from the princess royal university hospital

I have no confessions. I cannot quote any passed or overheard remark. I cannot offer a plot with a coherent struggle or narrative involving the correct number of dramatic scenes, frustrations and resolutions. I am waiting only for the time to pass. What is for some the most valuable commodity, sacred in its scarcity, especially in a place like this, is to me nothing else but a burden right now. Visiting hours do not resume for another hour. So I sit here, pacing out a cold cup of coffee.

I've been willing the minutes to pass, the days to pass even. In my own stupid way I want to die, but only very slowly and gradually, so that it causes no great disturbance to anybody.

This may be symptomatic of the congenital Excessive Politeness Disorder (DA) that runs throughout my family. This disorder was originally diagnosed in an obscure 20^th century French medical encyclopedia by the forgotten eccentric Ramon Descaux (google his description of 'stomach mice' as well, if you can find it). Descaux called it 'Le Désordre Anglais de politesse', or 'Désordre Anglais' for short. As Descaux puts it (and you'll have to forgive my poor French reading here),

“English Disorder: a manner peculiar though not exclusive to the English, where the sufferer is determined not to infringe or cause “bother“ to the others, usually co-workers or the family members. This results in apologising frequently for any request or difficulty during conversation, even when it is justified or necessary in the fact of circumstance.

“e.g. Barrington: I am ever so sorry my dear, but please can you move your feet so that I can clean the spilt lager beer beneath them?

Coralie: Ok.

Barrington: Ooh, excuse me! Oops! Pardon me. Oops! Thank you, thank you. I'm so sorry for bothering your television-viewing.

Coralie: Sacre bleu!

“It results either in a pathetic display of obsesquieousness and servility which only irritates others, or a persecution complex where the sufferer scurries around with the constant paranoiac fear that all despise him. This fear is aggravated by the contempt this deference causes. One sufferer became fixated with images of St. Sebastian. Another found erotic gratification in working as a bell-boy in a decaying city-centre hotel...“

I know that anxious consternation about the impression you make on your peers is generally an adolescent obsession, angst. But I think shit only in this: I am a ghost and I glide through wherever I go like a cold breeze, causing only disturbance in some, indifference in most, and comfort for ther very few who are genuinely and beautifully strange. I am too thin, too quiet and too vague for mortal, fleshy persons; I rarely get the jokes and I'm too gangley and finger-tangled to relax in the company of anyone. Like literary ghosts I am invisible to the world, unable to be heard, and I haunt one or two, obtainable ideals, regret and the like.