Bloodletting (8 page)

Home again, and feeling better, I winced when the owner of my flat cut down the only appealing feature of the entire property: the frangipani tree. I’d not complained when the bloke upstairs sold my bike to buy smack, nor did I leave when someone tried to climb in my bedroom window. (The bloke upstairs, perhaps feeling guilty about the bike, scared him off.) I tolerated the cold, the ugly orange tiles in the bathroom, the cramped conditions. It was the removal of the frangipani that did it.

It was time to move again.

It was time to live in a place I actually liked. The new flat was light, clean, had a luscious tropical garden, and was near the beach. For the first time since I’d lived in Sydney, I didn’t trip over people asking for money whenever I walked out the door.

My parents, delighted that I was out of the inner city, decided not only to lend me furniture, but to buy me some. Instead of three chairs, a futon and an old table, I had two bright yellow sofas, a coffee table and a real bed, with a mattress. My desk looked out onto the balcony.

I wanted to invite people into my house, and back into my life.

I was still taking antidepressants and mood stabilisers but fewer tranquillisers now. So I didn’t feel nearly as tired. No longer having to attend seminars meant that I could potter around the library when I felt like it, or work from home, or I could sit in a café and read. The choice was mine.

My hair, which had looked great when it had first been cut off, had over the months become straggly and out of shape. I’d dyed it myself several times, first red and then black, and I had to admit it looked awful. It was time for a professional to have a go at it.When it was cut, and back to its normal shade of light brown, it looked shiny and healthy.

And that was how I felt. Shiny and healthy.

And then I met Patrick.

I was 24, and still hadn’t got the hang of how to deal with men.There’d been many one-night stands,there’d been Alex,and there’d been Angus. I knew that Alex had never loved me,but I’d always told myself it didn’t matter. And I’d decided that I wasn’t worth loving a long time before I got involved with Angus.

Patrick was, in fact,Alex’s boss.We met late one night when I was having a drink with Alex.We’d finally stopped sleeping together and as a result were getting along much better, so Patrick was introduced to a relaxed version of me.We spent the night telling anecdotes, laughing and playing pool.

When Patrick called me the next day I was shocked.We’d got on well but I hadn’t sensed that he was interested in me—and I wasn’t used to blokes asking me out. My first thought was that perhaps it was a joke. He seemed too, too together to want to have anything to do with me.

I tried to sound indifferent and casual. Sure, I’d be happy to meet up. A drink perhaps?

No, he wanted me to come to dinner. He shared a house with two girls but they were going away for the weekend, so he’d have the kitchen,indeed whole house,to himself.As they also had a spa,I should bring my bathers.

It seemed ironic to me that just when I’d decided I’d rather be on my own than be the girl you have when you don’t have a girlfriend, along came someone cute, funny and warm who seemed to be genuinely interested in me.

As the weekend approached, I tried not to get excited.

As I knocked on Patrick’s door I felt nervous. He did seem a nice guy, but didn’t nice guys like nice girls? I wasn’t that. I wasn’t even a normal girl.The scars flashed through my mind.I’d worn a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans—my uniform—so he couldn’t see them immediately, but what about the spa?

I was torn. I didn’t want to show my scars but at the same time didn’t want the fact of them to stop me doing things. If he suggested the spa, I’d go in, and if I had to explain, I would. I’d tell him I’d had a bizarre ice-skating accident and that it was too painful to discuss. Flashbacks and all that. Actually, Alex might have already told him about me—after all, he’d given him my phone number. But I doubted it. Alex was clearly still ambivalent about me but had never been malicious.

I had to assume Patrick knew nothing.

He opened the door, smiling, and the smell of cooking wafted down the stairs behind him. He offered me champagne. I didn’t quite know what to do, so accepted a glass. And then another. He fiddled around in the kitchen and talked, and the more he talked, the more I drank. He was actually being nice to me and I couldn’t cope with it. Drinking seemed the best way to deal with the problem.

And then the topic of the spa came up. Apparently, it was huge, and in the garden, and a wonderful thing to do in winter. Relaxed now, I thought it sounded like a good idea, and I changed into my bathers in his room.

The contrast between the air temperature and the water was wonderful, and for those first few moments in the spa I understood its appeal.And then I began to see tiny stars,and feel pins and needles in my hands and feet. I was about to faint.

Patrick managed to get me back to his bedroom, where I lay on top of his—increasingly damp—doona and watched the room swirl about me. It wasn’t a good sign. As long as I don’t throw up, I thought, and concentrated on not doing so.

Patrick came in with a glass of water, and sat on the end of the bed.What could he do to help? Anything? Would food improve things? He was being embarrassingly considerate. All I wanted was to be at home. I asked him to call me a taxi.

Things really hadn’t gone well, and it was a pity. He really did seem nice. In a way I was relieved. He wouldn’t call again and I wouldn’t have to deal with all that a relationship entailed. It was better to be by myself.

The next day he rang. He apologised for the previous evening. It was his fault. He knew that champagne and spas didn’t mix. Could he take me out to make up for it? To a restaurant. Nowhere near water.

The restaurant was fantastic. Patrick was a chef, so I let him order and talk me through the menu. I hadn’t, until then, been aware of how little I knew about food. It had always been something to be wary of, something that would make me fat, or sick. At best it was something to give me enough energy to get out of bed. It wasn’t something that I actually knew how to appreciate.

Patrick was interested in everything, and knowledgeable without being opinionated.We discovered a mutual admiration for
Blake’s 7
,a creaky old BBC sci-fi drama. Patrick even knew a video store that stocked it on tape. I was beyond impressed.

After a few weeks, I began telling people I was seeing someone. Ieven told my parents.

‘That’s lovely, darling. So what does he do?’ said my mother.

I told her the name of his restaurant, hoping that its reputation might help.

‘Oh, a chef.That’s nice.’ It was evident from her tone that that wasn’t nice at all. ‘And what does he look like? Where did he go to school?’ Was he, in other words, suitable?

Some chefs don’t like to cook when they are off duty, but Patrick would arrive at my door, grocery bags under each arm. He wouldn’t tell me what we were going to eat, but would instead pour me a glass of wine and order me out of the kitchen. Invariably, whatever he made was delicious, and I began to relax enough to actually enjoy tastes and textures. I turned my mental calorie counter off. Occasionally, if I asked very nicely, he’d let me watch as he prepared something impossibly complicated, but I wasn’t allowed to do any work other than set the table.‘You’ve been studying,’ he’d say,‘you need a break’.

I’d find chocolates hidden in drawers and cupboards after he left the following day.

Part of me kept expecting to find something wrong with Patrick. I even tried to bait him, to get him to show the dark, unpleasant side that had to exist. He certainly smoked too much, and drank a lot. But these were things with which I could cope.When Alex first heard we were going out, he had phoned me to warn me that Patrick had a coke habit, which even if it were true—and if so he kept it well hidden—was a bit rich coming from Alex, who maintained that the best sex he’d ever had was with a tree, while on acid.

When Patrick saw my scars, he didn’t ask about them, or quickly change the topic. Instead he held out his own arms, which were zigzagged with white lines.‘Oven burns from taking out trays.You’d be surprised how many people assume I had a tough childhood.’ He laughed, and was more interested in what I was writing than the history of my mental health.As far as he was concerned, what was important was that I was fine now.And I was.I was more than fine.I was content.

He told me about his childhood in north Queensland, where in the wet season his family’s mobile home had to be tied down so as not to live up to its name. He told me about his birth, which happened at exactly the same time as man first landed on the moon.As a result,he was a blue baby—the umbilical cord had wrapped itself around his neck while everyone was in front of a portable TV watching the broadcast of Neil Armstrong making his historic walk. In turn, I told him about my childhood: the farm which I’d loved, the move to the city which I’d seen as such an adventure, and then life at uni. I even told him about the cutting and the depression. It seemed like a long time ago, even though it was only months since I’d last been in hospital. It felt like I was talking about a different person.

There was a problem, however. Patrick was planning to move back to Queensland. He’d told me the first time we met but I kept hoping he’d change his mind.There was no way I was going to suggest he stayed, that was up to him. But I hoped that maybe I’d be worth it.

As his departure date approached I grew increasingly tense. He talked about Brisbane, and was excited about the prospect of somewhere laid-back and warm, of a new job. He hadn’t decided where. He’d wait until he arrived. He didn’t talk about what would happen to our relationship, and he didn’t use the word ‘we’. Clearly this was a solo project—it always had been and I hadn’t changed that. I hadn’t been enough to change that.

So I broke up with him.

I didn’t say I’d miss him, that I’d be lonely without him, or even say that I really cared about him. Instead I lied. I told him that going out with someone and studying at the same time was too difficult. He was too much of a distraction. I wished him well in Queensland. He looked surprised but didn’t argue, and that’s what really hurt. I’d taken a gamble and lost; all I was left with was his Christmas present. Candlesticks.

Alex rang a few days later, saying he’d heard I’d broken up with Patrick.

‘Was he upset?’ I asked.

‘No. Not really. More puzzled, I’d say.’ I could always count on Alex for honesty when I didn’t want it. ‘He thought things were going well.’

‘They were,’I said.‘They were going very well.That wasn’t what it was about.’ Alex wasn’t the person to hear that I didn’t want to be the one left.That I was just getting in before Patrick did.That Patrick had been the first bloke who’d cared when my birthday was, who really cared about me. I hung up.

At first I managed pretty well. I tried not to think about Patrick. I tried to keep up with friends and I tried to write. As long as I keep busy, I thought, I’ll get through.

Emily, the friend I’d once hallucinated back into my life, was now back in the country for real.While Peter and Catherine focused on my depression and the self-mutilation, Emily didn’t. She didn’t ignore it exactly,just didn’t engage with it.To her,I was Vic,the same person she’d always known. Sure, I behaved in odd and disturbing ways from time to time, but didn’t everyone?

She lived nearby with her boyfriend, and after I broke up with Patrick, I spent more and more time with them. But it wasn’t enough.

The fact was, most of my days were spent sitting in front of a computer in a one-bedroom flat, and it was beginning to get to me. I was still trying to work out an argument and it was proving difficult. I’d had it for a while, but ideas are slippery things, and I couldn’t quite grasp it now.

Then, like a virus that never really leaves but goes into remission, just waiting for a chink in your immune system, the images and urges began to come back. Maybe pain would sharpen my thoughts.Wake me up.And if not, it was an appropriate punishment for my stupidity. I was stupid, stupid, stupid, I told myself. It didn’t occur to me that the medications I was taking might be making things more difficult or that I was more upset about Patrick than I wanted to admit. And that it was affecting my ability to work.

Instead I struggled on,writing what I could when I could.When it all became too hard, I went to bed, no matter what time of day it was. Sleeping was better than giving in to the urge to hurt myself, no matter how much I believed I deserved it. I desperately didn’t want to get dragged back into that pattern.The razors, the scars, the stitches, the hospitals. I wouldn’t do it.

Eventually, I managed to write something that seemed to make sense. My supervisor had seen sections of it but as she put it,I was ‘circling’. I certainly had something but it wasn’t focused yet. I kept working, eventually producing the required number of words. If it was accepted, I’d get my Master’s. If not—I wasn’t going to think about that. I couldn’t read back over it and tie up all the loose ends, and make sure it made sense, because I was afraid I would destroy it instead. By not checking my draft, I was protecting it, and, as a consequence, myself. I’d become so paranoid about my inability to write coherently that I couldn’t read over what I’d written. It wasn’t the first time this had happened, but it was the worst possible timing.This was an English literature thesis after all: it was supposed to be at least coherent and well written, if not wonderfully original.