Bloodletting (16 page)

I’d told them both then that it was Tegretol,a mood stabiliser I’d been prescribed some years ago to treat manic depression. I admitted that I’d had a few problems in the past but didn’t say that it was those same problems that had driven me across the country.

I was fine now, I told them. And I was.

I’d been fine since leaving Sydney.The move appeared to have done the trick.

‘It’s not as though it’s something to be ashamed about, of course,’ Annie had said. She wasn’t at all like family.

The salvage yard was a treasure trove, and I found part of a kitchen cupboard that I could use as a bedside table. Meanwhile, Annie had found a piece of stainless steel to put on top of it.And I found a bookcase, and a door that I could put over a table frame to make a desk.

At home that night, I rang my mother, excited, and told her about the salvage yard and my finds.

‘It’s not old junk I hope. I rather hoped you’d got beyond that.’ Igritted my teeth. She just couldn’t move on, could she? She just couldn’t get over the fact that I’d once lived in a warehouse and had worn damaged, second-hand clothes. After I’d left Melbourne, she remained on edge, seeing me as unpredictable, someone who was, at any moment, about to do something embarrassing. It meant that every conversation was fraught.

How long would it take to be forgiven?

I wished she were more like Annie.And then felt disloyal.She was my mother after all, and she didn’t mean things to be this way. Still, it was nice to be on the other side of the country and have a desert between us.

For less than the price of a small one-bedroom flat in inner city Sydney, I was able to rent a whole house in inner city Perth. Built in the 1940s, it had two bedrooms, one that I could use as a study. In the sitting room there was a large window overlooking a park.The park came with a lake and swans. Black swans. There was a small garden in the front, and, at the back, an ivy-covered garden shed.

A week after putting down a rental deposit, my furniture had been delivered. My bed, an antique I’d bought in a junk shop in Melbourne years ago, had a homemade base. I’d sticky-taped pine slats to the side rails. It was always meant to be a temporary measure, but somehow, I’d never got around to fixing it properly. Now seemed the right time. I looked at the base again and realised that if I anchored two boards on the rails, I could then secure the slats to them. I borrowed an electric drill and completed the job.

Fixing my bed had been simple—everything that seemed to be difficult elsewhere was easy in Perth. Work was only five minutes away by car and the closest shopping centre, Subiaco, had cafés, a supermarket and a cinema. My cousins were only ten minutes down the road.

I began going to gallery exhibitions, found clothes shops I liked, and generally enjoyed exploring the place.

I tried not to think about the fact that I still didn’t really know anyone who wasn’t related to me.

I didn’t want to impose on the cousins of my own age, who, despite being friendly, were busy. Similarly, my work mates, while pleasant, didn’t show any interest in doing anything outside work hours. They had their own lives. I could have asked them to introduce me to people when I first arrived, could have explained that I knew no-one. But I didn’t want them to think that I wasn’t settling in, or that I wasn’t able to meet people by myself.

As far as everyone was concerned then, I was happy. I liked my own company and was getting along well. I wasn’t lonely, I told myself. Only old ladies got lonely. In fact, things were going well. I had a real house, a real car and a real job. I had all the things an adult should have. It occurred to me that I actually was an adult: it was a frightening thought. I wasn’t ready yet. I hadn’t worked things out. I wasn’t poised, elegant, assured. I still felt like an awkward seventeen-year-old in many ways, and was in fact often still mistaken for a student. But I wasn’t and hadn’t been for years. I was now over 30. Many of my friends were married, and had businesses, or serious jobs. Many of them were happy.

Every time I spoke to Emily, or my old university friend Dee, I put the phone down feeling slightly depressed.They, to me, seemed to be living. Emily was now in Tokyo, going to nightclubs until 5 am, flying over to Hong Kong for weekends. Dee was an architect living with the man she loved in Bondi. Even Catherine, who I still remembered as a child with mulberry stains through her hair, was an economist, now married and living in London. Peter was a corporate solicitor.

Everyone, it seemed, was thriving. I felt a sense of frustration. Why couldn’t I thrive? What kept me from engaging with life? Even when I was content, I often felt removed, as though I were watching everyone else through a sheet of glass.

I was determined to make things work. I joined a gym and started attending life drawing classes. The key, I decided, was to do things that I enjoyed.A character in
Good Morning Midnight
,a Jean Rhys novel used the phrase ‘my little life’. It seemed to be an apt one. Perhaps that’s all it was. Perhaps I was wrong to want something more; perhaps there wasn’t anything more. Maybe this was how it was for everyone, and I was simply being unreasonable. The thing was, I’d tried everything: drugs, moving, changing jobs, changing clothes, losing weight— but I always ended up in the same place.

Whenever anyone asked me, I told them I was doing well. Increasingly, I made phone calls to my friends in the east, and even to my parents. I tried to avoid the enveloping sense of isolation.

There was another reason for not feeling as happy as I might.The job, which had started off difficult, was becoming more so by the day. I didn’t want to bother my predecessor, who’d by now had her baby, so I tried to muddle through.The one person who could have helped didn’t. He worked for me, but was too busy white-anting, and being bitter, to offer useful advice. He resented my age, sex and most of all my obvious inexperience, and made no secret of it. If he found a typo somewhere, say in a flyer, he’d fax it to me, and often to my boss as well. It reached the point where every time I did something, I was nervous. Even the things I knew I could do with my eyes closed, such as organising launches or publicity, became stressful and difficult. I began to actively hate going into the office. It seemed that everyone except my assistant and my boss wanted me to resign, but I couldn’t do it.

I knew I’d made the wrong decision in accepting the job in the first place but I was determined to stick it out. I’d made a commitment and I couldn’t bear the thought of admitting that I’d made yet another mistake. You can move only so many times before people start to notice and ask questions and I couldn’t afford for anyone to start asking questions.

My solution was to get fit.

Going to the gym gave me something to look forward to after work, and somewhere to go. It was either that, or go home and drink. I thought the gym would be less dangerous—I was wrong.

One morning, I woke up, as usual, and tried to sit up. As I did so, I became aware of the most excruciating pain in my neck. I lay down again and moved my toes, my legs, my arms.They were all fine. It was just my neck. I tried again, without success, to get out of bed. It hurt too much. Something had happened; I’d felt a crick the evening before when I’d been at a circuit training class, but had ignored it.

Deciding there couldn’t be anything really wrong with me, I made another attempt to get up, thinking that if I did it quickly, it might hurt less. It didn’t, but the pain didn’t last as long. I walked slowly towards the bathroom. Perhaps a shower would help. It didn’t, but by moving very carefully, I was able to work out which positions hurt and which were manageable. If I stayed perfectly still, for example, I could avoid the pain. Somehow, by making careful use of the car’s mirrors, I managed to drive myself to work.

It didn’t occur to me to stay home.

As I tried to lie down that night, I realised that it wasn’t going to happen. I was better off sleeping upright on the couch. So, after finding a quilt and another pillow, I settled down for the evening. It was a very long night, as every time I moved in my sleep, I was woken up with a blast of pain.

It was no better by the next day—worse if anything—so I rang Annie to find out if she could recommend a doctor. (Charles was aresearch scientist, and hadn’t actually treated anyone for years.)

I had seen a GP when I’d first arrived and needed a new prescription for Tegretol. He’d asked a few questions, and then said, ‘So why do you think you want to hurt yourself?’

I sat there, thinking it was a rhetorical question, and waiting for him to tell me.There was a few minutes’ silence, and then it dawned on me that he was actually waiting for me to answer. ‘I don’t know.’ Stress exacerbated the urge, but I didn’t know why I wanted to do it in the first place.

He then asked if I was religious.

It was an odd question. I told him that I’d been brought up as an Anglican, but that it wasn’t something I thought about.

He had a theory about the link between self-harm and religion, but said it was just a theory. Hardly even that. Just that there might be a link.

Historically, yes, there was, of course. I thought of hairshirts and self-flagellation. But I thought he was missing the point. I didn’t tell him, but I thought that if there was a link, it wasn’t to do with belief, but guilt.

He wrote out the prescription and I decided not to see him again.

The doctor Annie recommended practised a mixture of traditional and alternative medicine. He felt around my neck and said that he didn’t think it warranted an X-ray. Not yet. Anti-inflammatories and rest should do it.

‘Aside from the neck, how are you feeling?’ he asked.While I’d waited in the reception area, I’d filled in the required form, giving a few details of my medical history. He now had this in front of him.‘It must be tough coming over here by yourself from the east. How are you settling in? Have you met many people?’

‘Not really.’ It was embarrassing but true.

‘You’ve obviously got a history of depression.You don’t have any concerns about that at the moment, do you? Moving is a big thing.’

I took a deep breath.‘I’m fine. I want to drive my car into a brick wall, but otherwise I’m fine.’ Until I uttered those words, I hadn’t realised that was how I felt. I was shocked.

The doctor was calm. ‘Okay. Are you thinking about doing that any time soon?’

‘I can’t drive well enough at the moment.’ I smiled.

‘Actually, you shouldn’t be driving at all.’ He paused.‘Have you felt like doing something like this before?’

I wasn’t sure. I’d felt miserable, depressed, melancholy, destructive and angry but had I ever coldly, seriously contemplated giving up entirely? I’d taken too many pills, but that was because I needed a rest from myself. And I had driven into another car—but no, despite it all, I hadn’t.

This was a new development.

The truth was I felt possessed. I could cope with depression— I didn’t like it, but could deal with it.What I couldn’t deal with was not having control of my mind. And that’s what had happened.

I admitted, finally, and with huge relief, that I felt like cutting myself constantly: at work, when I woke up, when I was watching television,when I was driving,eating,showering.All the time.Visions of blood dripping down my forearms, of smeared knives, of used razors, of jagged wounds all collided with each other.The more I tried to put them out of my head, the more insistent they became. They were vivid and vicious.

They had also reached a new level of intensity and I was distraught.After all,they were what I had been running from for so many years now. They were why I left so many houses, so many cities. It was as though they had always been waiting for me here in Perth, and it was only a matter of time before I arrived and they found me alone, defenceless.

Part of me—and it was getting stronger daily—was convinced that the only way to stop them was to give in.To get a knife and get it over with. I knew the reason the thoughts were so persistent was because I wasn’t giving in.

All I needed to do was let go.

But if I started again, I wouldn’t be able to stop. I’d held off now for five years but just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to live this way anymore. I couldn’t. I just wanted them to stop and, apparently, was prepared to do whatever was necessary to make that happen.

‘I think we need to get you in to see a psychiatrist asap,’ said the doctor.While he was looking in his address book, he asked what kind of treatment I’d had in the past.

‘Not a lot, not really. Drugs.’ I listed them.‘A bit of group therapy while I’ve been in hospital from time to time but nothing else.’

‘Have you ever had any cognitive behavioural therapy?’

I didn’t even know what it was.

‘I think you’d really respond to it,’ he said.

Then he made an appointment for the following week for me with a psychiatrist who had a practice around the corner. I was to go back and see him in two days’ time.‘If you need to come in before then, just let me know. Here’s my card,’ and he wrote another number on the back.‘That’s my mobile. Call any time.’

As I left, he called out behind me, ‘Do send my best to Annie and Charles when you next see them’.Annie later told me he’d been to uni with one of her sons.

By the time I got home, I was exhausted. Admitting that I felt like I did meant that I also would have to confront the question of why. Now 31, I realised that if I didn’t work it out soon, my life wasn’t ever going to get better. I would never be happy if I didn’t confront it.Whatever ‘it’ was.

And what kind of therapy was he talking about anyway? Surely if it was something that was going to work, someone would have suggested it before?

While the stiffness and the acute pain that shot from my neck whenever I moved were disabling, they also brought intense relief. For a few precious days I was spared my mental torment and I had a chance to think about what I wanted, rather than just coping, from hour to hour.

I knew that I didn’t have long and that this was just a window of respite. It was like the intermission in a film.The images would be back, probably worse, once my body began to mend.