This was one of the many unplanned and urgent visits he had to make this month. His neon watch showed the time to be 5:05 p.m. He uncomfortably settled himself on the clumsy chair and stared at the empty chair opposite him and then the desk that separated the two; A well-defined partition between doctor and patient, normal and abnormal. He looked away and found himself examining the tiny, wooden bookshelf that stuck against the mint coloured wall. The words written along the spine of the books were too small to read from this far. He considered getting up and going over to the shelf to get a better look but then decided against it. His whole body was hurting from the weight of his thoughts. He was wide awake but exhausted in every way possible. There were no windows he noticed. He turned around to find nothing but the mint-coloured wall staring back at him.
The cut on his neck throbbed and he resisted the urge to scratch it. This smallest of itch was enough to drive him crazy in this moment. It wasn’t the itch really. It was the loss of control. If he can’t even control something so small and insignificant then how can he control and maintain order in his life. He found himself wondering whether he ever had control. Every decision he ever made was influenced by a matrix of physical events that had happened before it. It had to be. Everything that has happened and will happen is a consequence of something that has already happened in the past. And past was certainly something he had no control over.
He heard, ” How are you, Mr. Bateman?”.
A middle-aged man was now looking back at him with a grin on his face. He glanced at his watch, 5:15 p.m. His therapist was taller than him but with a bad posture. He was a annoyingly cheerful guy. The first time John visited him it barely took him 15 minutes to write a prescription. At the time, John was relieved that he didn’t have to talk about his messy life in detail to a stranger. But now he wasn’t so sure that his incompetence was doing any good to him.
He said, “I haven’t slept since 2 days. I can’t read. I can’t eat. I can’t stop thinking. ”
Kumar asked, “ What are you thinking about? “
The question lit a fire of rage within him.
He angrily stood up and and knocked over his chair with force.
“What am I thinking about? Anything and Everything. “
Kumar was shocked but he spoke with a calm and collected voice, “ I know that you are upset about your brother but we – “
John wasn’t listening anymore he knew very well nothing he would say would make him feel any better.
He knew he was on his own.
He felt an urge to get back to something but he couldn’t think to what exactly. He had left something unfinished. He tried to hard to recall what had happened in the past few hours. Past. The Past!
Past was certainly something he had no control over
His train of thought was interrupted by Kumar.
The absence of any windows inside suddenly made it suffocating to stand even a second longer in the room.
He hurried past the mechanical door and ran out of the building to stand beneath the night sky.
The evocative smell of rain and pleasant breeze made him feel like he could breathe again.
He thought to himself, “ Past dictates the Future.
Everything that has happened and will happen is a consequence of something that has already happened in the past. I think I have a choice but do I really? My choices are based on my desires and circumstances. Desires arise out of the experiences I have had in my life. My experiences and circumstances aren’t dictated by me. They are the result of a series of events that were set off by unknown agents in the past.
Every choice isn’t a choice.
My life is just a fall of dominoes set off the moment I was born.”
He knew what this meant.
Now he can let go of the guilt that has been like a twisted knife pushed slowly and deeper into his heart every single day of his life.
He looked up at the starry night and searched for the Orion. As he found the conspicuous hunter of the sky he muttered to himself, “I miss you, brother “.
– Vandana Swaraj