Lauren Brown - Hands: An Anxious Mind Unpicked

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First published by HarperNorth in 2022

FIRST EDITION

Copyright Lauren Brown 2022

Cover layout design Anna Morrison 2022

Lauren Brown asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008465766

Ebook Edition January 2022 ISBN: 9780008465773

Version: 2021-12-21

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• Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008465766

For Liv

I didnt give my hands much thought before they turned against me. Theyve not attempted to snatch away my life in any literal sense thankfully my unwell brain and its troubled, dexterous agents have never veered in that direction but at the time Im, were, writing this, it would not be untrue to say that they have been chipping away at my life, slowly, slowly, in a way I could never have predicted.

For as long as I can remember my energy has, like wild electricity, pooled in my fingertips, as though Id be able at any moment to shoot out lightning bolts. But thats been the problem: my inability to shoot out lightning bolts. The energy has to go somewhere, do something, and Ive found the solution sadly isnt as easy or as cool as that. Theres no grand peroration, no ecstatic relief from anxiety, no clean-cut explanation why for me it pools in hands that are constantly, though I hope not irreparably, in motion.

I hope that by tracing my many foiled attempts to expel the tension forever expanding in me, filling me up and up until I feel I might burst, my hands and I might be able to start again. Turn over a new leaf. After all, they stroke my beautiful dog Zelda, run through my partners hair like water, bring delicious food to my lips, give comfort as well as pain. Theyre helping me write this, sat on my sofa listening to a playlist called Indie Folk Music for Focus which, I have to say, is doing the opposite job as I simply cant understand why creator Julien Delenclos wouldnt call it Folkus; if youre reading this, Julien, I want answers.

We need to get on better terms, my hands and I. Theyre probably tired too; we all of us need peace. So maybe I dont need lightning bolts. Maybe, like the punch of a typewriter, sporadic at first and then rhythmic, flowing, maybe whatever foreign presence is unsettling us can leave us slowly as I write. Perhaps I can get it whatever it is out. Maybe by the time Ive expelled it which I hope these strings of words can be, an expulsion Ill softly close the lid of my laptop and feel able to sit with my hands on my lap, still. Maybe by sitting in its acquaintance, getting to know it, we wont want to expel it at all. Or maybe my heart and mind and hands will be off again like a hurricane.

The difference even then, though, would be that we will know we have turned nothing into something. That we didnt destroy but created.

But hold your horses, some subterranean voice rasps. What if theres no it to expel; what if its just you? Me. Us. This is my least favourite theory and I try not to think about it too much. It turns out I have, over the past couple of years, been trying to avoid my chaotic maelstrom of thoughts, each rushing by like a high-speed train, by drowning them out altogether. This tactic has been as horrendously ill-advised as you might expect. Ive discovered the hard way that thoughts always manage to find their way out. More on this later, but for now suffice to say its easier to shut a tangled mess of wires away in a drawer than to sit and patiently tease out the phone charger you actually need. I just dont have any patience, not when all of time is condensed into a too-bright present threatening my senses and pounding my heart. In many ways, this is an exercise in expanding time. Sitting in it. My fingers are already rapidly bashing the keys, getting it out. Get out.

I figured it was too dangerous to step out in front of the train; its just common sense. I travelled from Darlington to Cambridge via Peterborough often when I was studying in Cambridge, and Id always lose my breath when a high-speed train rushed through Peterborough, not stopping there, threatening to suck me (back pressed against the window of the Pumpkin Cafe) under its belly, away. No matter how far away you are from the platform edge, you cant avoid the way it breaks the wind in twain, the ruthless way it empties lungs.

I tried the Headspace app once and the silky voice encouraged me to imagine my thoughts passing me by. I remember a graphic of a little person sitting on a seat by a main road, just allowing her thoughts to drive by like crudely drawn cars, watching them without engaging. For me, though, its always felt like that high-speed train. Like Im standing tiptoe in front of the line on the station platform, constantly on the brink of being destroyed. I try to disengage, to acknowledge that my thoughts arent me and that thoughts arent necessarily true, but its easier said than done when, well, your thoughts are you. Me. A bundle of unthinkable thoughts. A train.

Mam used to be quite into interpreting dreams when my twin sister Liv and I were little. There was a time when there would be dream encyclopaedias, palm-reading manuals and horoscopes scattered around the house, ready for consultation. According to journeyintodreams.com a website that, with all due respect, holds no candle to the glossy nineties manual exuding platitudinous wisdom in pastel colours and textbook fonts that we would flick through a dream about trains signifies:

• Your Path and Journey in Life
• Power and Strength
• Connection
• Stability and Structure
• Setting and Reaching Goals
• Purpose and Mission
• Movement and Motion
• New Opportunities
• Regrets and Failure

Vague and irresistible. But Ive never dreamt of trains. Similar amorphous themes appear, though, in almost all the random searches Ive done. According to this particular website, dreams about puppies, for example, are about loyalty and trust, defence and protection, service and duty the list goes on.

Once Mam saw, or thought she saw, a black and white puppy on our front square of grass early one dewy morning, just sitting there with its tiny head cocked to one side in apparent curiosity. Even on the most usual of days this wouldve been a very strange occurrence in our little cul-de-sac in Billingham a small, industrial, north-eastern town neighbouring Middlesbrough or any cul-de-sac most likely, but today was especially auspicious (or ominous, depending on how you looked at it). Thats because the previous night shed vividly dreamt that our next-door neighbours recently deceased father told her that they, the neighbours, should get his grandson a dog for companionship.