BOOK EXCERPT: A Path to Seek - Chapter 1
Alex
woke again. His eyes staggered to open, and his limbs refused to move. He had
to be at work in an hour as usual, but he didn’t have the energy or enthusiasm
to get up, even though he had slept nine hours.
Finally, after three snooze alarms had gone off, he conjured
up enough resolve to get out of bed, into the shower and off to work. Still half asleep, he walked to the bus
stop in the awakening
summer heat. In
the past he would race to the stop hoping
that the bus hadn’t already gone. And as soon as he got there, he would wish
that the bus would imminently arrive, a testament to how fast a person’s wants
can change. Lately though, he just
dawdled to the stop and didn’t care if he missed it or not.
When he had almost reached the stop, the bus appeared. To
catch it, he would have to run; to run, he would need the desire to catch it;
to have the desire to catch it, he would need the desire to get to work. But
since work didn’t give him much satisfaction anymore, he didn’t have the
desire, so he didn’t run and just accepted that he would be late. However, for
some reason the bus didn’t move. Alex
looked more intently to see what was holding it there. The bus driver was
waving his hand out the window gesturing for Alex to get on. He was puzzled. Since
when do bus drivers go out of their way to wait for people? he asked himself. (He was oblivious
to the fact that some bus drivers do in fact do just that, but it was his first
time to be on the receiving end of such a kind deed.) He walked onto the bus,
expecting to see the smiling face of an angelic driver. Instead, the
scowling-man-behind-the-wheel asked impatiently, “Where are you going?” and put
out his hand ready for Alex’s money.
Alex paid and surveyed the seats to see where to sit. The bus
looked quite full. Then a waving hand at the back entered his gaze. A moment
later he saw the person who the hand was attached to: it was Susana from work.
He shuffled his way up to her and sat down.
“Hi Susana, how are you?”
“I’m well. How about you?”
“Yeah, I’m… a bit late,” answered Alex, eager to hide his
distaste for the process of going to work. “I guess I’m lucky the bus driver
waited for me to get on.”
“Actually, it wasn’t the bus driver. I saw you out the window
and noticed you were going to miss the bus, so I called out to him to wait for
you.”
“Oh, really? Thanks a lot!”
Susana, in her late twenties, was a few years older than Alex
and quite appealing to his sense of beauty. Like him, she had dark-brown hair
and eyes, though her hair was much longer and more luxuriant than his. They had
never spoken much to each other before, but he was always hoping to. After
their greeting they sat silently all the
way to work. Alex didn’t know what to say to her. (In fact, he wasn’t the
greatest conversationalist.) And Susana had been immersed in a magazine
article, so she continued reading until it was their stop.
They got off the bus and walked into the office.
Alex went to his desk, giving a nod and a mechanical smile to
everyone he passed. He got out the project he was working on, started working
where he had left off the day before, put himself in auto-pilot, and worked
through the entire day without even stopping for lunch. This was often his
daily routine at work, a routine driven by habit, not passion.
There was half an hour to go before work finished, so Alex
started to wrap up his tasks for the day. He opened his planner to write out
the next day’s work plan, glanced at the present day’s page, which he had
forgotten to look at in the morning, and was shocked to see that he had an
appointment that very afternoon. It was at 3:15 p.m., so he had forty-five
minutes to get there. If he didn’t want to be late, he had to leave
immediately. He was tempted to simply slip out of the office but thought he had better tell his boss that he needed to go
since he hadn’t already done so.
Alex tapped on his boss’ open door: his boss motioned for him
to enter.
“How can I help you, Alex?”
“Sorry, but I really need to leave early today. Is that
okay?”
“Can I ask what the reason is?”
“Well, I have an appointment.”
Alex could see in his boss’ eyes that he wanted to know where
he was going and certainly did not want him to know. He wished in his heart
that his boss wouldn’t probe him any further for information about his personal
life.
“Is your project on schedule?”
Alex sighed in his heart with relief. “Yes, I believe so…
probably ahead of schedule.”
“Okay. But please try to give me more notice next time.”
“Of course, thank you!”
In contrast to the morning, Alex ran to the bus in the
now-blazing-heat, hoping that the bus he needed had not just left. He got to
the bus stop and urgently asked the people there, “Excuse me, do you know if
the 'two-one-two' has already gone past?”
“It hasn’t come past since I’ve been here,” one woman
replied.
“I haven’t seen it either,” said another man.
Alex was relieved. A second later he was desperately hoping
that the bus would come immediately. Five minutes later it came.
He got off the bus and arrived fifteen minutes early. It was
his first time to visit a clinic of such type. He went in and urgently informed
the secretary, “I have an appointment at three fifteen!”
“Who are you seeing?” she asked softly.
“I can’t remember his name, sorry.”
“That’s okay,” the secretary reassured him with calm
acceptance. Alex felt pleasantly soothed by her gentleness and delighted to be
treated as a dysfunctional person who was expected to forget things.
“You’ll be seeing Dr
Pearson today. Please take a seat and help yourself to a drink of water, and
there are magazines on the table.”
Alex went into the waiting room and sat on the luxurious
leather couches. There were two other people waiting. He kept looking at them
to make eye contact, but neither of them looked up. He wondered why they were
there. Do they hear voices? Are they paranoid? Do they have a fear of open
spaces? Or closed spaces? He didn’t know. He didn’t find out.
At exactly 3:15 a middle-aged man with grey, balding hair
emerged from one of the rooms, and in his ultra-educated accent announced,
“Alexander Jones?!”
Alex nodded and walked into the room with him.
“Please sit down… How are you?”
“Good thanks,” Alex replied. Although it was not true, he
stuck to the standard response that most people give no matter how they
honestly feel. However, Alex was perplexed by the question, thinking the answer
was quite obvious: Wasn’t everyone who went to see a psychiatrist not
feeling well? But then he entertained the possibility that a person may
have felt terrible when they had initially made the appointment and then felt
better, but since the wait was three months, the person had thought that they
might as was well come and make sure for certain that they are indeed 'sane'.
“How can I help you today?” asked Dr Pearson, now making more sense.
“Well, I get really depressed and I can’t get myself out of
it.”
“How long have you felt like this?”
“I think about four years.”
“And how were you before that?”
“I was quite happy. I didn’t really have any problems.”
“How do you feel when you are depressed?”
“… I feel completely blank, and my heart feels empty and
dark. Life feels stale and meaningless. I get up and go to work and come home
again and again, and there just seems to be no point to it.” Alex was starting
to feel emotional. “I can’t escape from it. No matter how hard I try, I can’t…”
and then he started to tear up as he
talked, “… get out of this state.”
Alex had graduated from university a year and a half before.
He studied architecture and was now working in his chosen field. His salary was
reasonably high, and he had a comfortable place to live. From the outside everything seemed ideal. But he was not
satisfied with his life. His life seemed to lack purpose. He constantly felt empty
and miserable, but he didn’t know why. Many times he had tried to make himself
happy: he went for walks by the ocean; he saw films; he ate copious amounts of
chocolate; he went out to have fun with friends. But no matter what he tried,
he couldn’t shed this misery and emptiness. Finally
he decided to see someone about it. He went to a doctor who referred him to a
psychiatrist. He called the psychiatrist’s office, eagerly wanting an
appointment, but the soonest appointment was in three months. Since that phone
call, Alex had been living in a dim haze – just giving in to the depression.
Dr Pearson passed Alex a tissue box and said comfortingly,
“Don’t worry, you don’t need to struggle anymore – I will help you.”
“Ok,” Alex whispered through his sobs, relieved to have
finally talked to someone and relieved that he didn’t have to try desperately
to fix this problem alone anymore.
After some more cursory discussion about Alex’s depression, Dr Pearson held up a packet of display tablets.
“I’m going to prescribe you some anti-depressants. You need to take these
tablets twice every day.”
He wrote out a prescription and handed it to Alex. “We’ll
schedule another appointment for three months’ time. Don’t worry – you’ll be
fine. You’ll be back to normal in no time at all!”
The doctor stood up, walked to the door and waited
for him to follow. He put his hand on Alex’s shoulder and accompanied him to
reception. Alex paid his money and left.
He strolled down the street in a relieved peace, finally
feeling he had something to depend on. There was a pharmacy ahead, so he went
to get his medication. After he got it, he kept walking and walking without a
destination in mind and just felt happy to be breathing, knowing that he had
found a way out of his problems. He wasn’t ever very keen on taking
anti-depressants, both because of the social stigma and the potential
side-effects, but if it meant feeling normal again, he was willing to. After
peacefully meandering the streets for over an hour, he arrived at a stretch of
restaurants and cafés and decided to stop and have an early dinner.
He sat alone and ate his
quintessential-quasi-Mediterranean-café food and ordered a cappuccino to
stretch out his celebratory meal even more, even though it was quite late for
that. He paid the bill and started walking out. Just as he got to the door,
Susana walked in. They both stopped in surprise.
“Wow,” she said, “two random meetings in one day! Have you
already eaten?”
“Yeah, I just finished. What are you doing here?” asked Alex,
knowing that it was an unwarranted question.
“I’m having dinner with my friends over there. What about
you?”
“Oh, I just happened to be in the area,” Alex replied, now
feeling more cautious so as not to give away the real reason he was there.
“Okay, nice to bump into you, and have a nice dinner.”
“Thanks! See you at work tomorrow.”
Alex got a bus home. He marvelled
at the synchronicity of yet another chance encounter with Susana.
When he got home, he had a snack to further line his stomach
and took out his new tablets. In a spirit of ritualistic
ceremony, he swallowed with hope and relief the first tablet of his
newly-desired-life-of-peace-and-tranquillity. Despite the caffeine flowing
through his veins, he slept soundly and deeply that night. Was it the
medication that deepened his slumber and eased his mind or the relief of having
confessed his secret?
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