Secrets for the Mad

by Dodie Clark

  I like it.

  We hug, thank each other and wave goodbye, and I hop up the stairs, close the door, grab my laptop, and immediately start typing.

  DOWN

  I woke up as heavy as lead,

  an ocean of worry weighs me down in bed.

  But there’s things to do!

  There’s a life to live;

  must ignore my stupid head.

  Friends float above in the wind,

  bright balloons pulling them up as they grin.

  But there’s things to do!

  There’s a life to live;

  must ignore the things I think.

  It’s like walking around with a stone for a heart,

  people swimming in honey as your life falls apart.

  It’s cold and it’s dark

  and there’s no way out.

  ‘I felt like you once!’

  I wish I could shout.

  You can never undo the brain;

  now it knows of the holes it will fall as it’s trained.

  Cause there’s things to do,

  there’s a life to live;

  watch them laugh while you stay in the rain.

  FIREWORKS

  My chest and armpits are hot and itchy under the several layers of thermals and jumpers Mum has yanked over my head. Walking stiffly upstairs, I waddle to my bedroom, rip off my gloves and grab my jelly baby money box. It rattles and I excitedly pull a £10 note from the bottom, crumpling it in my hand. A squeak bubbles up from my stomach as I imagine the bright lights, the smell of smoke in cold air, the glow sticks I will buy and keep in my room to play with at bedtime for days after.

  As Mum and Dad talk in the front of the car, I stare out the window at the orange lights in the black night and my brain explodes with vivid imaginations. Smiling in front of thousands of people, applauding me on a giant stage. Flying around my school, my teachers looking up, baffled, but with gasps of admiration and awe. Time stopping, allowing me to walk up to my bullies and step on their toes and draw on their faces and tell them they’re ugly. Being stranded on an island, with a tiger as my best friend who allows me to ride on his back, my hands sinking into his bright, rough fur. My stomach jumps around and my heart aches at the worlds I build. I mime to music that isn’t playing and manage to squeeze a tear out of my eye for my imaginary music video.

  It smells like wet grass, burning wood and fried onions. I hear screams of joy from spinning funfair rides and my mum tickles my wrist with her little finger from the hand I’m holding.

  I giggle and pull away, looking up at her.

  ‘Mummy, can I go on the chair planes?’

  ‘Mummy, can I have some candyfloss?’

  ‘Mummy, can I have that rainbow wand?’

  ‘Please? Please? Please?’

  My cheeks are full of white bread and ketchup, and then hot chocolate and cakey waffles, and then sharp vinegar-soaked mushy chips. I stare up into the sky and coo at the pink, gold and green sparks in the black.

  * * *

  From my closed eyes and loose body position, I feel the car reverse and sink familiarly. It is quiet and I try not to crack a smile as I hear my parents turn back and feel their eyes on me.

  My dad scoops me up into his arms and carries me into the house. I don’t break character as he gently places me into my bed. He slots Andy Pandy into my arms and kisses me on my cheek.

  The light switch is flicked off and the door is closed. I wait a few more seconds, pull the wand I bought out of my pocket, and stare into the flashing lights, making shadow friends on my ceiling, inviting them into my duvet cave and chatting to them about the magic powers I was born with.

  SEVEN-YEAR-OLD DODIE’S HOPES FOR THE FUTURE

  I will never grow up. I’m not like everyone else – I am special! And I know that older-me will agree too. We will always choose to have fun – adults will sunbathe and we will splash in the pool and pretend to be mermaids. Adults will wear brown suits and eat mushrooms and we will slurp spaghetti hoops for breakfast in our tutus. Adults will worry about everything but we will eat cake if we feel sad and have pillow fort parties to feel better.

  I will be like the nice lady in the pink dress on the telly who reads stories and sings to the puppets in the rainbow world, or I will be like Miss Watkins and be a teacher but let everyone know in my class that I’m secretly just a kid like them, and then give everyone extra playtime. I would like to be a ballerina, but Daddy says that all they eat is salad and, although I love salad, I really do like pizza and chicken nuggets too.

  One day I won’t go to school and I won’t live with Mum and Daddy but that is so far away I don’t really believe it’ll ever happen. Granny says that she will go to heaven one day and it makes me scared, but that also feels so far away, like it will never happen, so I don’t think or worry about it too much. I hope when these things do happen and I am scared and sad I will just go to the park and go on the swings because that will always make me feel happy. I am a happy person and I will always be able to cheer myself up and everyone around me with my smile!

  I hope that someone will teach me how to do everything in the world. I don’t know how to ride a bus or how banks work and it all seems very big and difficult, like when Daddy talks about space and the universe and science. One day I will be as clever as him and he will be so proud of me. I like it when Daddy says he is proud of me.

  THE THEME PARK’S STOPPED WORKING

  If I had to describe my brain before I started experiencing darkness, I would say it was deep thinking, excited, but most of all, it was BUSY. If you were to dive into my brain at seven years old, you’d be plunged into vivid imaginations of magical fantasies; colossal, complex worlds of made-up characters and storylines, where in each one I was, of course, the star. Throughout teenagehood I still visited these worlds, but introduced my crushes and celebrity friends, passionate kisses and dramatic situations reaching their peak of extravagance. There were cogs in my brain that were rapidly spinning; the insides of my head constantly whirring and clicking; a theme park in my mind bursting with exhilaration, anxiety, fire, euphoria.

  * * *

  When I was in my last years of school, three things happened.

  * My granny passed away, and I experienced true grief for the first time in my life. I watched my mum shrink and fall into depression.

  * I started loving a boy, and realised too late that he liked to shout at me. (As I was in a relationship, I went on hormonal-altering contraception.)

  * In a coffee shop in London, I was given a monstrously heavy secret. My brain couldn’t comprehend or process the information, so it flipped upside down. (This isn’t something I’m in a place to talk about right now – maybe ever – but know it was significant enough to have a huge impact on my life.)

  I spent a while walking around confused. My theme park brain was running messily; carts rolling off their tracks, fireworks exploding too early in the sky, fantasies interrupted by aggressive men and their wolf eyes. I held my boyfriend’s hand, walking through London Underground and wondering who turned up the brightness in my eyes and why I was so sleepy all the time. I asked him if I was dreaming. He said I’d wake up soon, but I never did.

  I moved to a different city when I was eighteen; an experiment of adulthood, and a wonder that if I started a new purpose then all of this confusion would go away. I packed up bits of my little room into cardboard boxes, took them 120 miles away from my home, and dotted them around a cold, echoey house up a hill. My head had still been spinning up until this point, but slowing, dulling, until eventually, in the early hours of the morning, while lying teary-eyed and scared next to my sleeping boyfriend, my theme park brain just . . . stopped.

  My emotions sank through the holes in my mind, any sort of passion or feeling whatsoever disappearing down the drain. The final flicker dimmed and then snuffed; a sliver of smoke the only reminder of the vigorous fire that once was. Everything was replaced with one thing: a vacuous, hollowing, overwhelm
ing feeling of despair.

  I was a shell of a normal girl; the drama classes I’d taken as a child finally paying off as I managed to convince the world that I still had a soul. After a few months of empty smiles and dark headaches, I asked my mum to book me an appointment at the doctor’s.

  ‘What can I help you with today?’ A rosy-faced woman beamed at me in her cushioned chair.

  I pulled out my phone, trembling, and shakily read her the paragraph I’d typed up in the waiting room. I stumbled over how I’d run home to fall asleep as quickly as possible, just so I could shut down and not have to think any more. How I’d wake up at 3 a.m., nauseous from the nightmares that felt like black holes inside my being. I skipped over the scars on my thighs from the nights I dragged the edge of scissors along my skin, relishing the distraction of surface-level pain and coming the closest to feeling something I’d had in ages.

  She looked down with a slight smile while I mumbled through.

  ‘Are you studying, Dorothy?’ she asked as I finished. I plastered on my usual polite smile and told her about my move to Bath, my YouTube channel, and the hopes for the future I’d planned when my brain was working. She wowed and cooed, asking questions about my travels while my throat closed up and my heart sank as I realised I was being patronised.

  ‘I don’t think you are depressed. It’s very dangerous to give someone so young a label like that. You’re doing so many activities, travelling around the world, making new friends – it’s certainly more than I did at your age!’

  I felt the back of my neck get hot and tears sting my eyes. I wanted to shout, what’s the point when I didn’t really experience or enjoy any of it?!

  But I nodded and stretched my smile, whispering a ‘thank you’ and grabbing my coat to walk out before I started crying. I wasn’t going to be listened to or believed, and I couldn’t stand the room any longer. It took three years until I built up the courage to go back to the doctors to talk about my mental health.

  * * *

  Since then, I’ve learned much more about my darkness. I broke up with my angry boyfriend, came off the hormonal altering contraception I’d been on, and welcomed back the first emotions I’d felt in about a year. I ran around in the sunshine and started to remember what hope felt like. I certainly wasn’t cured – every now and again I’d find myself swallowed up into the void of nothingness and I’d spend months at a time forgetting how to live. The waves of depression taught me that there’s always an up after a down, and that my bad brain sneers and tells convincing lies about fighting it being pointless.

  With every new experience, good or bad, I’d shared what I had learned from it online through music and other forms of art, opening up to thousands, and then hundreds of thousands, and then millions of people who can relate in different ways. I use my voice to spread awareness of troublesome minds, and to create communities for people who are also struggling to feel grounded.

  There’s only so much you can say in songs, poems, even videos. You let the feelings overwhelm you and then you find neat little phrases to sum them up. Other people will find them and fill their own meaning in the gaps, and sometimes it matches with yours, but sometimes what you truly wanted to say will be missed by some people. And obviously that’s okay, that’s what art is for – but I wanted a place to share the depths behind the music and let the world in to my turbulent mind. The last thing I want in the world is to create any more drama for myself (which is a ridiculous thing to hold on to when you open yourself up as much as you can to millions of strangers who can judge you anonymously, especially when there are still large chunks of information and back story missing that you have to keep for the safety of yourself and for other people). I don’t share for gossip, or for attention; I write, create and share to offload some of the weight from my mind by turning it into something useful and good. I want to share the stories of the ways I lost my young theme park brain, for those who also feel as though the funfair lights are flickering, and for those who cannot understand how it could ever stop working.

  I have learned so much from my pain, and from sharing and connecting with others, and finding the good in my ‘madness’. I am far from better (in fact, I’m not in the best headspace while writing this book), but I am absolutely hopeful. I miss my young brain so, so much, but oddly enough, I would never trade it in for my experienced, slightly damaged one now. The theme park in my mind shrank into a little corner, and although I can’t visit it any more, I can still just about see a small girl flying around her colourful world, holding hands with her idols and saving people with her magical powers – the happy hero of many stories.

  WHEN

  I think I’ve been telling lies,

  cause I’ve never been in love.

  Everyone falls for the sunshine disguise,

  distracted by who they’re thinking of.

  I’d rather date an idea –

  something I’ll never find.

  Sure, I’ll live in the moment,

  but I’m never happy here;

  I’m surrounded by greener looking time.

  Am I the only one

  wishing life away?

  Never caught up in the moment,

  busy begging the past to stay.

  Memories painted with much brighter ink;

  they tell me I loved, teach me how to think.

  I’ll take what I can get

  cause I’m too damp for a spark.

  Kissing sickly sweet guys

  cause they say they like my eyes,

  but I’d only ever see them in the dark.

  I’m sick of faking diary entries,

  got to get it in my head – I’ll never be sixteen again.

  I’m waiting to live, and waiting to love,

  oh, it’ll be over, and I’ll still be asking when.

  Am I the only on

  wishing life away?

  Never caught up in the moment,

  busy begging the past to stay.

  Memories painted with much brighter ink;

  they tell me I loved, teach me how to think.

  I’m sick of faking diary entries,

  got to get it in my head – I’ll never be sixteen again.

  I’m waiting to live, still waiting to love,

  oh, it’ll be over, and I’ll still be asking when,

  oh, it’ll be over, and I’ll still be asking when.

  ‘HELLO THERE, YES, I’M JUST CALLING ABOUT MY WORSENING MENTAL STATE?’

  I have a slight suspicion that I’ve actually been sleeping and dreaming through my days since I was about eighteen. The timeline of my life seems to have a massive wall straight down the middle – a distinct before and after of feeling spaced out. Up until last year I knew that something was definitely different, but I’d never heard of anyone who felt the same. I’d travel and watch my friends absorb a beautiful view of the night sky, or the sea stretched out for miles in front, and I’d rub my eyes, opening and closing and widening them in an attempt for them to work how they used to and allow me to see the world in full.

  In 2015 I travelled around Australia and New Zealand twice, LA and Florida, and also around the UK multiple times on tour – and I can’t really remember any of it. Memories of my childhood and school life are clear, vibrant; I watch back moments where I’d drink in a situation, fully marking that present time as beautiful; gazing and adoring my life. I could have told you about the movie I saw a week ago and all my favourite bits, and recounted the conversation in the Pizza Hut, a vivid chunk stored neatly in my head. Now, in this present moment, I’m trying to remember where I was yesterday, and all I’m getting is ‘file not found’. There is nothing more frustrating than reaching for a memory and grabbing empty handfuls of air. If I do have memories, they are played on a tiny, slightly warped screen, a small, fuzzy snapshot of time at the back of my head, its place of order in a timeline unknown.

  When I was younger, I used a pocket camcorder to film my adventures so I could watch back my day in b
ed and relive the joy. Now I document as much as I can to desperately hold on to the memories of my early adulthood. When I recount stories of the roadtripping I apparently did through California, or the ziplining in Auckland, I steal smiles and phrases from the footage I took of ‘myself’ when I was there. It is so strange to watch a girl laugh and seemingly enjoy the scenes around her, but know that behind those eyes is my dark, obsessive, cloudy mind.

  But, like I said, there was no name for what I was experiencing (or rather wasn’t experiencing). I attributed it to growing up, guessing adulthood just lacked the clarity of youth. I slapped my cheeks and pinched my arms in an attempt to ‘wake up’ in social situations. I even got my eyes tested, convinced that I had some sort of a loss of vision which was restricting me from seeing anything properly. When I was coming out of my two-year depression, after my relationship ended that year, I felt hopeful and glowed about how much better I felt emotionally – but I knew that something big was still missing.

  * * *

  In the spring of 2016, my stress levels were peaking as I took on far too much work and travel. I’d been working as a presenter for an online channel, and we were to travel to Wales for a high-energy three-day shoot, so I pushed down the warning signs from my body and trekked on. Over those days I noticed that my vision was getting so bad it was like I could only see whatever pinpoint thing I was looking at – the complete rest of my peripheral vision was silver, like TV static. I was so tired my eyes felt itchy and heavy, my head aching as if I was hungover. It did feel like I was drunk, or on something; whenever I talked my words hung in the air in front of me, as if it were a recording. My own voice didn’t belong to me and yet it sounded so scarily familiar. I was terrified I’d accidentally been spiked . . . I guess by something that stayed in your system for a long period of time? So I’d go to bed early, desperate to wake up feeling okay, or okay as I was before. But I’d open my eyes, unsure if I was in a dream, and get out of bed, frowning and touching the walls to confirm that I was actually awake.