Senses

Sometimes you have to wake up in the middle of the night to check that you’re not blind. You look at the blinking red light on the smoke alarm above your bed, and then at the green light on your phone- the one that tells you it’s fully charged. You know, incase all you can see is black and red, so you want to make sure you can see green too. And you can. And your partner asks you why you’re stood on the bed looking at the smoke alarm. Every time.

And then during the day you’ve become so focussed on the inability of Microsoft Access to shut down correctly, that you wonder if you’ve lost the ability to speak anything more than garbled obscenities. Rather than try to say something meaningful incase it comes out all mangled and you choke on your own tongue, you decide instead to say something like ‘aubergine’ as loud as possible. And you can. And your work colleagues look at you strangely. Every time.

And then sometimes you’re walking along the street and the song you’re listening to suddenly cuts off. You wonder whether your MP3 Player has died from being kicked under the toilet too many times, or if the file you illegally downloaded has gone horribly wrong and has cut off the end. You turn the volume up to 100 to make sure you haven’t gone deaf, to make sure you can hear the next song. And you can. And it makes your ears bleed all over the pavement. Every time.

And then occasionally all you can taste is blood, and washing your mouth with water doesn’t rid your mouth of the terrible taste of oncoming gingivitis. You decide to find the spiciest food possible, to make sure that you can still taste the wonders of the world. You walk into a supermarket and rub chillies all over your tongue to make sure you can still taste. And you can. And you vomit all over the elderly people, who are there for a day out of the nursing home. Every time.

And then sometimes your overwhelming loneliness reminds you that you haven’t touched another human being in a few months. You wonder if you’re still able to feel anything. So you find a homeless person, promise him a free meal, and drown him in the bathtub, and try to feel the breath escape his body from under your fingers. And you can. And it reminds you that your paranoia is ridiculous, and that Microsoft Access will never shut down properly. Every time.