and depart the house through the front door. It's a warm and sunny day. I walk along the path of mine and Jayne's terraced house. We bought the house together using a mortgage (for your information, apparently 'mortgage' means 'death-grip' in English). Anyway, I walk along the path to look to see where I have parked my van from the night before. The parking is terrible here and I can't remember where I parked my yellow Vauxhall Astra van. I eventually spot my van some thirty or so yards down the street.

As I walk along the pavement toward my van, I wonder what 'this' is all about. You know, 'this' meaning 'life' and all that jazz. I'm 27 years old and it seems all my fun days have vanished. I used to meet so many interesting and exciting people, but now, the only people I seem to meet are people whose only interests are home-improvements and soap operas. I used to have a great group of friends who were passionate about things like playing music, philosophy, artistic things, etc. I have unfortunately drifted away from these friends and they were really good friends.

I get into my van and make the drive to Evergrove.

I have a relatively uneventful workday. After I have finished work at the barn conversion, I drive back to Brimpton which, incidentally, is where I live. I drive to the surgery for my first appointment with the counselor.

I walk into the surgery waiting room after signing myself in at the reception desk. The receptionist seemed quite aloof and cold. She was a lady who looked like she was in the latter part of middle-age and gave me the impression she was working as a surgery receptionist for a hobby rather than a vocation. I'm thinking maybe she is pissed off because her husband is at the golf course or maybe with his mistress. Or, perhaps she has never married. There must be a reason why she is so cold. Perhaps she is just having a bad day.

I sit in the waiting room and it isn't very long I have to wait before I am summoned by a tall, thin and quite attractive lady who I would put in her mid-fifties. I follow her down a short corridor to a room. We both enter the room and she closes the door.

The counselor introduces herself as Marie-Louise and shows me a seat. Marie-Louise does not really strike me as being the most friendly person I have ever met.Perhaps it has something to do with Brimpton surgery, since the receptionist wasn't too friendly either. Marie-Louise pulls up a seat and sits opposite me. She starts by asking me a few questions related to relationship with parents, number of siblings and so on. She has a pad of A4 notepaper resting on her knee and writes my answers to her questions. I ask her if this is the normal sequence of events and she responds with 'Why? Do you feel uncomfortable with me taking notes?'. I reply with 'No. I was just wondering as I have only seen this type of situation on the TV. I'm just curious and that's all'. She continues to ask me further questions to get an idea of my background. She asks of my interests which I tell her include music, art, religion, science-fiction and so on. Towards the end of the session, Marie-Louise suggests I bring in some artwork. I have told her that I have a few sketches and drawings which I made when I was a bit younger, from school days and the odd sketch and drawing since. I guess she will want to analyse the drawings for the next session and I am very keen for her to do so. I have been delving into Freud's ideas recently and have read a fair portion of 'The Interpretation of Dreams'. It's pretty heavy going and I need a dictionary to get through the book, but I guess my vocabulary will be the richer for it. This reminds me I need to micturate since I had a large cup of coffee just before getting into my van at Evergrove and haven't micturated since before then.

The counseling session comes to an end and I leave Marie-Louise with an arrogant thought in my mind which is thinking that she will not figure out how my mind works and that I will probably be a bit too much for her. In the sessions to come I will discover this will not be the case at all!

I leave the surgery, get into my van and drive the short trip home back to 14 Mayview. I wonder what I shall cook for Jayne and I for tea tonight? Jayne doesn't really cook or like cooking. She may cook fish fingers and oven-chips on occasion, but that's about as far as it goes.

I arrive home and cook sausages, baked beans and mashed potatoes, which isn't much of a departure from Jayne's speciality of fish fingers and oven-chips, but it was relatively easy and quick to prepare and that will do for today. I'm wanting to stop eating meat and have been reading up on Buddhism recently. Buddhism seems like the religion for me, although it seems more of a philosophy rather than a religion. I'm feeling guilty for eating meat and perhaps karma is punishing me with the scary sensations I have been getting recently for having eaten meat and still eating meat. Jayne arrives home shortly after me and we both eat our food sat on separate sofas in front of the TV watching some inane horse-shit soap opera.

The rest of the evening is pretty much the same as any other evening at 14 Mayview. Jayne continues to catch up on her soap operas and TV viewing while I go upstairs to play my guitar and read some more about Buddhism. I have a couple of books about Buddhism and am currently reading a book called 'Buddhism - The Plain Facts'. There's different types of Buddhism, which I discover and this particular type is Mahayana Buddhism. The book seems to explain that our lives are unsatisfactory, relationships are unsatisfactory and attachment leads to suffering, but we can train ourselves to become less attached and even become 'enlightened'. Meditation can be a helpful tool to gain awareness and cultivate compassion. I have always been attracted to meditation, so will give it a go at some point.

The evening leads to shower, bedtime and sleep. Before sleep, Jayne and I both say goodnight to each other. The chances of sex are zero. It seems like these days we only have sex at 3.00pm on a Sunday afternoon. This arrangement has been wordlessly dictated by Jayne. I'd like to be having sex pretty much every day. I'm sure that's what happens with other couples. And, it's not as if we are past it! Still, I have been resorting to buying pornographic magazines such as Mayfair and Fiesta from newsagents, really just to remind myself I still have a pulse. I bought a couple of magazines the other week. This was the first and only time I have bought 'top-shelf' material so far. I was pretty embarrassed and I needed to pluck up some courage. I ended up buying five newspapers along with the magazines, so that I could hide the magazines under the newspapers at the counter and make sure the magazines were well hidden after leaving the shop. Anyway, lights out. Sleep!