Azure blue
My mother booked me a massage: “You’re going to have another chronic fatigue flare-up if you’re not careful,” she warns me, lovingly. And, as usual, she’s right.
I’ve been to two concerts in three days, which is quite the feat for my blighted, Barbie-doll body—burnt out, buffering, and held together by klonopin, almonds and Tom Ford Rose Café. I have simultaneously been contending with Seroquel withdrawal and a minor relapse… Just a couple lines off an Azure Blue Le Creuset stoneware side plate, followed by a panic attack. I know better than to do coke on an empty stomach, in fact, I know better than to do coke at all. I haven’t touched the stuff in four years. Honestly, I believe the psychological mayhem Seroquel put my brain through made it seriously malfunction. Well—that, and some other more personal turmoil, expressed in a series of voice-notes to a few close confidants in girlish secrecy. I chased that panic attack away with three Klonopins and some chocolate soya milk, then had the best daytime nap I’ve had in ages.
“10am tomorrow morning—you’re booked in with Max for a deep tissue. He’s a pain specialist,” my mother affirms.
It’s been at least a couple of months since my last massage—at a spa hotel in Bath while on holiday. Another one is certainly overdue.
“If you can’t hack talking therapy, get massages instead” is a rendition of what my mother always tells me, especially during a rough patch. And I think that’s genuinely great advice. Best to relieve tension one way or another, if not verbally then physically.
That being said, I’ve never actually been treated by a male masseuse before. I’m a little nervous, considering men seem to grab at me like it’s sport. But it’s a local holistic wellness clinic I’ve been to more times than I can count on my fingers and toes—quadrupled!
My mother is a big believer in alternative medicine. Growing up, she made sure I sampled everything from reflexology to hypnosis. I can’t exactly say if any of it worked—I mean, look how I turned out! But I’m not dead yet, so that’s something.
Perhaps without all those fortnightly cranial osteopathy sessions as a teen, I’d be a junkie blowing for blow, from a darkly lit side street behind one of those sleazy basement Mayfair clubs—where women get in for free while men pay four figures to enter and be in their company.
Sometimes I wonder if I’d have lived a more fulfilling life as a hot junkie, than as a respectable, sober, painfully bored girl in her twenties. Trying to do this so-called normal life thing. Stumbling at every hurdle like the horse I backed in the Grand National. God loves a trier. Though I always feel bad for those horses, especially the fatalities. My grandfather’s Irish, so the Grand National is like our families Super Bowl. He calls each of us grandchildren individually to take our bets. It’s healthy competition, and always exciting when someone wins.