Am I Normal Yet?

by Holly Bourne

  I looked at her through my blurry tear vision. “I can’t believe you just called me lucky. And I can’t believe you sectioned me.”

  She cocked her head. “Well, that’s not quite accurate, is it, Evelyn? You agreed to come here of your own accord… You’re only sectioned if you refuse help. You came here willingly.”

  “Otherwise I’d get sectioned.”

  “Well…”

  “How did it come to this?” I interrupted with a hollow wail, that I could tell made even a seasoned therapist feel uncomfortable. She sat and listened, and made sympathetic faces while I, once again, relived the last month or so. The battle of the bands, the fight with my parents, Guy’s bedroom…

  “I became a mess so quickly.” I tried to explain my sadness. The pain in me that wouldn’t dull, no matter how many paintings the art therapist made me paint. “It was, like, so quick, Sarah. I was doing okay, I was getting better, and then – BAM – I lose my life again, I lose my mind again. That means that, even if I get better now—”

  “Which you will,” she interrupted confidently.

  “Even IF I get better now, what’s the point? I’m always a week away from potentially losing it again. On the cliff edge of normal. Then what? Then what do I do?”

  “You remember how far you’ve come, you get the help you need, and you continue fighting.”

  “I’m so tired of fighting,” I cried. “It’s exhausting – trying to be like everybody else.”

  “Do you not think everybody else finds it exhausting too, trying to be them?”

  “No,” I said sullenly, crossing my arms and wincing as my newly exposed hands scraped the wool of my jumper.

  Sarah was quiet for a moment, then she said. “What does normal look like to you, Evie?”

  “Just being like everyone else,” I answered without thinking.

  “And what does this great ‘everyone else’ do? Tell me specifically, what do they do?”

  “Well…they…umm…they don’t get sectioned.”

  Sarah actually rolled her eyes. “You’ve not been sectioned. You came here willingly.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t end up here.”

  “Maybe not…but when they go through bad patches – which everyone does – they end up in other bad places…down the pub…in a casino…in a stranger’s bed…in a bad relationship. If they know what’s good for them, they may end up in a yoga class…or running in a park.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Everyone’s on the cliff edge of normal. Everyone finds life an utter nightmare sometimes, and there’s no ‘normal’ way of dealing with it.” Sarah sighed. “There is no normal, Evelyn. There’s only what’s normal to you. You’re chasing a ghost.”

  I thought about it. “If there is no normal then, if we’re all just massive freaks in our own special ways – why am I here? Why am I on medication? Why do I see you every week?”

  Sarah put her tongue in the side of her cheek. “Because, Evelyn, your behaviour isn’t making you happy. If you were cleaning the house ten trillion times a day but thought ‘well, that’s just me’ and whistled while you did it, well, it’s not so much of a problem, is it? But you’re miserable. You’re wasting hours each day living in fear, trying to control everything around you. Trying, ultimately, to control who you are. You’ve got to stop hating yourself, Evie.”

  I burst into tears again, huge weeping peals of tears. I cried for where I was, I cried for my hands, I cried for Guy, I cried for the life I’d never have, the worries I’d always have, I cried because it was all so horribly unfair.

  I cried because, as always, Sarah was right.

  I thought about my logic the day of the accident, the day in Guy’s room. “I…I…” I stumbled through sobs on my words. “I really thought if someone loved me, then maybe it would be okay…”

  Sarah rearranged her skirt. “There’s two things to say about that,” she said. “One…about teenage boys, I bloody told you so.” Mum had obviously filled her in on what happened with Guy. I’d broken down and told her at the first hospital, after the doctors had picked the gravel out of my warped hands. “And the second thing to say is, people do love you, Evelyn. Maybe not randy seventeen-year-old lead singers – but your family do. And…well, your little sister tells me you’ve got two friends who won’t stop bugging her with calls. That’s love.”

  I caught a stray tear. “They won’t love me once they realize who I really am.”

  She picked up her file, making to leave. “I’m sure they will. But you’ve got to love you first, that’s the most important part. Anyway” – she tucked her file under her arms – “visiting hours are up, I’ll leave you in the very capable care here. You know you can call me anytime?”

  “I know.”

  “Well, bye then.”

  “Bye.” She turned to leave me in my lonely little room.

  “Sarah, wait!” I got off the bed and caught up with her in the doorway. “Do you…do you think you could arrange for me to have non-family visitors come here?”

  She gave me a huge, proper, no-protective-barrier-up grin.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Forty-seven

  It started with a house party.

  I don’t know if you can call a get-together in a private room on an adolescent psychiatric ward a “house party”. But there were definitely biscuits – and at least one attendee was on mind-altering drugs – just of the medical, safe, anti-depressant variety.

  I was so nervous that morning I shook all the way through my psychiatrist’s assessment. He peered over at me, from the depths of his red bulging file.

  “You’ve been doing very well in here, Evelyn. We’re happy with your progress and I think it’s time to start discussing a schedule for your discharge.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” I said, barely taking in what he’d said.

  BAD THOUGHT

  They won’t come.

  BAD THOUGHT

  They’ll never see you in the same way after today.

  Good thought

  But they’ll know who you are…and if they don’t like it, why would you want to be friends with them anyway?

  “Are you all right, Evelyn?” the psychiatrist asked. “You seem very nervous. This is good news!”

  I looked back at him distractedly. “Oh, yes, I’m fine. I’m…er…just, having some important visitors today.”

  He gave a small smile. “I’ve heard. Good luck, Evelyn.”

  He sounded like I was about to go on a mission to the moon or something. Maybe I was really.

  Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes until they were here.

  BAD THOUGHT

  Your room is too gross, you should tidy it.

  Good thought

  No, Evie, you’ve worked hard to make it this scruffy.

  BAD THOUGHT

  They’re not going to believe you have OCD if you leave that banana skin in the bin.

  Good thought

  You can’t control what they think, so why bother worrying?

  I left the banana skin where it was – though it did start to smell and made me very nervous. I paced the length of my room, muttering, hands shaking, stomach somersaulting.

  This is it.

  No going back.

  You might lose them.

  They might not handle it properly.

  They might not come.

  What’s going to happen?

  Back and forth, back and forth. Sweat dripped down my forehead. I sat on the bed. I stood up again. I sat down again.

  Lottie and Amber arrived with a nurse at the door.

  “Miss Crane? Your friends are here.”

  I gave myself a moment, before I looked up at their faces. It was like GCSE results day and you’re holding the envelope in your hand. The tests are over, there’s nothing else you can do, the results are in there, unchangeable, and yet you wait a while with the envelope – savouring that moment of not-knowing, before you rip apart the glue and
see what the future has in store.

  I raised my head.

  They both held a giant handmade poster, with the words “Get Well Soon, Evelyn” painted on it in massive letters. Amber had used her amazing artistic talent to create a collage of famous female icons around the lettering. There was Marilyn Monroe, Thelma and Louise, Queen Elizabeth I, Emmeline Pankhurst, Germaine Greer, Eleanor Roosevelt, JK Rowling, Sofia Coppola and dozens more – cut out carefully and stuck around the poster, all of them wishing me well.

  Lottie and Amber’s hands shook at the top of it. They looked so scared and sad – but also like they were trying their best to brazen it out. For my sake.

  A lump rose in my throat and I coughed to get rid of it. I smiled at them, so wide my face hurt.

  “Ladies,” I said, with a confident voice that didn’t really belong to the situation. “Welcome to the official Spinster Club meeting number four. Come…” I beckoned to the two beanbags I’d borrowed from the common area. “Take a seat.”

  They handed me my poster and I couldn’t look at it or I’d cry uncontrollably. I hugged them both and put the beautiful piece of paper down.

  “I’ve got biscuits,” I said, passing out a plate of pink party rings Mum and Dad had brought in. They looked at each other first, raised an eyebrow and then took two each. “Great, now, today’s topic for discussion is…” I coughed again. “Women and mental health: Is the patriarchy literally driving us mad?”

  Lottie and Amber exchanged another look, turned to me, and then burst out laughing.

  “What a fitting location you’ve picked,” Lottie said, “for such a discussion.”

  I knew then that everything was going to be just fine.

  “Shh,” I said. “I’ve prepared a talk.”

  What I learned about Sarah

  Sarah helped me research all the information for the meeting. She’d brought in her iPad and we’d poured through health reports and historical records, compiling what I needed. She’d known exactly where to look. After a long afternoon reading Victorian hospital records, I asked her why. She gave me a cheeky smile. “I actually did my dissertation on this at university.”

  “On what?”

  “On women, specifically. And how much society is to blame for their ‘madness’.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “Sarah, are you…?”

  She grinned. “A massive feminist? But of course! If it wasn’t breaking our patient confidentiality, I’d have a good mind to set up my own Spinster Club. Such a great idea, Evelyn. Like a book club, but for women’s rights. The antidote to the WI. It could go places.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Sarah?”

  “Yes.”

  “I give you my permission. To set up a Spinster Club, I mean.”

  “Thanks, Evie. I may well just do that.”

  I handed out my sheets to the girls, and began my meeting.

  “Statistically,” I started, “women are crazier than men. If you look at the numbers, the simple act of having a vagina makes you more likely to have a depressive illness, post-traumatic stress disorder or be unipolar, and we’re more likely to self-harm. Now, you could blame our DNA. You could blame our hormones. You could criticize the statistics themselves. But I think this…” I paused for dramatic effect. “We are not just a crazier sex. I believe the world, our gender roles, and the huge inequality we face every day MAKES US crazy.”

  I took a deep breath and Lottie and Amber took the opportunity to whoop, clap and cheer. “Wooooo, go, Evie.”

  “Shh,” I smiled. So glad they were here. So glad they were my friends. “I’m only just getting started.” And I stood up and pretended I was in a TED talk.

  “Madness and femininity have been linked throughout history. By the mid-nineteenth century, records show the majority of patients in mental health wards were women. We were considered more vulnerable to ‘madness’ because of our biology. Actually, the term ‘hysteria’ comes from the Latin word for womb, hystera. I.e. if you’ve got a vag, you’re hysterical.” The girls smiled. “The thing was, these women being shoved into asylums weren’t always ‘crazy’. They just didn’t fit the repressed notions of how women were ‘supposed to be’ at that time. You were called ‘mad’ and chucked into an institution if, say, you had a temper. Because women are supposed to be docile and meek. If you were sexual, you were mad because women back then were supposed to be pure… Think things have changed? Think it’s all better now? Think again. Just look at the language we use when we talk about women…”

  I had drawn some cartoons for this bit so I handed them out. Lottie and Amber took them, and giggled at my shite art. “Think about it, today a girl gets angry about something completely legitimate, and she’s called a ‘mad bitch’. A girl gets upset about something upsetting, and she’s told to ‘calm down, dear, you’re hysterical’.

  “The other week, Guy called me ‘mental’ when I dared ask him if he was only interested in sex. Girls get called ‘mental’ all the time.” I smiled sadly. “Yes, in Guy’s case, he may’ve been onto something…” I looked around my little room again and Amber and Lottie laughed nervously. “But…he wasn’t having a go at me for being mental because I have OCD. He called me mental because, again, I wasn’t playing the part I was supposed to. Because…now…women are also ‘mad’ if we want boys to treat us properly and with respect. We’re called ‘high maintenance’ or ‘psycho exes’…”

  I trailed off. Mainly because Lottie and Amber were elbowing each other and giggling.

  “Are you finished?” I asked, sounding like a school teacher. “You know, you could give the sectioned person a bit more attention.”

  “You weren’t sectioned,” Amber said, still smiling. “That Sarah lady told us you’d try and say that you were.”

  They dissolved into giggles again.

  “You tell her.”

  “No, you tell her.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” I said, worried they were laughing at me.

  Lottie coughed and stopped herself laughing. “Sorry, Evie, this is interesting, really it is. It’s just Guy…” And she burst into peals of giggles again.

  “What? What about Guy?”

  Lottie was laughing so hard she couldn’t talk. Amber took over.

  “We…er…umm…well Lottie and I…we swapped his weed for some kitchen herbs and he’s not noticed and still pretends to be stoned.”

  Then they were both unreachable for a good two minutes. I laughed too, in disbelief. “You did what?”

  “It was stupid,” Lottie squealed, tears running down her face. “But totally worth it. Jane helped actually. She really wants to visit, Eves, you should let her. I think she’s pretty worried, and she was amazing with the prank. God, Guy’s a loser.”

  I smiled, with a warmth in my tummy that porridge advertisements would love to be able to describe.

  “You really did that, for me?” I blinked back some threatening tears.

  Amber beamed at me. “Of course,” she said. “We’re not going to let some dickwad get away with treating you like that.”

  “We’re here for you, Evie,” Lottie said shyly. “If you’ll have us, we’re so here for you.”

  “I’ll have you.”

  “Good,” Amber said loudly. “Now, before we all start blubbing – Evie, finish your talk.”

  I sniffed and attempted to pull myself together. “Right,” I started. “So it got me to thinking – women are always thought of as the weaker ones, the ones more prone to craziness…and I was trying to work out why. I came to two conclusions. One, being a woman, in this world, ultimately makes you crazy. And, two, you’re more likely to be labelled crazy anyway if you’re female.” I pulled out some sheets from the World Health Organization. “Look, these guys are in charge of the health of the entire WORLD. And they’re basically saying gender is the cause of loads of mental health problems. People don’t wake up one day and think, Oooh, I think I�
�ll go completely gaga. It’s usually a case of spiralling circumstances. And, if you’re a woman, think about it, we have a shitload of spiralling circumstances. We’re paid less, we’re told we have to be beautiful, and thin, but we’re also told to eat chocolate all the time otherwise we’re not ‘fun’, and we’re constantly being objectified and told to calm down when we care about something… Isn’t all this likely to make us a little mental? Isn’t being subjected to daily inequality going to be a spiralling circumstance?”

  “Here here,” Lottie called through her hands. “Evelyn for prime minister.”

  I took another deep breath. “And then we go to the doctor for help and, because they’re all warped by our twisted worldview, they’re more likely to label us mad too. You know, they did this study and, say a boy and a girl both go to a GP’s surgery about depression – the girl is statistically much more likely to get prescribed antidepressants than the boy.”

  “No way.”

  “It’s mad, isn’t it? And that’s not just hurting girls. It’s hurting boys too. Feminism is all about equality, right? But how is this helping men? How is a society so broken helping anyone? I looked at the Samaritans website…” I handed them both a printout. They were both so engrossed I could’ve jumped on them with love. “Boys are more likely to die by killing themselves. Forget fast cars, forget cancer, forget getting attacked by a gang. Every boy at college – if they die – it’s statistically most likely because they took their own life. Sorry, am I talking too much? Sometimes a side-effect of my medication is mania – tell me if I’ve gone manic.”

  Lottie rolled her eyes playfully. “You’re not talking too much. It’s interesting, honestly. CALM DOWN, DEAR.”

  “Oi!”

  We all cracked up laughing. “So, anyway,” I continued. “See how it’s hurting everyone. How we’re told to behave as boys and girls is breaking all of us. Girls are under extreme strain and are more likely to be diagnosed and labelled as mad. Whereas boys aren’t allowed to open up and talk about their feelings because it isn’t ‘manly’ so they bottle it all up until they can’t take any more. Something needs to change.”

  Amber took a bite out of a party ring and sprayed crumbs all over the floor as she spoke. It actually didn’t bother me that much. “So what’s the answer, Evie? What do we do?”