‘Exquisite, for a second or so. After that, it hurt like hell. The pain was so bad I threw up in the taxi. The worst pain you can imagine.’
I could tell from Melody’s face that she was imagining it, which probably wasn’t healthy for her. But I figured a question that honest deserved an honest answer.
‘So.’ Melody let a pillar of ash fall and scatter on the breeze. ‘Have they given you a diagnosis yet?’
‘Yes. Not here, though. I was diagnosed a few years back. Type two bipolar. You?’
‘Acute unipolar depression, and maybe some sort of personality disorder as well. They’re still deciding. You know what doctors’re like.’
I shrugged. ‘They like to find the right box for us.’
We smoked the rest of our cigarettes without saying much. There wasn’t much more to say.
18
A SECOND LETTER: THE MOST ASTONISHING THING IN THE TATE MODERN
Dear Abby,
So here I am again: another letter that you might never read. But Barbara said I should go ahead and write it anyway. She thinks it might do me some good. I’ve no idea if that’s true, but it’s not as if I have a lot of other options right now. And I suppose it’s liberating, in a way – writing a letter that will probably end up in the bin in a few hours’ time. At least I don’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing. I figure I can just tell you exactly what’s been going through my mind over the past week, good and bad. And if, by some small chance, you are reading this – if you’re well enough to read it – then perhaps this is still the best way to go about things. There’s no point writing something dishonest, right?
Last night was a bad one for me. I was up until God knows when thinking about us, trying to work out where and when everything went wrong. Because things have gone wrong. That’s the conclusion I’ve been forced to draw. You won’t see me, you won’t talk to me. If you don’t want me around now, of all times, then what exactly does that say about our relationship? The truth is, I’m not sure how much longer I can go on like this. I don’t want to leave you, I really don’t, but more and more, it feels like the choice is out of my hands. You’ve already left.
For a while, I tried telling myself that perhaps this is for the best. Because if I can’t be there for you right now, as you seem to think, then what future can we possibly have? Just more of the same: endless ups and downs which neither of us can do a damn thing to prevent. We’d be better off apart. It stands to reason.
Except, of course, it’s not that easy. I’m reminded of that old cliché – one of your favourites: you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. Well, whoever came up with that should have added that you can’t choose who you fall in love with either.
So do you know what I ended up thinking about last night? I was trying to list all the reasons we’d be better off apart, and instead I found myself remembering all the details of our first date. You took me to the Tate Modern and made me grade all the paintings A–E. It was a little terrifying, to be honest, or it was at first – less a getting-to-know-you than a weird cultural initiation test. I remember asking you if we couldn’t just go for a quiet drink instead, and you told me no, for two reasons: 1) Taste in art was much more revealing than taste in alcohol. 2) You were flat broke, so we had to do something free. Shortly after that, we had our first ever argument – over Francis Bacon’s Seated Figure. I graded it C and you went apoplectic and started waxing lyrical about how it was one of only three pieces in the gallery that was beyond reproach and deserved an A++ (along with Souza’s Crucifixion and Dali’s Metamorphosis of Narcissus). But the truth is, I’d pretty much stopped looking at the paintings by then. I only had eyes for you, and I came really close to telling you that a couple of times. But I couldn’t, of course, not on a first date. It would have sounded too much like a line.
Well, it wouldn’t have been a line. So I can tell you now, three years after the fact in a letter you won’t read. You were astonishing that day. The most astonishing thing in the Tate Modern. After just a couple of hours together, I already knew that my life would feel much, much poorer without you in it.
And you have to know that a big part of me still feels that way, three years down the line. It’s just that things have got a whole lot more complicated.
Early on, I used to think we could get through anything. Actually, no. If I’m being honest, what I thought was more naïve than that. I thought that I could get you through anything, that it was just a case of unconditional support, of drying your tears and patiently waiting for things to get better. But back then I had no idea how draining it can be, trying to look after someone who, at best, doesn’t appreciate the effort. God, that sounds harsh, set out in black and white like that, but I don’t think it’s a judgement you’d contradict. I remember you telling me once that depression is a completely selfish condition, one that takes away your ability to engage with anything beyond the fog in your own head. You have nothing to give, no energy or emotion that isn’t turned inwards. So when you’re at your worst, it’s not a case of being there to dry your tears. There aren’t any tears to dry. There’s just this void, this empty shell that can’t be reasoned with or comforted.
Then there’s the mania, which is every bit as intractable, with the added problem that half the time I don’t even know how best to support you. Yes, I’ve got better at spotting the early warning signs, but at what point am I supposed to intervene? You’re feeling brighter, happier, creative, energized – perhaps for the first time in weeks – so why would you want any of that to stop? And why would I? I don’t want to be the person who’s constantly holding you back, smothering that spark that makes you you. But we both know how quickly things can slide. Energy turns to hyperactivity, thrill-seeking, spiralling hedonism, self-destructiveness – at which point it’s far too late to rein you in.
There was a time when I used to be an optimist. I used to think that things were bound to get easier in the future, however distant that future might be. Even when crisis followed crisis, I was always able to convince myself that now, finally, we’d been through the worst. We’d hit rock bottom, but now you were going to get the help you needed, and things would have to improve. I felt that way last year when you burned yourself and had to be hospitalized for forty-eight hours. I felt that way after we’d got through that awful couple of months when you were starting then stopping the lithium. But I don’t feel like that any more. At some point in the past few weeks, I’ve stopped believing that things will get better rather than worse.
So where does that leave us? God, I wish I knew. I’ve been writing for more than an hour now, it’s just gone midnight and I’m still no clearer about anything. There’s just this jumble of contradictions that seems to amount to one giant no-win situation.
I still love you, I still miss you. But I’m no longer sure that’s going to be enough.
19
THE MIRROR PEOPLE
When she wasn’t in therapy or being electrocuted, Melody was almost a permanent feature of the smoking area, as constant and reliable as the twelve-foot security fence. She had an inexhaustible supply of cigarettes thanks to her mother, who brought in a couple of packs most evenings and weekends. Melody would then give them away as freely as condoms in a GUM clinic. This was one of the reasons that Melody was always worth smoking with; but it was not the only reason.
Talking to Melody, it turned out, was far preferable to talking to the sane – mostly because there was none of the usual bullshit to get through: none of the evasion or pretence; no carefully chosen words or timid circling of the point. And there was no need for the inane trivia of everyday life: What do you do? Where do you live? Conversations with Melody didn’t start on the ground floor; they started in the attic, with the stuff your family didn’t even know about, because they’d never asked – and wouldn’t like the answers.
Melody had already been on Amazon for two weeks when I arrived, and this, combined with her endless cigarettes and cont
inual need for chat, meant that she knew pretty much everyone on the ward. She was also a terrible gossip, and before long, I had been indirectly acquainted with the backstories of most of the other inmates.
Amazon’s oldest and longest-serving resident was Mrs Chang, a fifty-nine-year-old Chinese woman who had been on and off psychiatric wards all her adult life. Mrs Chang had been on Amazon so long that she had her own chair in the dayroom – the one opposite the TV – which no one else would use out of respect. For a while, I assumed it was respect, too, that caused Melody to refer to Mrs Chang only by her surname – what with Mrs Chang being so unimaginably old. Or perhaps Melody simply didn’t know Mrs Chang’s first name. Both were reasonable guesses, but neither turned out to be correct. I later discovered that Melody did know Mrs Chang’s first name, but was unable to divulge it; all she could tell me was that it started with an X and was a real mouthful.
Then there was Jocelyn, a six-foot-tall, two-foot-wide black woman in her early thirties who, Melody said, was proper crazy – as if the rest of us were just here for a holiday. Jocelyn had been on Nile for more than a month, and could have been kept there even longer. She’d been transferred not because she was getting any better, but on the grounds that she was completely harmless. Despite her formidable appearance, Jocelyn posed no danger to anyone, least of all herself.
Then there was Paula the paranoid schizophrenic, and Angelina the regular schizophrenic, and obsessive compulsive Claire, and so on and so forth. And I had no doubt that my backstory had likewise done the rounds, since Melody didn’t know the meaning of the word discretion – literally. Within a couple of days, I was probably bipolar Abby, or Abigail Burns, or something similar. But at least it was a level playing field. Thanks to Melody, there were no secrets on the ward, and because every woman in here had attained a comparable level of craziness, there was little stigma in having your psychiatric history served up for general consumption. I never felt judged.
With the doctors, of course, the opposite was true. I felt judged every hour of every day – including the hours I spent asleep. This was not paranoia; the quality and quantity of my rest was a subject I had to discuss at great length with Dr Hadley, and she always seemed to know when I’d had a bad night, despite my unflagging assurances that I’d slept like a baby. More and more, I found that therapy with Dr Hadley was turning into a fencing match, full of feints and complicated footwork, sudden thrusts and clumsy parries. The never-ending challenge was to give her the impression that I was being open and cooperative while actually being evasive and guarded. It was a challenge that often proved insurmountable. Dr Hadley kept implying that I was being evasive and guarded.
I finally cracked in art therapy. Most of the other service users were drawing or painting; Mrs Chang was shaping an oblong of modelling clay into what appeared to be a tiny coffin. But I was trying to write. Dr Hadley had suggested, in our previous session, that this might help me, that I might find it easier than talking. This made perfect sense to her; since writing was my job, perhaps trying to write would help me to reconnect with ‘the old Abby’.
Where the old Abby would have told Dr Hadley to stop being so fucking patronizing, the new Abby nodded meekly. After all, getting a reputation for being hostile and resistant to therapy was not going to help matters.
This was how I found myself staring for the best part of an hour at a small stack of blank sheets. I could imagine the sort of thing Dr Hadley wanted from me – a mood journal or a long, emotional essay about my childhood – but when I picked up the pen, it felt like a lead weight in my hand. It turned out that it was much harder to lie in writing than it was verbally. I knew that anything I set down on paper was bound to betray me. But I had to give her something. If I didn’t, if I refused even to try, it would be yet another black mark on my record.
It was only when I’d stopped trying to write and started stabbing the pen into my palm that I hit upon an answer. I decided to write a short abstract poem. It would be extremely short and extremely abstract, possibly a haiku, and crammed full of evocative but impenetrable imagery. Then Dr Hadley could spend as many fruitless hours as she wanted trying to decipher it. More likely, she’d just be pleased that I was trying to express myself, and all I’d have to do in our next session would be to nod in all the right places and wax lyrical about how much the writing process had helped.
Unfortunately, by the time I’d settled on this plan there wasn’t long enough to implement it. Art therapy was almost over, and my next session with Dr Hadley was right after lunch. Even if I’d been in the mood, there was no time to get creative.
Instead, I wrote from memory, jotting down the following four lines:
The hopes so juicy ripening –
You almost bathed your tongue –
When bliss disclosed a hundred toes –
And fled with every one.
Under which I scrawled an explanatory note:
Dear Dr Hadley,
This isn’t my original composition; it’s from a poem by Emily Dickinson which I memorized in school. It’s about a cat stalking a robin. When I sat down to write, this is what popped into my head. I don’t think I can write anything original right now. I’ll try again tomorrow.
Abby
After art therapy was over, I slipped the single sheet of paper under Dr Hadley’s door. Then I went outside for a smoke.
Of course, it wasn’t just about a cat and a robin, as Dr Hadley was quick to point out. Neither was it a poem that had popped into my head at random.
‘It’s quite pertinent to your situation, isn’t it?’ Dr Hadley asked. Except she wasn’t really asking.
She glanced over the lines again, her eyes like little blue scalpels. I could tell from her expression that literary analysis was yet another of her strengths. She probably painted astonishing watercolours too.
‘Do you want to tell me about being manic?’
‘No, I don’t,’ I replied. Dr Hadley looked at me and waited. I shrugged. ‘Racing thoughts, rash decisions, impaired judgement—’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ she interrupted. ‘I don’t want a list of symptoms. I want to know what it feels like. Subjectively. You enjoy it?’
‘Yes. In the early stages, anyway. I enjoy it very much.’
‘Why do you enjoy it?’
I searched for the note of accusation in her voice, but couldn’t find it. She was taking a more straightforward approach than was usual, going for the direct, open question; and she waited patiently for at least a minute while I thought about my reply. The easiest way to explain would be to tell her that it felt like being on speed, but much cleaner: all of the focus, energy and confidence, none of the teeth-grinding or stomach cramps. But it didn’t seem sensible to tell Dr Hadley this.
‘I enjoy it because it’s extraordinary,’ I told her. ‘It’s like existing in a perfect little bubble. Everything feels easy, nothing hurts. If I could live my whole life like that, I would.’
Dr Hadley nodded slowly, then said, ‘But it doesn’t last, does it? Not for very long. The bubble always bursts.’
I shrugged. ‘If it lasted, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’
Dr Hadley smiled wryly, in acknowledgement of this truism. ‘And what about afterwards? How do you feel then?’
It was the ‘then’ that allowed me to answer this. If she’d said ‘now’, I would have lied. But we weren’t talking about now. We were still talking in generalities.
‘I feel bereft,’ I told her.
She waited, and I could tell she wanted me to go on – was going to wait for as long as it took. So I gave her an analogy. She wanted a ‘subjective’ response, and this was the only way I could get close.
‘Imagine you’re walking on a sunny day,’ I began. ‘Somewhere pretty. A beach, for example. You can feel the sunlight on your face and arms, and the warm sand under your feet. Everything is extremely bright and clear. You can see thousands of individual grains of sand – that’s how clear it i
s.’
I’d been staring out of Dr Hadley’s window, which faced out onto a bare brick wall, but at this point I looked at her to make sure the words were all making sense. She nodded for me to continue.
‘But then, very slowly, a dark cloud starts to pass in front of the sun. The light and warmth begin to fade, the colour drains from everything, and, bit by bit, the landscape is transformed. Nothing is clear any more. The beach is flat and empty. The sea is just an endless grey sheet. And when you look up at the sky, you see that this isn’t a temporary thing. The cloud goes on for ever, stretching right back to the horizon.’
I stopped talking. This was far more than I’d intended to say, and it felt like a huge effort to get the words out. Dr Hadley must have sensed this. After a few moments of silence, she told me that she’d see me again tomorrow. In the meantime, she wanted me to keep writing. My words or someone else’s. Whatever I preferred.
It was the shortest session we’d had; the whole thing lasted barely ten minutes. But even at the time, as I rose from my chair and stepped out of the office, it felt as if something odd and significant had happened. For the first time since I’d started seeing her, I’d told Dr Hadley nothing but the truth.
It was the next day that it happened. Not in therapy; outside in the smoking area. With Melody.
I was on my own at first. Paula the paranoid schizophrenic came out for a bit, but we didn’t talk, and she sloped off as soon as she’d finished her cigarette. I think most of the other crazies were in the dayroom or exercise class. Except Melody. She was with her mother, who had a half-day off work.
I’d come out here intending to write something else for Dr Hadley, or at least to see if I could. But I never got that far. I was rummaging for a pen in my handbag, when my hand brushed instead a folded envelope. When I took it out, I discovered it was the last article I’d written – ‘Which Blue is Right for You?’ – frenetically scrawled on eight sheets of embossed Dorchester notepaper.
The Mirror World of Melody Black Page 16
