His friends from the university, his family and other good people gathered around him and tried to give him strength.
His mother bought a new car and gave him her old car. It was a gift which might have saved him two years before but now he struggled to use it safely.
People outside of the university freely gave their support. He was asked to be a judge at a NAIDOC art competition. He managed to stay on his feet for the event but was totally crushed by pain and illness.
The next event was worse. Toukley Art Society asked him to be a judge on their signature competition and to speak at the event. He blanked and was simply stuck in a place where nothing was in focus. He fought a silent battle inside desperately trying to find words but while he managed to stay upright the words didn’t come and he babbled, embarrassing himself. They were kind to him but he was dying inside.
People wanted to hire him. He settled for a role as a photographer of cover images for a small start-up magazine out of Gosford. He was given the role as a cartoonist for the same publishing group and soon discovered brain damage destroys your sense of humor. He created some abysmal little cartoons which only embarrassed everyone as his collapse progressed.
He was given a task as an arts officer at Watanobbi where even in the crushing grip of pain he made art with a small class of teenagers and handicapped. It was a moment he cherished but ended too soon as his health collapsed.
He had been a good driver but now his declining mental state meant the car always seemed to have a few extra centimeters of width. He scraped a lot of things. He was in two minor accidents which weren’t his fault but he knew he should have been able to avoid them.
He forgot the names of people he spent the three year degree course with. People who should have gone on to be life long friends. He got lost on the way home from a nearby event.
One day he was so ill he drove the car into bushes before climbing out the door and lying on the ground vomiting helplessly. Soon he would refuse to drive any more. He knew the cost of blackouts in a suburban environment and didn’t want someone else’s family to pay them.
Now he was begging for pain relief and buying anything he could get over the counter at pharmacists. He knew he was ill and hovered in a kind of nightmarish dream. The doctors and medical staff in the area treated him rudely and abusively with one female doctor from The Entrance following out of her surgery and up the road shrieking at him as though he had caused her some dire hurt.
At Toowoon Bay a doctor locked his medical records away and told anyone who asked he was a junkie and she wasn’t giving them back. It led to a very amusing incident where she accused the second in command at the Freedom of Information Board a criminal junky and refused to give him the files.
He walked in as his house was broken into and was severely beaten up. They stole his ID papers. Not the first time he had experienced this. They applied a phone trick which made anyone calling his phone to be redirected to another phone at his expense. (A drug dealer) He didn’t find out before he had a phone bill of over a thousand dollars.
He had fallen behind in his rent as well so he grabbed every cent he could earn or borrow and went to pay his bills. Had obtained advances on his business account, sold heirloom coins he had salted away and used every penny of pay.
Holding the phone bill he reached into his pocket and the money was gone. Almost three thousand dollars! He was so ill and so deep into the fog of mental collapse he might have flushed it when he was in a toilet, or thrown it in the garbage or had his pocket picked. He could not remember those hours at all.
He was broken.
Another day he spent his whole bankroll on clothes and a stereo. He no longer knew where he was or what was happening much of the time. The criminals had recognized his vulnerability and were targeting him. He believed the outcome of their attentions would be his death he was alone. The past and the future almost disappeared.
He took his possessions and put them into storage with the assistance of his mother who was in tears. He had nowhere to go but he had to stop the attacks and break the link between his family and his troubles.
When the property manager was accepting the keys it was obvious she was feeling betrayed. She asked him what happened and he blanked. He knew nobody would believe the efforts he had gone to get the money if he didn’t have it in his hands and he knew also the problems would continue while he remained a sitting target. The despair was greater than he could wade through and he just looked at her with tears in his eyes as she went on to lecture him of her disappointment.
The Chittaway Affair, page 6. After the Graduation
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