The storm before the calm

 

There is a moment of doubt before taking your first pill, your first line of something, your first tightly wound rizla bomb or acid tab. There is, at least the first time, a fractional moment when the possibilities of what may or will happen swim up to the forefront of your mind, suddenly thick with doubt as you lift the narcotic to your lips, the pipe to your mouth, the note to your nostril, whatever. Do you jump? Will it ever be the same?

That moment passes, but is replaced by another soon after. The woozy feeling of the drug’s fingers reaching up through each artery, from the pit of your stomach, driving a flutter to the heart, before reaching your mind: vision swoons and sparks, colours phosphoresce, perceived distance expands and contracts. Before mind and body are taken hostage completely, before you submit to the experience willingly or not, there is a moment again of doubt – tinged this time with panic, or fear. Because now it is in you, and no matter what your poison, you must run the course.

There are other times, other occasions that recall these moments. Moving to a foreign country with nothing but the clothes on your back and a sense of – potentially misplaced – optimism is one of them.

The prospect is exciting from sufficient distance, but looms larger and more real as the date approaches. Practicalities to be ticked-off preclude too much thought. The elation of arriving somewhere new or unusual carries you so far, but after the tourist sights have been seen, after days wandering town drinking small beers and coffees, taking photos of buildings, looking in windows at things you won’t buy, looking at people you won’t – or can’t – talk to, coming back each night to a hotel room, there is an emptiness that quickly grows to fill your days in lieu of anything else.

As adults, we don’t often have the experience of being alone, without friends or contacts. The first day of a new school, first day in a new town – these are experienced usually long ago as children, and at the time come with the support of family and friends from other places. So it was with some surprise that I realised the last time I was in this position, I was nine years old. Of course there’s Skype and email and Facebook, but it’s not the same. It’s at times like these that you realise what social animals we are.

Without purpose, without a social network to hand, with a language barrier and with the days growing shorter, it’s easy to focus only on what isn’t working. And it would be easy to succumb to that, to jack it in and take a route back to easier, familiar ground. But that would serve no purpose. I don’t want the feeling of safety; I’m looking to ride out the need for it, landing the other side. There either will be buried reserves of strength, stamina and optimism that can be tapped, new skills and discoveries that will alter the way I approach the world in the future, or there won’t.

I’ve taken the jump, swallowed the pill. I’m over the wave of panic, and I’m looking up. And I absolutely, categorically, hope everything will never be the same again.



One Comment

  1. Adrian P wrote:

    Ah yes, there was a place that offered Toutes Directions as the alternative to Autres Directions ….a choice of ‘Inner city bypass’, or ‘Local roads whose names you don’t need to know’. Not relevant to anyone’s Canadian experience really.

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