Suggestible Me Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Suggestible me


I had ended up in a country with a strange pub culture
and obsession with the class which I found restrictive.
No posh pubs if the working class and not slumming it
if you were middle class, and the rich lived in Bermuda.
I was full of terror and uncertainty this world was
not of my liking to get through the day I drank a lot
mainly at home or in the park.
My new wife said I was an alcoholic and a nice man
from AA came and took me to a meeting where people
sat around a table talking about themselves and how much
they had suffered, while I am just getting out, was a full
of the terror of agoraphobia.
I suddenly had many friends, but they were mates only
as long as I went to their meeting, that over time became
repetitive like reading the same book a hundred times.
I stopped going to their gatherings went to the library instead
and spent happy days reading, but lost my friends.
Finally, after a nervous breakdown, I got much help from a psychologist to confront my fears.
But I was never at ease in this country I left and is blessed
in Portugal where no one knows my name.