Bloodletting (19 page)

I unlocked the door and was greeted with a musty smell. Nervous about leaving my windows open too far, I hadn’t ever been able to get rid of it, even when I was at home. One of the things I’d not known about Perth, until I moved there, was that it had one of the highest crime rates in the country.The news always seemed to be full of theft and violent break-ins. My assistant’s house had been broken into twice in the last six weeks. The second time she’d been at home and the intruder, seeing her, had continued walking in. It wasn’t until he noticed her boyfriend that he turned and ran.

After putting some clean clothes in my backpack, I went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. Sitting down at the kitchen table, I began to understand how much I hated living there.The house was large and light, but it was also empty and cold.

The neighbour’s dog was barking, as usual. It barked nonstop, day and night, and had done since I’d moved in. One morning, after yet another evening lying there thinking of ways to strangle it, I’d complained to the owner. She brightly told me that one of the other neighbours had also asked her to do something about it, so she was going to get a sedative from the vet.The poor little thing, I knew how it felt.

I locked the door behind me, dreading having to return. Not just to the house but to the job and life that went with it. It had been my decision to move to Perth, and I’d gone hoping that things would be better.The eighteen months left in my contract stretched relentlessly before me. But it wasn’t a prison sentence, I thought as I walked back to the clinic, there was no reason that I shouldn’t just leave and go back to Sydney. The more I thought about it, the more excited I became. I’d resign, pack up my things, and go back east. It might be admitting defeat but if I was better already, then surely that was a win? Couldn’t I just look at it as cutting my losses? As a failed experiment?

During the next morning’s session I discovered that I wasn’t the only one who had found going home difficult but I was the only who planned to move as a result.There was another member of the group who was from Sydney, and who found Perth a difficult place to meet people but, unlike me, he wasn’t alone. He was happily married, with children. While his kids were enjoying their new school, his wife her new job, he was missing his friends, the local RSL, his Saturday golf game. As part of the program was to try to help other members of the group with their problems, we asked if he had been out in Perth, if he’d joined a golf club. His answer was no. And it quickly became obvious that he wasn’t actually trying to make new friends but expected them to find him.

There were similarities in our situations, but unlike this man, I had a choice. No-one was going to care if I left.

Ray wasn’t impressed with my solution. I still wasn’t dealing with my problems apparently. I was running away. Again. Doing what he called ‘a geographical’. (There was actually a name for it.) He went on, reminding me about what I’d told them all. How many times I’d moved in the past, and how it hadn’t worked. I couldn’t run away from myself.This was my opportunity to break my habit, and to settle down.

But I knew this time that it wasn’t about running away, it was about going home.We’d been asked at one point to do a ‘map’ of the people we felt made up our support networks. Mine were in Melbourne and Sydney.When I’d been asked to do it again, without factoring in the phone, there wasn’t much to it.

Ray was adamant. I could build a network in Perth. I could use the other people in the program as a start, and expand.

Everyone agreed.And I didn’t need to stay by myself if I didn’t want to. Other people in the course said I could have dinner with them, or visit them. Two of the women even said I could stay with them if Iwanted. I didn’t need to be alone.

‘Running away isn’t the answer.’ He’d made his point, but Ray couldn’t help repeating himself.

That evening, I had a visit from my psychiatrist.

He’d been speaking to Ray.What was this about moving back to Sydney?

I told him. I’d rather be with family and friends, and, if necessary, poor and unemployed for a while, than stay in Perth. It was a long, long way from anywhere.A six-hour flight from Sydney,or three-day drive— if you didn’t stop on the way. He nodded. If I felt it was the right thing to do, and that I would genuinely be happier, then I should go. He knew about the ‘geographicals’ but was more concerned about me. I would be isolated again once I left hospital. I understood more about how my mind worked, but while I was feeling better, Iwasn’t yet well. The images hadn’t disappeared, and, as I now admitted, had been overwhelming when I had returned alone to my house.

We both knew things were worse than I was letting on to the group. He told me to think about it. It was my choice, not anyone else’s.

When I discussed it with Melissa, she thought it was definitely the right thing to do this time and that the job situation would resolve itself.

I made my decision.This wasn’t giving in but choosing, for once, to make things easier for myself. I rang Felicity, a disconcertingly glamorous blonde friend from uni, who’d always said that I was welcome to stay with her when I was in town. She was delighted when I called, and said I could stay as long as I liked.

‘You know,’ she added, ‘I was wondering how you were. I always worry when I haven’t heard for a while. Perth sounded like an odd choice, even for you.’

On the final day of the CBT course, Ray asked us how we were all feeling about leaving.

I was nervous, and said so. I knew I’d be okay over the weekend, as Melissa was staying, but I was worried about afterwards.

When I told Ray that I wasn’t ready to go home he was dismissive. I was just suffering a bit of anxiety which was perfectly normal. It wouldn’t be any easier to leave if I stayed another week. He still thought I was doing the wrong thing by going back to Sydney.This wasn’t the way the course was supposed to end. I was supposed to stay in touch with the other patients and report for follow-up group sessions. Iwas breaking the rules. It was evident that he also wasn’t pleased that my psychiatrist was supporting my decision.

I went home and Melissa and I spent the weekend doing ordinary, girlie things—going to the movies, shopping, and just hanging out. It felt like a very long time since I’d done that with someone else, and I’d forgotten that it could be fun.That it was different with other people. I’d tried to train myself to be content to be alone, not just occasionally, but most of the time. I hadn’t been very successful.

On Sunday evening Melissa flew home and it was just me again.

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7

At work on Monday morning, I wasn’t able to concentrate on anything. My mind, filled with ugliness, was in turmoil. Over and over I said to myself, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this. It wasn’t an affirmation that Ray would have approved of but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about coping strategies, negative self-talk, or anything else I’d learnt in the last two weeks: all I knew was that I shouldn’t be at the office and that I couldn’t be at home.

At 10.30 am I rang Dr P. He had half an hour available at lunchtime.

‘I can’t do it. I can’t cope,’ I said in tears again in his rooms.

He suggested another week in hospital might be a good idea.

My boss, who I’d always found a little intimidating, looked concerned when I said I’d come back too early.When I had first told her I was going into hospital, she’d asked which one. ‘I don’t really want to go into it,’ I’d said, aware that the clinic was well known—only known— as a psychiatric hospital. I’d given her Annie’s number should she need to get in touch.

‘You don’t look well,’ she’d said, as I sat in her office that afternoon. ‘Is another week really going to be enough?’

This was the time to tell her.‘Not really, but it’s a bit complicated. I think—and my doctor agrees—that I’d be better going back east.This isn’t something that is just going to go away.’There was a silence, and it became clear that I was going to have to tell her the truth.‘It’s not terminal—just inconvenient.’ I didn’t know whether she would under
stand but decided it didn’t matter.

I told her about the depression and the hospital. It was too much to explain about the thoughts, so I just said that I was having trouble with them. She could interpret this however she chose.

What I didn’t expect was sympathy. ‘I’m really sorry that things have been so difficult,’ she said. She had a cousin with the same problem. He had a good job, great family and was great fun. She sighed. He had been hospitalised a number of times, for both mania and depression. ‘I can understand why you didn’t say anything. He doesn’t talk about it either.’

We were both silent for a moment. I didn’t know what to say.

She then moved on to more practical matters.‘When do you think you’ll go?’

I said in a month or so. No longer.

The final week in hospital, while not as highly structured as the first two, was still busy. There were other group therapy sessions I was encouraged to attend, on relationships and coping with day-to-day life. After the intensive CBT program they felt too easy, and they were also less intimate. Patients didn’t have a chance to form any kind of bond, which meant that often, they just didn’t care.

When they asked why I was there, I didn’t have to think about my answer.‘Not cutting myself was driving me nuts.’

A small, pixie-faced woman, looked at my forearm, and then said dis-missively,‘You’ve done it before: it’s not like you do it to kill yourself, do you?’ She was bitter.‘I overdosed and unfortunately my husband found me before the pills worked.Wanting to cut yourself is nothing. Nothing.’

It was a line I’d heard before, and one that really went to the heart of the matter. I too had struggled with the idea that wanting to cut myself was nothing—but it wasn’t. It had almost destroyed me. But if even I found it difficult to understand, how could I expect anyone else to? One of the reasons that the bipolar diagnosis had appealed was that people understood it. I knew it didn’t cover all my problems but it explained enough.

I’d met a man several years before. He was in his mid-thirties, gorgeous looking in a sharp-featured, Ralph Fiennes sort of way, and a successful corporate solicitor. One day he started having chest pains and breathing difficulties. Initially fearing a heart attack, he’d seen various specialists but after a number of tests, they told him that it wasn’t a physical problem but a psychological one. He was suffering from panic attacks. By the time I knew him, he’d been forced to admit himself to hospital in order to sort them out and was acutely embarrassed about the condition. He hadn’t ever thought that kind of thing would happen to him, and he didn’t understand it. Didn’t understand how it could have happened—and didn’t want anyone to know. I got the feeling that he would have been happier if he really had had a heart problem.

I knew how he felt.

I understood that need for something tangible. Sometimes, when I was in hospital I looked at the other patients and felt inadequate. As though I hadn’t done enough damage, didn’t have enough scars. If I’d been really sick, I sometimes told myself, I would have had more.Then perhaps people would believe that it wasn’t just a matter of pulling myself together.

It was only in Perth that I came to understand that my problem had ceased to be about cutting long ago. My real problem was about not cutting. If I had given in to myself, if I still used a razor, I wouldn’t have been tormented.

It really was not cutting that had been driving me mad.

Not cutting, and trying to ignore it.

That week after the CBT program, I began to put into practice some of the techniques I’d learnt, but not all. Many aspects of the program still seemed too simplistic to bother with. I didn’t, for instance, keep a mood diary with details about how I felt at certain times of the day. I knew my mood varied—I didn’t need written proof.We’d also been encouraged to treat ourselves to special things, to take time out for ourselves.This was something else I didn’t do: I found the idea of self-nurturing too close to the idea of self-indulgence, so wasn’t comfortable with it. Besides, I lived alone, so wasn’t everything I did for me?