A Recurring Malaise
The first time it happened was in mid-September and it lasted no more than a few minutes. By dinner he had already forgotten about it.
A year passed and, even though he was usually a careful observer of the seasons, he failed to note that the second time it happened was again the 14th of September. It was worse this time and lasted the whole day. But even though he suffered, he still didn’t pay it much mind. By the following morning when he awoke it had gone.
The third year he made the conscious connection between date and the occurrence. This time it lasted all weekend and most of Monday. He sat inside with the curtains drawn and didn’t speak to a soul. His wife was away at the time.
The next year, his body knew what happening before him, for he had a panic attack on the morning of the 12th and had to return home from work. Sensing that a fourth bout was imminent, he went to the doctor’s, but they refused to believe him. Asked a lot of convoluted medical questions and acted as if he was making it up. So, convinced he wouldn’t make it through the day, he made other arrangements to secure the prescription. It had little effect in any case. He couldn’t go back to work after that. Even once he had recovered, it took him some weeks to venture outside. His wife was away a lot. He thought of travelling but something always seemed to stop him. Eventually by the following summer he did go for a four-day break in the sun. He found the experience utterly miserable. That was the end of August.
That fifth September marked a watershed for him. On the 14th, like clockwork this malady returned, with a ferocity that at first frightened him but then felt no more than deserved. He was unable to shake this black dog on his back until early spring the next year. And by then he was broken and nothing but a shadow. He had no hope for the future, for what future could there be but that it must stop. He took to mixing strange tinctures and refused to socialise. His wife had left him some months before anyhow. He spent time on the south coast and walked morbidly along the cliff tops.
Occasionally he would catch sight of a group of gulls. Hanging far out over the waves. Circling and wheeling against the black clouds. They seemed to have no need to be anywhere and yet no desire to stay put. Wild artists of the sky. Pausing on a muddy clump of grass, he would stare. Sometimes for unbroken hours. Pondering the seasons and the ideal of the eternal return. The ground beneath him already felt drier than it had in the depths of winter, fertile with meaning.
© Lochlan Bloom 2022
