Self Help - Jow Bates

Undiagnosed, unmedicated, unhindered. Left to grow in the wrong way.

Henri tapped his pen against the table irritably.

"Paroles."  He thought.

Unable to think with the deafening silence of his room, Henri flicked open his laptop and pressed play. iTunes, however, sent mixed messages and conflicting thoughts that crowded his inconsolable conscious. The sudden want for quiet caused him to feel ill-at-ease. Henri opened his window and looked desperately over the banlieues for any kind of help, advice from the ether. A barely audible conversation drifted up to his bedsit, forming a light fog of noise which was permeated slightly by the distant symphony of separate car alarms. Henri closed his laptop again, this was better;

"Musique à ne pas écouter." He thought.

He began to coordinate his thoughts, tapping his pen in a more productive rhythm against the off-key orchestra or Paris' forgotten suburbs. Henri nodded along with the ignored sounds of his neglected housing estate and smiled. Nothing was happening with a tenacity and verve. Henri had yet to write anything, black dots filling his otherwise empty notepad, it seemed apt. He sipped a bottle of Stella Artois and thought more about what he ought to write. Maybe the absence of thought encapsulated best his time here, it certainly epitomised it. Henri smiled, thinking of something to write summed up what he was trying to say perfectly, the search for thought, abstract connotation, the arbitrary quest for ideas and ideology.

"Existence." He thought.

Henri finished his beer and stared down at his once empty notepad, now filled with the écrit de la musique of his own plight for concept. Henri sighed, imbathed himself with petrol and signed it.

"Temps pour une cigarette." He thought

Self Help - D'oh

Andy
“I met some‘un today”

Therapist
“Real, or imaginary?”

Andy
Andy pauses for a moment and decides to ignore the question “His name is Jack, I met’m at school”

Therapist
“What’s he look like Andy?”

Andy
“He is real funny look’n. Has a face like a pumpkin, like one ‘em Halloween lanterns. With these long sheep-shank legs. Kids at school make funna ‘im, call him Pumpkin Sheepshanks”

Therapist
The therapist lets out a long disappointed sigh

Andy
“He doesn’t have many friends. Bit like me I ‘spose. That’s why I like him.” He waits for some sort of reaction from his therapist, but she is busy scribbling something down on her note pad. Andy lowers his voice to no more than a whisper “Jack and I have a plan”

Therapist
“Oh? What kind of plan?”

Andy
“We’re gonna build sum’n… he’s found this thing on the internet”

Therapist
“What thing?”

Andy
“Well, um, it’s kind of like instructions…to make a pipe bomb.”

Therapist
“ANDY!”

Andy
“It was all his idea! I swear it. He said that they were all gonna pay, for making funna me and callin’ him Pumpkin Sheepshanks. And all those girls that just laughed at him when he tried to talk to ‘em… they were all gonna pay.”

Therapist
“Andy, have you been taking your medication?”

Andy
“Aye, I have. Everyday like you says”

Therapist
“You must tell me the truth now, otherwise all this work, all these sessions have been all for nothing… Now Andy, is Jack a real person?”

Andy
Andy lowers back into his bed, eyes down full of shame “No, no he’s not… I made him up”

Therapist
“Why would you do that Andy?”

Andy
“I wanted a friend, someone who can help me”

Therapist
“But aren’t I helping you?”

Andy
Andy can hear someone coming up the stairs “Of course you are, you’re helping me loads”

Therapist
“You’re a good boy Andy”

Andy’s Mother
Andy’s Mother pops her head into Andy’s room “Hey honey, I thought I heard voices, who’re you talking to?” She surveys the empty room.

Andy
“No one mother, just myself”

Self Help - Pumpkin Sheepshanks

I stood there a bit awkwardly for her to acknowledge me. i didn't have all day and I wasn't sure if it was worthy of manners, so eventually i burst out with: "Hello, i was looking for a book." How many times had that sentenced been used as an opener within these four walls of Waterstones i wondered. she looked up from the screen that had taken all her attention and smiled.
"any particular one" she responded in that polite sales assistant way that communicated they think your a prick.
"The game, by Neil Strauss". as i said it i noticed my voice break a little bit towards the end as i picked up on recognition in her face.
"Yep, that's in the self help section, ill show you." she said in a way that made me feel like i gave her the right answer. she didn't even look on the system for it, she was well acquainted with the book. since the words left my lips her face and demeanor changed from hard and cold to soft and inviting. i could deal with the hard and cold, they were well worked perimeters for me. But when i sensed a switch from animosity to interest i fear for making a wrong move and make no move at all. this is what happened when the sales assistant started walking towards the self help section and i was frozen at the customer enquiry desk.
I watched as the sales assistant walked the length of the shop, turn around and look suprised. i wondered whether she thought i was behind her the whole time and had been talking to me, even though she was at the opposite end of the store i could still recognise the confused look on her face when she discovered i was still where she left me. she looked over towards me, pointed towards the aisle and began to walk back. i could sense by her face we were back to animosity by the time she got back to the customer service point so i thanked her for her time, and scuttled towards the self help section.
A semi dyslexic shoplifter was shoving self help books under his jumper. i soon saw the book i wanted. it took a prominent position amongst the display that made it seem out of place. a novel with a cartoon picture cover amongst books such as "Fun with Fungus, apothecarian techniques for 21st century" and "how to stop smoking". I ignored these and flicked through an nlp book that i decided to get another day and began walking towards the pretty girl at the till with the book she seemed to know about. the was a look of hope and expectation. she scanned the book and smiled. "anything else" she enquired eagerly. in my mind i was fucking her, and for fear of her being a mind reader i simply shook my head and paid for my goods and left.
When i got outside i told myself to cut down on the dope, its making me paranoid as people cant mind read. An old man walked past and looked me straight in the eye and planted in my head the thought "yes we can mind read you little schnook". he smiled and walked off. I carried on my walk towards work, confused by what it all meant. everything seemed to piece together so perfectly, like when you have a conversation with someone with music playing in the background and when you have a moments silence the lyrics of the background music seem to fit the context of your conversation perfectly, yet words are just a series of sounds which we each attribute our own meanings to. Surely there's a purer form of communication.
I carried these thoughts and my new book with me to work. I stood outside and socialised with the smokers and engaged in slow euthanasia. "Whats in the bag Pumpkin?" asked a friend. i try to only keep friends with intelligent people so presumed they knew it was a book inside the Waterstones bag. When I went in to buy the book i saw it as a journalistic piece on picking up women. i was embarrassed it was in the self help section, i didn't need help just some inspiration. now amongst coworkers some of which i would like to learn to pick up, my initial take on what i was holding didn't seem appropriate.
"a self help book" i responded.
"oh" some one said.

Self Help - Borealis

Between Newcastle and Edinburgh, the coast is enough to make me stop thinking. The edges of the country are half-stroked, half-cajoled by the North Sea. If you look down from the train, you can see Famous Five-coves, waiting for smugglers and hiding caves that hide chequered napkins full of sticky cake and flasks full of ginger beer.

Taking photos is impossible as the train speeds past; by the time you've gathered yourself and your camera together the moment is gone, or a rare bit of sunshine leaps onto the murky glass windows, so that all you can see is yourself squinting after what you've just missed.

After a year I stopped trying to take photos and settled down to smile at it. Two hours of watching an endlessly flat yet impossibly choppy sea. It's almost like watching the ships go in and out at Felixstowe, binoculars in hand. But this time, no pebbles. Padded seats instead which are infinitely less comfortable, and make me ache to get outside, down to the shore.

Bus routes are difficult to find. And maybe that's good, maybe it's the anonymity and the safety of a train that makes it nice. Even the old, entrenched, stone-built houses balance perilously on the rocks next to the sea. You'd have to climb a lot of trees and a lot of crumbly hill-sides before you earned the right to be down there beside the waves.

It never really changes; and I'm not sure what I expect to happen in the space of two months. But that's leveling.

There's only one person that ever distracted me from thoughts of coves and adventures. She was a Roald Dahl-grandmother, with twenty-first-century grandchildren. They bashed away on Nintendo DS's, completely oblivious to the sea-view and utterly incongruent with it. She rummaged around in an old plastic bag, dug out some biscuits and cheese and a knife and smiled at them.

That's all she did, all I noticed. It was all nothingness, and all fleeting; but I invite people to the beach a lot and I'm never quite sure they're not-there with me. For some reason, this one time, I'm convinced someone was down there, not-there, with me.

The coast in Scotland stops me.

Self Help - CammyWhite

Living this way would have seemed crazy 6 months ago. When she had been surrounded by the carefully constructed support system she had spent so much of her life maintaining. Her job, her family, her friends, all of which had taken up so much time, and given so much comfort that she’d never questioned it. She’d worked as a nurse, seemed the logical choice after spending much of her early life caring for others and had lived in s small terrace house in Middlesbrough, not far from where she had grown up. She’d left school and married young, as was the tradition in her family, to her childhood sweetheart Bill, who’d grown up 4 doors down on the same street as her. The two of them had been content, both working long hours in order to bring in enough money to give the kids what they had needed and enjoying the time they had off as a family and they had albums full of smiling photos depicting white Christmases and chocolate covered children at Easter but as the years went on she could never fight that thought. The thought that she wasn’t supposed to have, the thought that maybe there was more. She’d been raised to believe that her role was to be a mum, to raise children and to keep her husband happy, not to question that. As the children got older her and Bill had become more and more separate and once they had left home she finally realised how different from her he really was. They had continued living together and had a great friendship which she still cherished but she had known it for awhile, she needed to change something, to stop waiting for some great adventure to come her. They’d all called her crazy, at her age! And maybe she was, but she as she sat there, listening to the strange calls of the animals in jungles near by she knew that she was finally doing what she needed to be.

Self Help - Beau

He's not an emo, and he's not depressed
No one in his family has even died yet
He's never been to jail; never lost a wife
Yet for some reason, his existence is still riddled with strife

He graduated school at the top of his class
Never dropped out; he was too smart for that
Never been broke, never been homeless
But he's bad off, and everyone knows this

He's plagued by a chemical and its insidiousness
And 10 out of 10 doctors agree with this
He feels he's too smart for this world, so he drinks to squelch
The plaguing ideas others deem as insane. He calls drinking "self help".