Am I Normal Yet? (7 page)

“How did it go?” she asked, before I'd even sat down. Her pen was already poised above her notepad.

I picked up the dilapidated rabbit. “Aren't you going to ask me how I am first?”

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

“So how did the date go?”

I shook my head. “You're getting it all wrong. We're supposed to sit here in awkward silence first, because obviously I'm not fine, that's why I'm in therapy. Then we make small talk for at least five minutes before I open up.”

Sarah narrowed her eyes. “You've imposed rituals into therapy, haven't you?”

“No,” I said sheepishly. Maybe I had a
bit.
“It's just you're not saying stuff in the order you usually do.”

“And does that make you feel uncomfortable?”

I narrowed my eyes back at her. “I'm in therapy for an anxiety-related disorder. EVERYTHING makes me uncomfortable.”

Sarah let out a small laugh. “Fair enough. Let's do this the usual way.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you have this week's Worry Outcome survey?”

I rummaged in my bag and plucked out a wadded ball of paper. It took a moment to flatten out the creases on my knee. “Here it is.”

“Thanks.” Sarah leaned over and took the paper, fanning it out, scrutinizing it.

A Worry Outcome survey is a therapy thing – a thing you only get to know about if you've been through The System.

I remembered the first time Sarah asked me to fill one out.

My first Worry Outcome survey

I was rocking in the chair, my foot buckling back and forth on the carpet, riding through the relentless adrenalin surges. Everything looked dangerous. Even Sarah was dangerous. I'd spent the car journey convincing myself she was actually a serial killer, who earned trust from her patients before killing them and making it look like suicide.

“Now, Evelyn,” she'd said, putzing about on her computer. She hit enter and a sheet of paper slid noiselessly out of the attached printer. “I'm going to give you something called a Worry Outcome survey. Have you heard of them before?”

I shook my head.

“It's just like homework. Nothing scary.”
Like she knew what scary was
…
“
But I want you to take this sheet around with you…”
Around where? My bedroom, i.e. the only place I spend my life?
“And whenever you get a worry, I want you to fill out the first three boxes.”

She held out the sheet. I didn't want to touch it. Where had it been? Where had her hands been? What if Sarah'd been to the toilet before our session and not washed her hands afterwards with soap and water? I pictured the bacteria multiplying on her fingers. I could almost see their luminous glare in real life. I whimpered away from the sheet.

Understanding, for this session at least, she put it on the table. “Let's look at it from here, shall we? You can pick it up with gloves later.”

I thanked her with my eyes.

“Now…as you can see…the first column is the date. So note down the date you get that worry…”

The paper had a giant table on it. It looked like this:

“So, I'm what? Supposed to fill it out when?”

“Whenever you have a worry,” Sarah replied.

“Every single one?”

“Every single one…well…if they start to repeat themselves…just tally it. Then we can see each week if your worry came true and, if not, it may help you challenge some of these unhelpful thoughts. Now…do you think you can do that?”

I nodded slowly. It sounded a lot less scary and a lot more manageable than the other crap she'd tried to get me to do since I was unsectioned. Like only wash my hands ten times after going to the loo instead of fifteen times. And drinking fresh milk rather than those tiny capsules of long-life milk that can survive a nuclear holocaust.

“Great.” She beamed and pushed the piece of paper over. I stared at the one lonely sheet of A4, looking all hopeful on the mahogany table.

I started laughing. Really laughing. A snort even happened. Sarah looked around self-consciously. “What is it?”

“Are you kidding me?” I asked, gesturing towards the paper.

“What? What's so funny? I don't get it.”

Bless her, she looked genuinely baffled. I guess I didn't laugh much in that room. More sobbed. And wailed. And yelled, “NO YOU CAN'T MAKE ME.”

I laughed myself out and pointed to the paper.

“You've told me to list every worry I have, as it happens, and you've only given me one sheet of paper?” I snorted again.

Getting it, she smiled. “Do you not think one sheet is enough?”

“I think you should print out some more.”

She smiled more broadly, and hit the keyboard. Another survey slid out.

“And again.”

Another slid out.

“And again.”

And one more.

“Surely that's enough?” she said, after the fifth sheet was added to the pile.

“You have no idea what you're dealing with.”

At the next appointment, I presented her with my filled-out survey. This is what some of it looked like. Not all of it – I don't want to be personally responsible for the death of the rainforest.

On and on it went. Pages filled after pages. I'd even started writing on the backs of them. I'd got a lump on my finger from the non-stop scribbling. Every single thought, over and over, sillier and sillier, and yet scarier and scarier as those days went by.

When I handed it in, Sarah took one look and said, “So, yeah, you did need all those five sheets, didn't you?”

And so it went on.

But not any more…

Present day again: I hand my new Worry Outcome survey to Sarah. Only one side of paper. Never, ever, did I think I would see the day when I only used one side of paper. For a week. A whole week! Oh the pride in being normal.

Every single session I was amazed how blasé Sarah was with my Worry Outcomes. She'd just collect them like they were art homework and, if we had time, we might go through one of two of the worries at the end.

“So,” she said, scanning this week's. “Take it the date didn't go well then?”

“You could say that.”

“So let's fill out the rest of the columns…” She grabbed her pen. “You were worried the date wouldn't go well…and…it didn't. So would you say the worry came true?”

“He slept with someone else, Sarah. On our first date. Would you call that ‘the date going well'?”

She mumbled something.

“What was that?”

She didn't make eye contact as she repeated herself. “I did warn you…”

I crossed my arms. “You're going to lecture me on boys? You are an NHS Cognitive Behavioural Therapist. Tax payers are spending a fortune for you to help me get better so I can become a functioning member of society. Are we really going to go down the ‘boys are no good' route? Can't I just charge that to my new friends?”

She always changed the subject when I got difficult.

Effortlessly, she looked down to the bottom worry. “Ah, yes, your new friends. You're worried they'll find out about…about what?”

I gestured to the therapy room. The beige walls, the box of crappy toys, the nondescript desk… “About this. Being here. Why I have to come here.”

That prompted a scribble in the pad. “And what's wrong with coming here?”

A lump trampolined up my throat, as it always did when the topic came up. My eyes prickled with Yet. More. Tears.

“You know…it's embarrassing. They won't get it.”

“What won't they get?”

“Any of it.”

I crossed my arms and made the “I'm-not-going-to-talk-about-this-one” face and she let me off this time.

“All right…we can discuss that one later. You've written here that you're scared you're ‘going mad' again?” She tapped the sheet with the end of her pen. “What's that all about?”

I thought of the knitting-needle-in-my-guts moment before the date. The bad thoughts. Immediately my tummy began to swim in the extra adrenalin.

“Before the date…” I started. “I was…washing my hands…just the once…but then I wanted to wash them again…and again…” I remembered touching Ethan's hand and winced. “And again.”

Unperturbed, Sarah asked, “What else was going on before the date? How were you behaving?”

“I dunno…I was a bit jumpy, I guess. Wound up. My brain did that thing where it stepping-stoned from place to place and my heart was beating all hard. But it was okay…but then I wanted to wash my hands. I've not felt like that in a while…” The throat lump soared up on the trampoline again, wedging itself just behind my tonsils. I tried to swallow. She gave me a moment to compose myself. They're never “there there”, Cognitive Behavioural Therapists. They're more like having a strict teacher that you know cares about their students deep down somewhere. The most sympathy I've ever got out of Sarah was a silent passing of the tissue box.

“We've discussed this, Evie, remember? That these thoughts could come back now you're reducing your medicine?”