Page 100 of To Hell With It
‘It’s about a ten-minute drive but you can get a shuttle bus.’ She handed me one of the leaflets with a picture of a couple trekking up a mountain covered in snow. ‘They leave here every half an hour.’
‘Do you know how long it takes to walk up?’ I asked.
‘Anywhere between five to seven hours, so you’ll need to pack some thick socks and blister packs, otherwise you won’t be able to walk by the end,’ she said. ‘And it’s a long way, trust me.’ She grinned.
I hadn’t thought about packing any sort of first aid and had no thick socks on me.
‘Why don’t we book you in for tonight, and if you need to stay longer we can sort it out tomorrow?
‘Thanks.’ I smiled gratefully.
‘Great stuff. You can have Rudbeckia.’ She winked and handed me a key.
‘Sorry?’
‘Your room, first one on the right, Rudbeckia. It’s a New Zealand flower and means Irish Eyes.’ She smiled.
‘Ah, I see.’ I laughed. ‘Very fitting.’
‘I’m Lynne by the way.’ She raised her hand to a wave and not a shake and I let out a breath.
‘Pearl.’
‘Ah, you’re a rare Sheila, aye?’
‘Sorry?’ I said again.
‘Pearls,’ she said. ‘You don’t see many around, which means you are very rare.’ She winked again.
‘Yes.’ I smiled. ‘I suppose I am.’
* * *
It was early evening but the sky was still bright when I decided I would walk into the town. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it on my way in; perhaps because Rob and Ruth were going on so much that I’d not been able to take anything else in. But when I reached the high street, I looked up and saw the biggest mountain staring back at me, towering behind the town like it was watching over it, keeping it safe. Something about it reminded me of Slievenamon, although this mountain was much, much bigger, of course, but just as beautiful and just as spectacular.
People sat outside cafés, enjoying the late afternoon sun like they didn’t have a care in the world. I wondered if that was even possible. To not have a care in the world. I couldn’t imagine it. What would a life be like without OCD? How easy and carefree my world would be.
Perhaps it was the mountain that kept their worries away? Some mystical spell or legend – like Fionn and his fair maidens – that kept them from harm’s way. The urge to be up in the mountain consumed me. To be amongst the jagged rocks, finding my way to the top so that I could stop and look back at how far I had come. But what was the point of coming all this way if I behaved the same way I did at home? What was the point of all Mairéad’s tips and techniques, the buses, the trees, the rivers and rafts, the breathe, relieve, relax exercises? What was the point of it all if I couldn’t conquer at least one thing? Mairéad was always going on to me about mountains – they were brought up in most of our sessions.
Just climb that mountain one step at a time. Be proud of every step up the mountain. Step by step by step by step – the mountain is your guide.
But if I didn’t climb the mountain (metaphorically speaking) would I go back to Drangan the same person? Did I even want to go back the same person?
I looked over at the carefree people, hanging out in cafés without a worry – they could sit down without having to think about who was next to them, or who might have been there before them, or if someone might or might not have sneezed moments before they’d arrived – and I suddenly felt jealous.
Why was sitting outside a café so easy for them but so hard for me? How could I have missed so much of life around me? How could I have let my own beliefs and fears get in my way?Whydid I let them?
My frustration spurred me on to join them – not actually sit with them but near them. I picked the first café because it was the quietest, with the fewest tables outside, which meant the fewest people. I studied the chair as discreetly as I could – it was clean (visually, anyway), so I sat down and then poured my sanitiser onto a tissue that I’d purposely brought with me to wipe my glass. I would climb the mountain in stages, I’d told myself.
The waitress came over and I ordered a lemonade and when she was gone I tried to push the thoughts from my mind of what she might have touched before she picked up my drink – coins? The till? Her nose? The butterflies fluttered silently, but wildly, inside my head, where no one knew they were but me.
When she returned, I wiped my glass and did my own hands before drinking my drink like the normal person I so desperately wanted to be. And I would have been fine had I not seen it – there all slimy and yellowy-green – stuck to the inside of my glass where the lemonade had passed over it to my lips and inside my mouth. A bogie.
And I knew it was a bogie because what else could it have been? It must have fallen from her nose somewhere between picking up my glass and filling it with lemonade. Which meant I had tasted someone else’s snot.
No amount of trees, rivers or rafts could have saved me then. The damage had already been done. It was already inside me, somewhere. And so I had a meltdown, right there, outside the café surrounded by the people with no worries and the mountain as my audience.
‘One, two, three, four.’ I breathed in deeply, as slowly as I could. But when I held my breath I forgot to count and so I let out an almighty gasp for air. ‘Fuck. Get off the bus, get off the bus.’ I whispered to myself but all I could see was a bus full of snot and me stuck in the middle like glue. ‘Trees, trees, trees, one, two, three, four.’ I tried again but it wasn’t working.I’m on the river. The snot is on the raft, I’m on the riverbank, I’m watching it float away. It’s gooey, it’s stuck, it’s in my mouth.
