Circles and cycles. Circles and cycles. Sometimes I feel like my life is an ongoing repetition of circles and cycles.
I often have the vision of being a point on the circumference a wheel – a sense of continuous change and forward momentum, accompanied by the constant predictability of the rhythm of repetition. There is sameness yet subtle difference in each revolutionary touch of the road. And always, there is a distortion in the echo – a premonition of incongruity lurking in the fleeting sense of deja vu.
Here I am again. I can see the cycle coming around once more. I am circling back – hurtling back – to the same old road which saw this journey started. If you believe in predestination, this is the inevitability of my juggernaut.
It started with vomit and vomit will likely be the herald of the next revolution of the cycle. At the very least, there will be nausea. Probably headaches. Definitely fatigue. Aching deep in my bones to match the ongoing cramps. Just as it started. Circles and cycles.
Pedal backwards about 45 years to find the point in time when this wheel started spinning. As with most things related to time and memory, history and place are coloured and tempered by a range of conscious and unconscious factors. Whilst our histories help to build who we are, the corollary stands that who we are helps to shape and sculpt the memories of our histories. Events appear to be malleable and change retrospectively. We change our point of view, we shift our perspective, we see from a slightly different angle – and the story is different.
This, however, always remains a memory encased in haze and viewed through a blurred set of blinkers – an amorphous tunnel through which I can vaguely make out my bedroom doorway, the walls of the hallway, and then the toilet bowl. There is always vomit and fever, diarrhoea and the fear of not knowing whether to stand or sit. A few years later I would live in a house where the toilet was situated next to the bath, so the decision was simpler – I could sit on the loo with my head over the bath and evacuate both ends simultaneously – but there was no such luxury at this stage.
I was sick. Not just a sniffle and a cough sick, but really “sick, sick, sick. So we called for the doctor to come quick, quick, quick”. That was back in the day when the doctor would make house calls. After taking my condition into consideration I was prescribed some sleeping pills. I think the doctor’s primary goal was to provide me with a form of medicinal amnesia in order to block the discomfort I was experiencing.
As the nastiness started to alleviate, I started pissing what could have been interpreted as a range of liquids and beveridges: black tea; black coffee; hot chocolate (no milk); cola (flat, of course – no bubbles); beef stock; watery gravy; thick pea soup (pardon the pun) with a hint of Vegemite. I can’t actually tell you whether it tasted like any of these because, fortunately, I had no predilection for sampling any of it. But it was definitely an indication that something still wasn’t right.
Off to see the doctor again.
I offered up a urine sample which confirmed the presence of large amounts of protein and macroscopic blood and, after being subjected to a series of embarrassing questions for this 1970s 15 year old virgin – “Have you got any sores on your penis?”; “Do you have any pus-like discharge?”; “Have you been having sex with fast women?” – I was referred to the renal clinic of St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne.
Another series of circles and cycles commenced. Circles and cycles based around hospital visits and renal biopsies; a diagnosis of IgA Nephritis and its associated collection of medications; decisions promoting self-cosseting and denying exploration and adventure – all of which, when combined, would alter my “who-I-am-ness”.
I know it’s obvious and fairly simplistic, but I likely would have been different in many ways without the revisions and alterations applied to my universe by IgA. I often picture alternate versions of my universe where IgA did not occur.
However, in this current universe, in this current timeline, in this current reality, I am the rat on the wheel in the cage. I find myself constantly running but getting nowhere. This current universe, this current timeline, this current reality is built on the recurring dream of trying to escape some hidden malevolence but always finding myself unable to ever gain ground or elude its presence.