A Fine Line.

My second week volunteering at a day centre for the homeless, vulnerable and socially excluded, and coincidentally two days after reading a damning response to the forthcoming DSM-5, the American psychiatrists rulebook of psychiatric disorders. To quote its conclusion, “This is why fifty years of study and investigation…. across the Western world ……has failed to establish the validity of a single psychiatric diagnosis.” As I sit in the canteen I personally fail to establish any clear-cut boundaries between even staff and clients, and definitely, if there are ‘sides’, which side I’m on. After my brush with the doctor’s receptionist when Mothermouse in a matter of moments inadvertently convinced her I was senile simply by butting in at every opportunity I’m loath to make snap judgments. I did observe what I might call the ‘Sane Game’ as played by three middle-aged volunteers. The Sane Game is where, if we fluently reflect each other, we prove we must all be sane.

Slip in a few references to museums, a film and Waitrose and everyone’s comfortable. Sit in silence, talk non-sequiturs and smile at nothing and there ensues an unease that requires a label. For sure we’re on the look out for…. Well what exactly? Is it madness or simply our own discomfort? Sitting outside for a fag, a singleton amongst clients, I’m aware of floundering as my playing of the Sane Game comes unglued. No one’s interested in Waitrose. I watch a munched mouth turn as black and yellow fingers roll a cigarette. It’s cold. And there it is. He is suffering from my sane assumptions. He is failing my exam of expectations just as, at many past times, he has failed other’s expectations, flunked their assumptions. And thus filleted by the rules of normalcy he stitches a future of feelings, knits his self acceptance as best he…, well no not as best he can, as best he has been allowed to live his life aloud. And there but for the grace of my examinations might I be, puffing sideways on a rollup, a forgetful orangutan on a bad hair day, and really only because I can pull off the trick of normalcy when necessary. It’s a fine line.