Running Totals

“I want you to have this!” she said.

I undid the bow and opened the shoebox. I eased out the gift inside. It was something full of bells and whistles; a thingamabob between a Fidget Box that is given to those inclined to stim, and Ziggy, the Supercomputer of Quantum Leap.

“Will it bite?” She laughed.

“What does this do? And this? And this?”

“That is for you to find out…” She smiled, and took her leave, not even staying for coffee or ice-cream.    

I was one big mess. I had a list of ailments and conditions as long as my arm – alexithymia, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, chronic stress, cyclothymia depression, hyperactivity, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, and heaven knows what else.

Sometimes, I felt – and looked like – a zombie. My brain was in almost perpetual overdrive, except when I went low, my synapses flashed like lightning trapped inside a washing machine. I was either a chipmunk on speed, or, rarely, a sloth on downers. I ate voraciously one day, and I barely touched food the next. I was checked for hormonal and / or chemical imbalances, and the specialists found nothing wrong with me in that area.

I didn’t want – or need – any toys. And I said so. “This is not a toy!” she said. “This is a state-of-the-art mechanism, tool appliance, call it what you want… that I invented just for you, to make you feel better.

Many people occasionally undergo experiences and situations when their thoughts just can’t keep still, and chase one another like a dog that, chasing its tail, gets nowhere.

With me, it was something I could not help. Medication and meditation had not helped. The only relief I got was when I went swimming – in the sea because the smell of chlorine in pools made me retch. And it was too cold to swim at that juncture.

Helen reassured me that there was no medication or chicanery involved. I could use it when I was hypomanic or down; it had no side effects. The flashing lights would not cause seizures, because they were (and she used a difficult word that I do not remember).

There were, of course, switches and levers that ‘did nothing’; these were to be flipped and flicked as the mood took me.

As for the rest, there was a purpose behind each knob and toggle, button and lever.

Ironically, this was the time when I was most productive. I was ambivalent.

As it was, when I began writing the next book in my series, I could visualise all the plot, as if in a flowchart, and also the cover of the book, and the blurb. It was the other meaning of “fait accompli”. I was afraid that tampering with the conditions that caused this phenomenon would hinder, or even halt, the process.

“Try it and see!” was the only answer I got.

Anyone who has been stricken with the condition of what comes under the general umbrella term Racing Thoughts knows that it is more than just, well, racing thoughts, or thinking fast.

It’s like a waterfall of feelings and ideas and theories and concepts that summersault over one another; wave upon wave of notions that strive for precedence; impulses and urges that cannot be quietened. It’s incredible, really it is – but it leaves you insanely tired.

I had quite gotten used to it, really. I used to allow myself to get into a sort of trance, willingly allowing my functional consciousness to disappear for as long as I wanted it to.

Then, before it could ever have become the debilitating experience described in the textbooks, I would suddenly decide that I had had enough, or that I was hungry, or that – albeit rarely – I needed to take a shower, or to take a catnap. 

When I was at school, teachers used to tell me I am so intelligent I am stupid. Streetwise kids bullied me. I had to have a Facilitator to make me stop going off at tangents, and, frankly, she was not that much of a deterrent to the bullies, who flicked my ear or tried to trip me, at every chance they could get.

I lived alone. I had no one to tell me that I talked nineteen to the dozen, except for the few friends who came over to my house to check that I had eaten (sometimes they brought food, too). I now realise that they did not want to get social services involved, because the chances are that I would have been placed in an institution. But they loved me, so they did that for me.

They made light of my “butterfly method” of leaping from one topic to a totally unrelated one, telling me I am a genius. So, what’s new? Well, I know I am.

With trepidation, I pressed a slate grey button. There was muzak. I smiled. It was a metal rendering of Flight of the Bumblebee; apt, when you consider that some shrinks call this racing thoughts ‘flight of ideas. But, then, I assume they mean ‘running away’ not ‘airborne’.

I immediately thought of butterflies flying in formation; as if I was trying to marshal the thoughts into some semblance of order… not necessarily the correct one.

I pulled a lever. Out of the box came a series of words that, as I immediately realised, were not pronounced as they were written.

I pulled out a knob, and the walls of the room were suffused with tiny pinpricks of light, as would have happened had there been a disco-ball hanging in the centre of the ceiling, rather than a mundane light fitting. Somehow, I imagined them dancing around to Mozart 40.

It is interesting to note that my friends never said I was crazy. I never heard voices in my brain – I just saw my stories written down, or rather typed out neatly in Helvetica (I always use Times new Roman).

I do know, yes, that racing thoughts often herald a hypomanic episode. I learned to sit down and thump away at the keyboard, sublimating the infinite energy unleashed. Sometimes, the thoughts melded into one another with grace and gave me great satisfaction – but I did get the occasional jarring note that I removed by shaking my head rapidly.

At these times, I didn’t even hear the phone ring, and I would only realise that someone was calling me if I happened to see then bulb flash, from the corner of my eye.

I was lucky, I guess. I had a steady income from my books, and friends who supported, cherished, and nurtured me, because they were concerned about my well-being.

So whyever was this contraption given to me?

I pressed tabs with red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo in quick succession. White noise. Oh, this was so, so soothing. Just what I needed to get me over an impasse (what others would have called writer’s block) in my latest novel, and the blue funk of delusions, paranoia, and hallucinations, I was having at that moment (when I write I don’t want to take psychotropic medications).

My alexithymia caused a dysfunction in emotional awareness – the subclinical inability to identify and describe emotions that made it so hard for me to get into the minds of my characters as I wrote my books. It required a superhuman effort to concentrate and pretend, in order to portray interpersonal relationships and social attachment.

But – wow! As soon as I toggled a red control, something inside the machine whirred and then the noise settled down to a quiet hum; I felt relaxed and my coffee grew cold as I write and wrote.

But I noticed something. It seemed to me that my 100w.p.m. fingers were not as fast as usual. Was I imagining things? I set up the stop-watch and took a word-count. Yes, I was right; I was only managing 95 words per minute.

I assumed that I would be recoup my speed if I played a couple of Majong games… but I was wrong. So, it was clear that the machine was having an effect on me. I did not want to get rid of stressors but simultaneously have my super-abilities impaired.

I needed my brain to be alert at its full capacity, not hindered by the machinations of a machine. I had been doing all right, unscrambling the messages of synapses firing every which way. Oh yes, it was terrifying, frustrating, and often overwhelming – but I had managed the confusion, frustration and anger, so far.

I put both thumbs into rounded depressions at the top left and top right of the apparatus, and a mechanical voice said

I am your Automatic Therapist.

1.Cook something

2.Dance or exercise or swim.

3.Eat some honey

4.Listen to Spotify

5.Make some tea.

6.Run a load of laundry

7.Say a mantra

8.Smell some lavender

9.Take a deep breath or six.

10. Wash your hair.

This was ridiculous – if I wanted a shrink, I’d go to one.

The book I had been writing at the moment involved someone who had a thought disorder. My chapter-by-chapter Beta Readers said that, so far, I had got her delusions of grandeur down to a T. I was afraid that if I clicked any more switches to find out what their purpose was, I would lose the connection with my character’s brain. Was it paranoia? Or was it real? I did not want to find out.

I unplugged the kit from the power outlet. I called my friend and explained exactly why I was disturbed by what had been happening, ever since she gave me the box.

She sighed. When I said I didn’t even want it in the house any more, she said she would collect it within the hour.

And she did.

We spoke of how, with a few modifications, it could become an innocuous toy. She fiddled about a little with it in her studio, and patented the result.

And that, my friends, is the origin of Boxe of Triques.