Ill

The specialist’s office was in the basement. I was sent to her because of my symptoms. ‘We have an in-house specialist’, said the G.P. Very well; I’d see her – I was happy to see her. I’d been feeling tired for months, and worse than tired. Anything – I’d do anything. Down to the basement, where there is a multiple choice to fill in. When do I feel most tired? Do I feel pain? Do I ache anywhere? ‘Everywhere’, I wrote, across the boxes. I ached everywhere – I was tired. No pain, unless pain was that diffuse throbbing which filled my whole body.

Then, later, the diagnosis: there’s no question about it. I have it myself, you know. So the specialist. She had it too! We both had it, the pair of us! And my sister has it, she told me. She stays in bed. Someone else is looking after her children. The specialist tells me how to handle my symptoms. Take it easy, she says. Plan everything when you have strength so that when you feel weak you are not overwhelmed with worries. Arrange your life so there’s no panic. Very well; why not.

It’s common to highly successful people, she tells me. I laugh. ‘I’m hardly successful’. Highly motivated, intelligent people, then. ‘I’m hardly intelligent’, I said, ‘and motivated? I don’t think I’m that’. Wasn’t that the problem? Wasn’t it the lack of motivation that was the illness? Wasn’t it the draining away of motivation, of all forward movement, a life that had lost its grip on the future. Is it really an illness?, I asked her. It was an illness, she said, and I saw that for her it had to be an illness. We were both ill, physician and patient. Both of us – ill.

She lent me a book. ‘Read this’. It was full of practical advice and cartoons. The list of symptoms was endless. All this was one illness? Then it was everything and nothing, this illness. It was like hysteria or neurosis – a name for everything. Home on the bus. I can’t stand the bus. I get off and sit on the wall, alcoholics around me. Are they ill? Is it the same illness? Then, I walk along the narrow pavements. They’re all ill, I thought, looking around me. Everyone’s ill, I thought, I know their secret.

Do they know of it – their illness? Probably not, I thought. They haven’t been diagnosed, I thought, and laughed. They haven’t been diagnosed by a fellow sufferer, I thought. It takes one to know one, I thought. But I’ll diagnose them, I thought. I will diagnose them all. I’ll put notes through their letterboxes: you’re ill! – and crosses on their doors. We’re all ill! We’re all tired! Time’s passing us by, it’s over! There’s no forward movement! Nothing’s going to happen! Nothing’s ever going to happen, not now and not ever and we’re all ill!