I write;I think;I know.

inside-out inside view

"Are you not concerned," asked my cat over breakfast, "about the degree of obsessive behaviour you're currently exhibiting."

"Certainly I'm concerned," I replied. "I lack the ability to confront my inner turmoil so I've resorted to Obsessive Compulsive Behaviour." I cast my cat a sideways look. She was sitting on the windowsill. Outside it was a sunny day of rain. Leaving me with the suspicion that she was looking for rainbows.

"I think you'll find," said my cat with authority, "that's not the problem which truly concerns you."

"Indeed," I nodded, "what concerns me is that I was unaware of the inner turmoil or my obsessive behaviour until I became aware I had effectively destroyed months of effort."

"It's worse than that," my cat informed me. "If your obsession had not effectively suppressed your emotions you'd be on the verge of killing yourself again. Even as things stand you're perilously close to doing something dangerous."

"It has take me several weeks," I admitted, "to became aware of the shift in my behaviour. It's too late to undo the damage to my immediate environment. Even if I could I've got weeks of effort ahead of me addressing my inner turmoil to ensure it does not snowball into a major psychotic episode."

"You'll also find," announced my cat, "it will take several months to deal with the consequences of the damage that's been done." My cat stood and performed the sort of stretching exercises which could be felt on the other side of the room. Then she jumped off the windowsill and padded over to where I was sitting. "But again, I think you'll find," she purred as she curled up beside me, "that's not the problem which truly concerns you right now."

"Cause and effect run backwards," I muttered, "I've identified an effect, so obviously what truly concerns me is the cause."

"Precisely," replied my cat. "Until that's addressed you can't really overcome the effect."

"Unfortunately it's not that simple," I said with a hint of resignation in my voice. "I've got Lucifer and the other Archangels having a battle of words with me over the ongoing mechanisms surrounding the Apocalypse preempting much of my mental capacity. I need another worry to the same degree as I need another hole in my head."

"I seriously doubt," said my cat, "anyone will be impressed by your more supernatural concerns."

"Truly they are valid concerns," I growled. "To others they may sound like the ravings of a deluded mind but for me it is an extant reality; as true to me as the state of the economy is for those deluded souls who believe money matters; or, for instance, the price of petrol is to those deluded into believing a car brings freedom."

"That you inhabit a world overlaid upon the same substrate as the differing worlds of those others," announced my cat, "is not in doubt. Or indeed the issue." For a moment the tip of my cat's tail began to twitch impatiently. "What is the issue is that a crisis has occurred at a point of intersect and you need to deal with it."

"I would have," I asserted, "only others got involved and began advising me as to what I needed to do."

"Your social workers," my cat informed me, "were concerned. Anyone who walks into your flat will discover you live with three mugs, two beanbags, a kettle, and don't actually have a cat."

"I do have a comfortable bed," I exclaimed proudly. "And I certainly do have a cat," I grinned as I stroked the fuzzy ball of perfection now purring on my lap.

"Let's leave this out of the bedroom shall we," interjected my cat, "and return to your otherwise empty flat."

"And the advice," I reminded my cat, "of my Social Workers."

"Indeed," muttered my cat impatiently. "At a time when they were desperately running around looking to find ways to help you address the obvious problems they see with your standard of living they were concerned with your apparent willingness to invest your limited resources in dental treatment they felt you were effectively exempt from paying for."

"They seemed to think," I added, "that I should, perhaps, be investing any spare cash in some of the parapanelia society deems required to support a minimum standard of living. Carpets and curtains, or a sofa and chairs, or a fridge and a cooker, that sort of thing. So they promised to sort the paperwork so the dental treatment would all be taken care of."

"I remember them helping you with exemption forms," nodded my cat. "You became mildly psychotic for a few days. You also got quite violent towards inanimate objects."

"Quite," I muttered in apology. "And whilst dealing with that," I remembered, "I was told I should discuss the ongoing formage with the dentist, when I highlighted that this would not be given the way it was affecting me the social worker promised make some calls on my behalf."

"Did they," asked my cat.

"No idea," I admitted. "When I finally fronted-up to have my tooth fixed nobody brought-up the issue of payment leaving me with the distinct impression it had been sorted. Indeed there is a sign on the waiting room wall informing me that according to regulations 'treatment may not commence until payment has been made in full'. So when treatment commenced without any discussion on the matter taking place it was not an especially unreasonable assumption to consider the financial situation had been resolved."

"So you assumed," grinned my cat, "the social worker had made some calls."

"Indeed," I replied after a short pause to consider the matter. "It's not until I'd made it back to base and was doing my best to ensure post dentist somatisation didn't set in I received a phone call that dispelled that notion." For a moment I considered that phone call, "I have to say it wasn't an especially pleasant experience."

"It was your own inner frustration," said my cat, reminding me of the call. "frustration which gets magnified when you find yourself unable to express yourself clearly. It spills into the tone of your voice. At which point you may as well stop talking as most people can't understand how someone can be talking to two people at once and assume the emotions conveyed by your voice are directed at them."

"Deep," I muttered, "So my words go one way, my emotions go another."

"Indeed," smiled my cat. "And in a world which insists aggressive and abusive patients will not be treated you're effectively denied access to services when your condition flares because you loose the ability to express yourself."

"It didn't help," I added, "being hit with an accusatory tone the moment I answered the phone. I was being made to feel like I was at fault for failing to do something nobody had asked me to do. Worse, when I began to get distressed the receptionist who I had always found to be perfectly polite and affable started to get more than a little shirty with me."

"Which, if you say that gain backwards," grinned my cat, "highlights what I was just telling you."

"Funny cat," I smiled.

"Seriously," said my cat, "the only way you managed to handle your latest brush with dentistry was to adopt an air of utter passivity. Doing whay you're asked to do, not doing anything you've not been asked to do. If you'd not you'd probably have hit crisis point and been in hospital by now."

"It's the pointlessness of all the pieces of paper," I sighed.

"Including the green ones," smiled my cat.

"For them it's a minor workplace hassle which they can turn their back on at the end of the day. For me it's a nightmare that is has a major affect on my quality of life."

"Mine too," agreed my cat. "And when the exemption certificate finally arrived," she asked.

"I tried to do," I admitted, " the right thing to resolve the problem. So I took it straight to the dentists where the still shirty receptionist seemed to take great delight in frustrating my attempts to resolve the matter whilst forcing me to discuss aspects surrounding my medical condition in an environment where other patients were able to overhear."

"Unpleasant," agreed my cat. "Still as you've discovered you can pay the bill and claim it back."

"Wonderful," I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster. "I'll be handed more forms; more paperwork; more of the kinds of thing that push me into the realms of frustration and on into anger."

"The kind of frustration," agreed my cat, "which we've already seen trigger bouts of psychosis and the kind of frustration which makes you violent."

"And quite frankly I don't wish to become like that so I refuse to take responsibility for resolving this matter. As far as I'm concerned the NHS can make the reasonable adjustments to their policies procedures which under law anyone with a disability is entitled to expect and deal with it internally whilst I do my best to ensure I don't become a hospital case."

"So do you think," said my cat, "you'll have to find a new dentist after this debacle."

"I hope not," I frowned, "the stress would probably make my teeth ache."

"Behave," commanded my cat. "Now," she continued more lightly, "you've accessed the intersect and identified the crisis point. Now we need to get you out of it to stop you doing more damage in more realistic realms."

"Well it would certainly help," I admitted, "if the real world was sign-posted."

"There is no real world," asserted my cat. "Merely metrics of belief which fall into a normal distribution curve. You may inhabit the fringes of that curve but your beliefs are no more or less valid than the individual beliefs of any one of the majority."

"Validity is one thing," I nodded, "belief is another." For a moment I felt the presence of something unpleasant. I looked around the room but what wasn't there got in the way. So I closed my mind and looked again. "I think there's a ghost in this room."

"Fetch," corrected my cat with a sigh. "And if you cast your mind back you'll remember who it is and how he got here."

"Shadows," I muttered. "The ones from the dark places we're all assured we're afraid of. The ones that traverse the unconscious mind."

"The ones," purred my cat, "you're on speaking terms with."

"It's the ghost of a psychiatrist," I said eventually, "the one who was so good at his job he left me with a bad case of post-traumatic stress disorder. The one who's gets away with abusing patients because nobody cares to uphold the law as he's well respected and been there for years. The one who caused me to have a mental breakdown which got left untreated because the abuse had taught me that life on a psychiatric ward was about being introverted and covert."

"And with that," said my cat, "we're back to belief."

"Really," I queried with mild bewilderment.

"Really," asserted my cat. "The mass-belief is that society has mechanisms to protect them from the mentally ill. To protect them from mental illness. Doctors who help make the illness go away well with care, compassion, and the enlightened use of medicine."

"Mass-belief," I muttered.

"The thick bit," muttered my cat, "in the middle of the bell curve." For a moment she paused to lick her paw. "Yet as your experience shows," she continued, "it is a belief that is erroneous. As is the belief that there is oversight that has sufficient will to prevent such abuses from becoming systemic."

"Proving of course," I nodded, "that the majority is not always right."

"Unfortunately in such circumstances," said my cat, "there are only three words which can be used, and even then only in retrospect."

"Three words," I asked with a puzzled look.

"Told you so."

"Funny cat," I smiled.

"Although you're still too close to the intersect," my cat announced. "Still too likely to lapse into obsessive behaviour because you can't cope in a world which still considers abusing minorities a legitimate activity."

"Does it," I asked with a degree of puzzlement.

"Consider how it is," said my cat, "that the Apocalypse you see on the horizon is as real and tangible to you as the words on this page. And yet consider how although you go to great efforts to respect the perceived realities of others few care to grant you the same respect. For their world classes your words as heretical because Science has yet to unlock the secrets buried deep in your mind."

"I'm aware of Angels and Demons," I admitted. "And it does come as a shock to wake-up one day to discover you're on speaking terms with Lucifer."

"Well if you're going to come to terms with your ability to go prying into the minds of others," said my cat, "there's no better entity to be on amicable terms with when you're looking for the answers to the dark secrets."

"Telepathy," I muttered, "that's another one of those things with the ability to earn me a free ticket to detention without trial should I dare to discuss it."

"And it's more than just Angels and Demons," said my cat. "To an extent they're simply patterns of mental force which coalesce from time to time to allow for a rebalancing in the psyche. Patterns with various attributes built-up over a long history, with identities co-opted by authoritarian and somewhat dogmatic belief systems. Mostly they operate in individual realms. There are some, however, with the power to break beyond the one and operate globally."

"Archangels," I sighed. "You're talking about Archangels."

"Indeed," agreed my cat.

"So why," I asked, "are they talking to me."

"Oddly enough," said my cat with a glint in her eye, "because your name is Peter and you have two keys on your key ring."