Baggage

A musing from the bus stop the other day

Bus wasn’t due for twenty minutes

But sometimes, I purposely arrive early. When it’s dry, I enjoy standing alone at a bus stop, particularly this one. I give myself permission to people-watch and day dream. I listen to the bird song and occasionally, rats run out from the bottom of the tall wall. First time it happened, it startled me. These days, not much stops me in my tracks.

Then he arrives, stands next to me, makes it awkward, a task. He blows in like a sandstorm, fair hair lank and matted, blue eyes glassy. I’ve written about him before, this guy. It’s a small town and the same faces show up time and time again, the way conveyor belts used to keep showing you the same items on game shows. You memorise their idiosyncrasies as you once recalled prizes. Some seem worth a little effort, desirable even……

Others, you automatically discount as useless, not your thing. The pointless cuddly toys of the world.

Some people find comfort in this familiarity, the small town ‘hellos’, smiles and nods. I remember as a kid listening to the theme tune to ‘Cheers’, the bit about wanting to go ‘where everybody knows your name’, wondering ‘why?’ See, I’m the opposite. I’ve always found my ease in anonymity. Communities unsettle me. Always feel like I’m about to be rumbled, disowned, outed as a witch.

In a city, you never belonged to begin with.

He’s troubled anyway, this guy, and it’s hard to know where someone’s troubles begin and end sometimes, isn’t it? They’re figure eights. My mum taught me to draw ‘8’s as one ball on top of another. “No” the teacher told me. “It’s one movement.”

But for a long time you can get away with drawing number 8s that way. Stacking one near perfect circle on top of another. For a long time, no-one notices if you break your flow.

So yeah, back to this guy. The brain wants so desperately to assign labels and reasons; alcoholic, learning difficulties, psychiatric problems, too many drugs, PTSD…..but the older we get, so many categories overlap, become lodgers. Cell mates.

Some of us look ‘normal’ but others, like this man, wear their issues externally like a badge. And I’m not sure which is worse. To wear your badge of crazy on the outside as he does, or to invert it and have it stab repeatedly upon your own soul.

Is it better for people to know from the offset from a physical cue that you’re damaged, or to surprise them later down the line with your hidden neuroses? I guess I like to know what I’m getting.

He’s seen me in my glad rags, red lipstick, nice dresses, cool tights. He’s also seen me as I am now, bare-faced in an ugly yet practical turquoise parka, shopping bag in tow. But still, I imagine he thinks me stable because I do pull off a good normal. And we encounter so many people every day with no obvious clues to their inner head wreck, don’t we? Most people I see at bus stops look okay, fine, ditto those in supermarkets, walking their dogs…….yet statistics beg to differ.

I know him well enough to have to make conversation and I do. I say ‘have to’ because despite us being a similar age, I always feel like the adult. He upends a Boots brown paper bag of prescription medication on to the metal bench before me.

“Look at all the stuff I have to take!”

He does have quite a collection, I must admit.

No wonder he rocks back and forth, slurs his words. No wonder his shaky hands are that pink colour that reminds me of childhood penicillin. No wonder his breathing rivals the whistle of the wind with its wheeze.

“I always end up seeing you at bus stops don’t I?”

I say nervously.

“Cause I don’t like staying in”

My blue shopping bag is on the bench next to the array of rectangular boxes that hoodwink him they’re containing his chaos. My bag is one of those that holds its own shape like a pop up tent. Practical, sturdy. Pay more for them than a ‘bag for life’.

Maybe it’s a bag for ‘lives’.

He’s peering into it the way a child would look for treats.  He always does this and I find it endearing.

“What’s that?”

He says pointing at a bunch of herbs.

“Coriander, going to make a curry”

I can tell he’s curious, so I pull the coriander from the bag, hold it under his nose;

“Smell it!”

I invite.

“Sort of peppery”

He’s eyeing up the spice packet in there now.

“Cheeky madras, cheeky madras…”

He mutters under his breath.

Then;

“Did you buy that from a shop?”

“Well I didn’t steal it…..and I certainly didn’t go all the way to India to dig it up”

I say. This makes him laugh.

“Is it easy to make, curry? Can you give me a recipe?”

He asks

No, I think, I bloody well can’t. People always ask for recipes, have you writing em out and never use them. Asking has almost become a pleasantry, hasn’t it? Sod to that.

“No, it’s just out of a book”

“Put mince in it?”

“No, don’t eat meat”

“‘Oh….how long you been…?”

“Since I was twelve”

And then he outs my nerves without me even knowing I’m doing it.

“Look at you…..picking your fucking nails!”

I smile shyly and look down but he continues.

“Go on, show us your nails!”

He’s half laughing, half demanding.

“Show us!”

I recall my mum telling me they used to have ‘nail inspections’ in her school. Remember thinking how odd that sounded, how archaic. She’d go on to explain that if said nails weren’t clean you’d be hit on the hand with a wooden ruler. Sometimes your parents tell you stories that really do evoke another era, this sounded truly Dickensian to me.

I decide upon a hand and lift it like a trained dog’s uncertain paw. It’s the hand I know is least affected by my anxieties. The one with the more acceptable finger nail lengths where the beds aren’t red and sore, bitten to the quick and stinging. I confirm my status as ‘normal’ with the hand that doesn’t betray me.

“I don’t care, I don’t care!”

He says. Satisfied with my hand, he moves on to my hair.

“Where d’you get it cut?”

He asks.

“Turkish Barber, only £15, why would I pay stupid prices women’s hairdressers charge?”

As I say it, I become self conscious again, remembering how I never used to go to the hairdresser at all until three years ago because of my trichotilimania. Compulsive hair pulling. Try not to do it nowadays. Usually manage it.

He glances back at his pile of meds on the silver bench. They tower like a child’s junk model city, teetering on the edge.

“Was the drink that did it to me….”

He says.

“And sepsis, had that….”

And then with a twinkle in his eye

“And cocaine! Fucked me up it did”

“We’ve all got our shit going on”

I say.

He produces a big bar of Galaxy chocolate from his pocket, glee smashing the glaciers in his eyes.

“Got this for later!”

The bus arrives.

We board and the overbearing friendly lady bus driver makes small talk about the weather

“Well I think we’ve escaped the rain, was supposed to chuck it down wasn’t it? We’ve been lucky really……..”

“I couldn’t give a shit myself”

He says, true to form, and I stifle a smile.

Few minutes later, I get off the bus

I enter my house. I make a plan to go to the cinema. A plan I end up changing because I’m suddenly overcome with a stark sadness and anxiety that blow into my heart from nowhere like a foreign wind, heart pounding in my chest.

I place my shopping bag upon the counter top.

I remember when they first started with the ‘bags for life’ thing. They were supposed to last a long time, weren’t they? Promised us that. That’s why they called them ‘bags for life’. They were supposed to be strong. Enduring.

But somehow, they weren’t made for my life. I’d always put too much in one.

The handles would go. It would all fall apart.

The contents would spill all over the floor.

Visible.

And then there was the weather too.

Who knows the weather you’re going to get. I mean, you can’t know, can you?

Because sometimes it starts off so sunny, so fucking beautiful, blue skies and everything and it suddenly changes, doesn’t it?

I guess we get better at carrying stuff.

And better at judging the weather.

Containing.

And some of us, are better at all of those things than others.