The Courage to Care by Christie Watson

Author:Christie Watson [Watson, Christie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473566903
Publisher: Random House

7

I Got You Babe

I wish I could say that giving my brother an LSD acid tab when he was fourteen years old and I was fifteen, for doing the washing up, is the most stupid thing I’ve ever done. But it probably isn’t.

My dad and I are eating Chinese food and I’m now an adult. It’s mid-June and there’s a tree in full bloom next to us. We sit outside, so Dad can smoke. He blows giant clouds of smoke as though he’s Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. We’re having a heart-to-heart and we’re both a bit drunk, which is when we talk most. I want to tell him about the stupid things I’ve done, and other important bigger stuff, but I find myself staring at the tree. It’s hard to talk. The blossom and my dad’s smoke remind me of X-rays of children that I care for: patchy soft clouds of disease. I can’t separate myself from my nursing any longer. The two are fused. Eventually I do talk and the words come out in a rush. I tell him about the drugs, and how I could have harmed my beloved brother so much.

‘I don’t know why I did it, or what I was thinking. It seemed normal. I didn’t even take anything myself. I have no idea why I thought it was okay.’ I close my eyes. The things that seemed normal to my messed-up teenage brain.

‘It was just a trip.’ My dad shrugs. ‘You were probably conceived on a Purple Om.’ He laughs and I don’t know if he’s laughing because it’s a joke, or because it happened. It would explain a lot. I know my dad has a pretty relaxed attitude to drugs. He used to grow weed in the airing cupboard for a while, and after my friend died by suicide when I was twenty-one, he gave me something to smoke that he called Rocky Death Black, and claimed it would knock me out for far longer than any prescription sedative. ‘I think it’s best for you not to be fully conscious until the funeral. Get back on track afterwards.’ I sobbed into his jumper until it was soaked.

I’m in a perpetual state of confusion, grief and shock about my behaviour during my teenage years. My ‘going off the rails as a teenager’ is a subject that peppers every chat between my mum and me to this day. I spent the years between thirteen and sixteen putting myself in dangerous situations, hanging around with much older friends who were also low-level criminals. Before nursing, I lived a life of chaos. I was self-destructive, but it seemed completely normal. I used to think that nursing saved my life, with its rules and structure and kind people. But those older friends were not unkind. They treated me like a sister and were full of moral codes, with a list of ethics longer than the nurses’ Code of Professional Conduct. Both my wayward youth and my nursing

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.