Page 110 of To Hell With It

It won’t be that dark, it will be good for you.

Why will it be good for me? I don’t want to do it.

Have you read what it says?

What what says?

The link.

I’ve read what I need to.

Read it and then let me know.

I can let you know now if you like – NO.

Just read what it says.

So I did.

Begin your journey on a beautiful cruise to the caves of Lake Te Anau and join our tour where you’ll experience the magical world within.

With rushing water from an ancient underground stream – known to have healing powers – you will go from the darkness into the light when you venture further into the caves to hundreds of glowworms above. Surrounded by whirlpools and the roar of an underground waterfall, immerse yourself in the mystical land seeped in history.

I wasn’t going to even contemplate it. But then an angelic vision of Tim’s wife popped into my head (I don’t know how because I didn’t actually know what Tim’s wife looked like). She was singing in the sea with the dolphins, with her bald head from the chemo and a smile on her face, despite what she was going through. And then I saw Tim hiking up a mountain with her ashes in his bag.

I wasn’t going to contemplate it until then.

Because if Tim’s wife could have such a positive outlook on life, even when hers was ending, then I could stand in some caves with worms that glowed from their arseholes.

ChapterFifty-Three

With all the therapy I’d had – two years of it with Mairéad, a week with Lily (the one who thought I was making it all up) and the hypnotherapy, the clairvoyant (who told me something bad was going to happen), the trees, the rivers, the rafts, the buses, the breathing – with all of that, I’d never have predicted that a dead person would have been the reason I finally made a change. And I mean, really made a change, not just saying that I would and then half-heartedly trying – getting a taxi everywhere instead of a bus, taking sleeping tablets on a plane, etc.

But it was, it was Nicola. She was my reason, and I would forever be grateful to her for showing me (from heaven) that there was another life out there if I wanted to choose it, that I could push myself even further, if I wanted to. And that I could face my fears – look them right in the eye (or the penis, in my case) like she did and just get on with it – even if me or someone else was going to die (which wouldn’t happen, I knew that). But even if it did, it wouldn’t be my fault.

I’m not saying I was cured, by the way; please don’t think that because I’m not sure I can ever really fully be cured. But I figured I could give it a damn good go. And also, I wanted to try, Ireally reallywanted to try.

You see when I was outside the café in Wanaka that evening, before I met Bunty again, looking at the mountain, and wondering what life would be like without OCD, I couldn’t quite see what it would be like, I couldn’t quite imagine it. But now, I could. I could see that without OCD – or even let’s go much deeper than that – with OCD and doing it anyway, I could be free. I just had to get on and do – whatever it was that I was trying to do – and come out of the other side (alive or dead). I had to charge through like a bull, no matter the consequences.

I had to face my OCD and not let it stop me from living.

* * *

One of the things I’d learnt about being in New Zealand was that it was normal for it to take a few hours to get from A to B because everything was so far apart (town to town, I mean). So when Niall sent another text with my bus details to Te Anau, I wasn’t surprised that I would be on it for three hours.

Nor was I surprised that the bus was full as it pulled up (it seemed a lot of people wanted to see the glowworms). Now, the thing is, what I want you to remember is that I wanted to make the change – like I said, Ireallywanted to – but the actual changing was a tad harder than what I might have made it out to be.

Please don’t think I’ve lied to you, by the way, I wouldn’t do that, but I just want you to be aware that the reality of me just doing stuff – charging straight through like a raging bull – might actually be more accurate if I were to describe myself as one of my dad’s moles, trying to get across his garden in daylight without being hit by his shovel. Pretty impossible when moles are blind, but some do give it a go. So I was giving it a go. I was trying to get across my dad’s garden back to my molehill. And the molehill was my mountain.

I had to stand up on the bus, it was that packed. But then the guy who was sat at the front got up to offer me his seat, which I accepted. And although I still gave a quick scan before I sat down, I sat down – and that in itself was a big stride because I didn’t have to did I? I shifted uncomfortably so that my clothes didn’t brush against the person next to me (a young lad who kept tapping his knee to whatever music he was listening to) and I sat very still trying my best to think of Nicola and her lust for life, even when she was facing death.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t OK with it. I didn’t sit there with a smile on my face, welcoming the breath of strangers on my skin as they laughed, chatted, coughed and sneezed (OK, no one sneezed, that would have been too much) around me. I sat there as tense as a corpse. My jaw was tight, I only stared straight ahead and I took very small, very slight breaths in through my nose with my mouth firmly shut (because I’d rather it all went up my nose than through my throat, where I could potentially taste it). But the point was, I did it. I sat down, when I could have stayed standing up.

When everyone got off I didn’t need to follow Niall’s directions to the ferry because a group of them were headed that way too. So I followed them, instead. I followed them and I listened to their conversations about the caves, how dark they were, how low down they’d have to cower to get in through the first section. That there would be lots of sections, some more open than others, in the dark, buried under the ground.

When I got to the ferry I was well and truly in a state of panic as I sat outside to breathe in sea air (which wasn’t actually the sea, it was a lake, but the lakes are so big in New Zealand they look like the ocean). Then, as if she knew I needed her, Mairéad texted me.

How is it all going?

---