Am I Normal Yet?

by Holly Bourne

  I nodded. “Oh okay. That’s…er…weird. So, you like films, huh?” I gestured towards the screen at the front of the classroom, and then cursed myself for stating something so obvious.

  “Yeah. I’m not much of a reader, I prefer my stories in visual form. How about you? You’re, like, the only girl in this class, have you noticed?”

  “Oh, am I? Right…” And we both blushed, his sculpted cheeks and my normal puffy cheeks each glowing red. “But, yeah, I love films…they’re escape, aren’t they?”

  Escape was undermining it. Films had been my saviour over the past few years. The roll of opening credits the only thing that could distract my brain when it swan-dived into the neurotic abyss. I must’ve watched hundreds of movies during my meltdown. Locked in my sterilized room, a tiny TV in the corner, I was able to lose myself in the stories and get caught up in the characters. For two hours at a time, I could forget all the whirring non-stopness of gut-twisting anxiety. I could merge myself into the lives of people capable of leaving the house, capable of having storylines.

  “I guess they are,” Oli said. “So, anyway, shall we do this assignment then?” He couldn’t quite hold eye contact. Which was a shame because his eyes were a shocking green colour. Like basil, or something more romantic-sounding than basil. But basil is a pretty lovely shade of green to have eyes made out of.

  “Yes. Sure.” His shyness made me shy and I found myself playing with my hair. “So what are your top three films since 2000?”

  “Well, Fight Club, obviously,” he started, ticking it off on his finger. He didn’t even need to think about it. He’d obviously honed the list loads of times in his head. I was impressed. “Then Pan’s Labyrinth, and, well, Donnie Darko. Of course.”

  I nodded, secretly correcting him in my head. Fight Club came out in 1999, but he seemed too shy for me to say so. “Donnie’s my number four. He doesn’t quite make it into the top three though.”

  “Ahh, so what are yours?”

  I didn’t need to think about it either. “Amélie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Big Fish,” I reeled off.

  It was his turn to nod, and it was an appreciative one. “Interesting choices…for a girl.”

  “And that’s supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Well…er…” Oli realized his mistake and he spluttered and stumbled over his answer. Shy shy shy shy SHY. “It’s just…erm…well…not a regular girl’s top three, I guess…in a good way…seriously…in a good way…I meant that in a good way.” His basil eyes downturned and I could see him hating himself internally. It felt weird, making someone else nervous rather than being the nervous one. Quite powerful. I liked it. He was so shy though that I dropped his “good film choices for a girl” comment. Maybe I fancied him a bit.

  “So what film got you into film then?” This is a film-person question. We’ve all got one. The film that made films a way of life, rather than just passive entertainment.

  “The Godfather, Part II.”

  I burst out laughing and Oli’s cheeks burned brighter.

  “What’s wrong with The Godfather, Part II?” he asked, a bit mortified.

  “Nothing’s wrong with it – it’s a great film. It’s just also the biggest gender cliché ever of a bloke’s favourite movie. And you just made that comment about me having good film choices for a girl.”

  “But, it’s Al Pacino…” His eyes didn’t meet mine and I let it drop. Again. I really did fancy him, I guess.

  “Never mind. I like The Godfather too.”

  “Oh…cool…” He stared at the desk. “So what film got you into films then?”

  I smiled, recollecting the first time I’d seen it. “It’s a weird one. Edward Scissorhands.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  The first time I saw Edward Scissorhands

  I’d just started to get sick, and no one knew why or what or how yet. Mum had tried to force me to go to school again, but I’d barricaded myself into my bedroom by pushing all my furniture against the door.

  Have you ever barricaded yourself into a room? Honestly, it’s the most definitive way of confirming that, yes, maybe you have gone mental.

  And that confirmation unleashes the emotional landslide – where, suddenly, after fighting for so long, your brain gives up and erodes in on you, spiralling your thoughts into monsters who seize the city and tell you nothing is going to be okay ever again. That this is your new life now. Fear, and pain, and confusion. And your mum hammering at the door, screaming that she’s calling the police for your truanting, and you don’t even care – just as long as you don’t have to leave the house.

  Eventually Mum gave up – thinking if she stopped “giving me attention” I would “snap out of it”, because that’s what every parent of someone who gets head-ill believes at some stage.

  I was left in peace.

  To ruminate into madness.

  The problem with that is, there’s only so much delirious spiralling you can do before your brain gets a tad bored. Not bored enough to move the furniture, open the door and say, “I’ll go to school now.” But sustained crying was exhausting and, without drinking, due to the barricade and such, it got hard to keep producing tears. So eventually I started looking for things to do and found an old DVD Jane’d lent me – she’d been going through a Johnny Depp obsessive period – and shoved it into my laptop.

  Films had never been a huge deal to me before. They were things in the background in a friend’s room, or a way of passing time on Christmas Day when the family is bored of one another. But the moment Edward Scissorhands began, with its haunting music and blizzarding snow and magical fairytaleness, it did the impossible. It made me forget what was going on in my head. For one blissful hour and a half I was distracted by this story of an odd boy who didn’t fit in, in a boring town just like mine. It was like going on brain holiday. And it was so beautiful and poignant and perfect. That was the film that did it.

  And for the following years film was my only escape. I chased gorgeous story after gorgeous story, usually old romances, my film pile growing ever bigger and my movie knowledge ever greater as my brain got gradually worse, and then much worse, and then better.

  “So why Edward Scissorhands?” Oli asked, his basily eyes wide with interest.

  “Oh. I just like Tim Burton,” was my reply.

  Eight

  Sarah couldn’t wait to hear about my disastrous date. Naturally.

  “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?”

  I nodded, looking at a scuff on the carpet. “I know. But I just sort of thought maybe that wouldn’t happen and I would get lucky or something. I must get lucky at some point, right?”

  “What’s important to remember is that you’ve got all the techniques now, to deal w
ith these thoughts when you have them.”

  “Can’t I just never have bad thoughts? Can’t they just go away for ever?”

  And, for once, there was a bit of sympathy in her eyes. Because that wasn’t going to happen. She knew it. I knew it. I just wished I didn’t know it.

  Nine

  Mum was cooking dinner when I got back – wearing the apron of doom. “Doom” because her cooking evoked fear in even the strongest-stomached of people. She heard me slam the front door and peeked round from the kitchen, over the top of Rose, who was engrossed in some awful music video on TV where none of the girls seemed to be allowed to wear clothes.

  “How was your appointment?” She nodded her head towards Rose and gave me a stern look.

  Rose didn’t even look away from the screen. “Yeah, Evie,” she said. “How was therapy?”

  “It’s not therapy,” Mum butted right in. “Is it, Evie? It’s just a check-up?”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Mum,” Rose said, turning round on the sofa. “I know she goes to therapy.”

  I leaned against the wall and held my breath.

  “Well…yes… but we don’t all have to call it that, do we?”

  “Why not?”

  Dad bowled into the living room then, brandishing a large glass of red wine. The smiley stain around his lips suggested it wasn’t his first. Dad tended to self-medicate himself before Mum attempted cooking. “All right, Evie?” he asked. “How was your therapy session with Sarah?”

  “It was…great,” I said. As I always did. “Very…umm…” I looked at Rose who was pulling a face, and laughed. “Very therapyish.” And Rose laughed too.

  Mum’s lips went all tight and she disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Good, good, well I’m just going to read the news before we eat.” And Dad tapped me slightly affectionately on the shoulder before withdrawing to his study. I slobbed down next to Rose.

  “She’ll tell me off later, you know,” I said, looking at the half-naked stick insects on the screen and immediately regretting eating a Mars bar at lunch. Stupid music video.