Loud noise and steam filled the kitchen. Just like me, my coffeemaker struggled in the morning to get going. Through the kitchen window, I saw how a turtledove landed in the middle of my courtyard. I had been awakened by an incessant cooing. It was a beautiful spring morning. I should be cheerful. Go to the city park and enjoy the sun. Sighing, I walked towards my laptop, holding a large cup of coffee. According to doctor Peeters, coffee wasn’t good for me, but it was the only thing that kept me going. This morning, I had been staring at the ceiling for half an hour again after my alarm had gone off, barely able to move. Sometimes it all just seemed so pointless. Waking up. Wanting to do things, but being too tired to do them. Coming up with a way to spend this day without having the feeling that I was just doing something to pass the time.
The note lay next to me on the table. PHOSPHATIDYLSERINE. He had written it in neat capital letters, exactly in the middle of the piece of paper. I typed in the word. It had been a while since I last looked things up on the internet. The first weeks after I got fired, it had nearly been a day job to find a solution for my ailment online, but I soon got lost on the internet, discouraged by the abundance and way too often contradictory information on pseudo medical websites, blogs and forums for people with similar complaints. Not to mention the usually heartfelt tips from friends and acquaintances.
Have you considered acupuncture?
Haven’t you just got a shortage of magnesium?
It’s all in your head. Go and see a good psychiatrist.
Buy a new mattress.
I felt myself becoming disheartened at the prospect of spending hours browsing the internet, but it didn’t take very long before I had found a website that looked reliable.
‘Phosphatidylserine is an important substance that can be found in a highly concentrated form in the brains and the nerve tissue. It influences an important neurotransmitter that plays a big part in the nerve system. It improves the transfer of stimuli. The glucose metabolism improves as well, which is important, because one third of all glucose in our body goes to our brains. Finally, phosphatidylserine also causes an elevation of dopamine in your brains, which, in turn, leads to a decrease of hypersensitivity.’
H’m, that sounded good. I had read about dopamine before. It allowed for having less impressions to process. I knew all too well what it was like to be engulfed in impressions. A few months ago, a friend took me to a lecture on hypersensitivity. I went with her to do her a favor, but I ended up listening with my mouth hanging open for two hours to the account of the woman who gave the lecture. That night I discovered I was hypersensitive. The over stimulation, the violent emotions, the wariness. That you took everything in and processed everything so much deeper. The need to isolate yourself regularly, even though you’re actually really social on occasion. The often nearly self-destructive empathy for others, that makes you put yourself second. With all its consequences.
That had been a huge problem when I still worked at the call center. It hadn’t been so much my own stress that tripped me up, but more that of my colleagues and the frustration of the customers. All those emotions seemed to hang in the air and pushed down on me. In that time, I also discovered that my sense of smell and ability to hear were more developed than those of most other people. My ex occasionally joked that I could hear an approaching thunder storm even before the nervous whining of the dogs in the neighborhood began.
The discovery that I was hypersensitive made me view my life in a new perspective. Not only my present life, but also my youth and childhood. How often hadn’t I burst into tears because of a trifle? How often hadn’t I locked myself in my room for hours after my father had cried out that I was way too sensitive and that I shouldn’t overreact so much?
I read voraciously about the subject and learned to see the good side of my hypersensitivity as well. I had learned to be nice to myself. And I trained myself in ‘positive thinking’. Even though it remained baffling how you could think purely positively for more than a few minutes. Fretting was just part of my nature.
So it definitely sounded good, those effects of phosphatidylserine. However, I had read so much about supplements and tried out quite a few of them. I hadn’t experienced any really big results so far. Most supplements had mainly caused a stomach ache.
I took another large gulp of coffee and scrolled through the information I had found. Odd that I had never found anything about this during earlier searches. Had this all been backed scientifically?
In all respects, it wasn’t a new supplement, I read. Research had been conducted since the seventies which showed that phosphatidylserine had a positive effect on the memory and the mood.
Moreover, I read that the substance was gained from soy lecithin and the enzymes from savoy cabbage and that you can just get in a pharmacy. I sat up straight, emptied my cup of coffee and massaged my sore shoulder. Was this the solution I had been looking for for so long?
I was hungry again. I was nearly always hungry. The past years I had already gained a few pounds and it seemed that this trend would only continue. Before I had chronic fatigue syndrome, I was really active and got rid of all the excess calories with an intense training session. Ever since doing sports wasn’t an option anymore, the arrow of the scales kept moving further and further to the right. I cut an apple in four pieces and ate them one by one while I paced up and down the living room. When I had finished my apple, my phone buzzed. A text message of J.P.
Did you find it?
For a moment, I got the uncomfortable feeling that he knew I had just done research. Of course that made no sense at all.
So this phosphatidylserine is the solution you were talking about?
I was deliberately curt in my text message, if only because he was as well.
It took a while before he answered. The turtle dove on the courtyard was joined by a second one. I started when my phone buzzed in my hand.
No.
That was all it said. A few seconds later it buzzed again. I considered deleting the message without even reading it and removing J.P.’s number from my phone. This game had been going on for long enough. However, my curiosity won over my feeling of indignation.
It’s a part of the solution. Tomorrow, you’ll hear about the rest. Ten o’clock, at the MAS.
Ten o’clock at the MAS? Who did he think he was?
I can’t tomorrow.
It didn’t take long before I got an answer. Of course you can. See you tomorrow.
I repressed the urge to throw my phone to pieces against the wall. The worst part was that he was right – I really didn’t have any plans the next day and even though I tried to delude myself into thinking that I might not be going, deep down inside, I knew all too well that I would be there. I opened the back door, which made a noise that reminded of two cats fighting. Frightened, the doves flew off. I walked to the middle of the courtyard and, with my eyes closed, went to stand in the small beam of sunlight that only managed to reach this place with great difficulty. When I opened my eyes, I saw someone watching me from behind one of the many windows of the apartment buildings at the backside of my small house. I regularly sat on one of the chairs in my courtyard and occasionally, I waved at the older elderly people who sat at their windows all day. Now it suddenly felt oppressive. I imagined that that someone was looking at me from behind every window. Every window became an eye. An eye that was aimed at me day and night. Suddenly the shadow of the apartment building seemed an awful lot like the shadow of a tall man.