by Hazel Hayes
My mother never used to pick me up from the airport, but now that I live abroad she insists. She even parks the car so she can wait at the arrival gate. Sometimes, especially around Christmas, we stay awhile and watch as other families are reunited. It’s maybe the least cynical thing I’ve ever done.
Theo was in the back seat, complaining about Ireland’s shitty internet. He was looking at pictures of suits.
‘What’s that for?’ I asked.
‘Tom’s wedding next weekend.’
‘Oh. You’re getting a new suit?’
‘It’s Tom’s wedding,’ he replied, like he hadn’t been wearing the same two suits on rotation since the day I met him: one plain black, the other brown and bobbled.
‘Can I see?’
He handed me the phone and I scrolled through the images. My first thought was that all of these suits looked great, but none of them looked like something Theo would wear. Something was off. I knew this man. This was not a man who cared about what he was going to wear to a colleague’s wedding down the country. I chalked it up to insecurity; his teammates were all quite well-to-do, so he might have felt like he needed to up his game.
When we pulled into the driveway, we were met with the sight of all five of my nieces in the throes of a water fight. The girls were running around on the grass; feet muddy, clothes soaked through, and hair stuck to their faces and necks in wet, stringy clumps. Some were armed with massive plastic water guns in neon pink and orange, some carried buckets of water balloons, which they hurled with gusto at one another, screaming laughter all the while. The youngest, only a year old, was sitting by herself, squirting water from a small pistol onto her own bare foot. She seemed happy enough with this arrangement. The others left her be.
As soon as they saw the car, the girls stopped, heads whipping round almost in unison, like a pack of crazed meerkats; a new target had been acquired. My hand moved to the button on the door and a little motor whirred as my window rose slowly upward. My mother realised what was happening. Her eyes widened.
‘No,’ she shouted, shaking her head violently, ‘no, no, no, no …’
They advanced on the car, guns raised, and she threw them a look so severe I was sure it would stop them in their tracks – I don’t know at exactly what point during pregnancy a woman learns this new skill, but every mother is somehow capable of the kind of look that would ‘put the fear of God in you’, as my nana would have said. I saw them hesitate. They were on the brink of surrender, when four-year-old Sally, the second youngest but somehow leader of the pack, raised a comically large Super Soaker above her head, and roared, ‘GET THE CAR!’
They charged, pelting the car with tiny water bombs and gleefully spraying the windows. I heard Theo jump in the back seat. He must not have noticed any of this up till now.
My mother’s head fell to her hands.
‘I just had it washed,’ she mumbled.
I leaned over and hit the lever for the windscreen wipers. They swished apathetically back and forth and we broke into laughter.
After a pretty mild telling off – my mother could barely keep a straight face – we left the girls to their game and went to the kitchen to get dinner ready. She has the whole family round for dinner every time I go home: my sister, Una, my brother, Donal, their partners and kids, and my granddad. We were never a particularly big family but these last few years it’s grown a lot. I get back as often as I can, every two or three months, and each time the kids have sprouted up another inch. There is no more obvious indicator of the passage of time than children growing in your absence.
I said as much to Donal as he passed through the kitchen to refill his beer.
‘I know,’ he replied. ‘Apparently if you keep feeding them, they keep growing.’
‘Maybe stop feeding them,’ I suggested.
‘Can’t,’ he said, ‘they complain.’ And off he went.
Theo had parked himself at the kitchen table and opened his laptop, avoiding eye contact with everyone who passed him by.
I knew why he was off; his mother had called him late the night before and, while I don’t know exactly what she said, I can only assume that some of it was anti-me propaganda. After the call, Theo mumbled something about how he never sees her any more, and when I tried to remind him why he’d made that decision, he accused me of causing the rift between them.
‘I think this might be something you should speak to a therapist about,’ I said, as calmly as I could.
‘I don’t need to see a therapist.’
‘Okay.’
‘I don’t,’ said Theo. ‘I’m fine.’
‘All right. It’s just, you’re the one who suggested it.’
‘When?’
‘Nearly a year ago,’ I said. ‘The night your mother … the night we had to look after her.’
‘I was upset. That’s all,’ said Theo. ‘Just because you need therapy doesn’t mean everyone else does.’
I shut down a bit to avoid further conflict but Theo of course took this to mean I was giving him the silent treatment. He made some comment about my mood swings, at which point I, ironically I suppose, went off the fucking handle.
I don’t mean to get so upset about things, but lately it feels like my emotions are all just whirling about under a paper-thin surface, and one tiny scratch could rip the whole thing wide open and release them, screaming and tumbling into the world. Sometimes it goes the other way, though – the feelings all vanish completely and I’m left wandering about like an empty husk; just skin and hair and teeth and limbs with absolutely nothing inside.
I know these are symptoms of depression, but I can’t figure out if the relationship is causing my depression or if my depression is causing problems in the relationship. Maybe both can be true. For example, I quit my job late last year to pursue a career in writing, and for a few brief weeks my depression lifted. I was proud of myself for making the leap, for taking a risk, for choosing the road less travelled and so on. Theo was proud of me too and that manifested in him being more present and playful and at ease around me. I envisioned myself spending sunny afternoons on the balcony, drinking tea and tip-tapping away on my keyboard, blissfully bashing out the next bestseller, before telling Theo all about it every evening over dinner and a well-earned glass of wine. But the reality was long, lonely days, a severe case of writer’s block and a dwindling savings account; my monthly column wasn’t enough to pay the rent and I had far fewer side jobs coming in than I’d hoped.
I found myself awake most nights, exhausted and afraid, with nothing but the voices in my head to keep me company. They told me I was just another fraud who fancies themselves a writer, that eventually I would have to admit defeat, and admit to the world that I simply wasn’t good enough. I felt insecure and isolated and in the midst of all this – perhaps even in response to this – Theo started going to work earlier, coming home later, and suddenly spending all his spare time working out. To make matters worse, I get anxious about plans changing – I need structure and routine to feel safe – and having just lost the stability of a full-time job, I was also faced with uncertainty about my partner, both in the grand scheme and on a day-to-day basis; Theo never seemed to know what time he’d be home or whether he’d be free to hang out on the weekend, so I was left in a permanent state of limbo, always waiting for him to confirm plans. He knows how much that affects me too, so his thoughtlessness made me resent him a little.
It was like he wanted to be anywhere but with me, and since all I needed was some comfort and company, his absence only made me feel worse. Unfortunately, me being worse made him want to be with me less, so around and around we went, not knowing which was the chicken or which was the egg or whether it even mattered any more.
I let this be our rhythm for a while until one day I decided to sort myself out. I found a new therapist and started seeing her every week, I took up yoga again, joined a book club and went out with friends more often. I said yes to every available writing job, no ma
tter how big or small or ‘beneath me’ it seemed. I even worked for free for a while until finally, my writing started to pay the bills. I’m ashamed to admit that this new, can-do attitude was based entirely on a desire to make Theo love me again, but the outcome was that I now felt stronger and healthier and more sure that his problems existed with or without me.
My mother tried to chat to him as she pottered about the kitchen. She asked how work was, how his family were keeping, that sort of thing. He was only half responding, engrossed in whatever he was doing, and it bothered me – that a screen so often took precedence over other humans in the room – but I couldn’t face another argument, so I pushed my anger aside and decided to take an interest in whatever he was doing instead. I brought him a cup of tea and saw that he was now shopping for green ties.
‘Green?’ I said.
He opened another tab and showed me a photo of an impossibly handsome male model in a grey suit, with a white shirt and green tie.
‘I’m trying to replicate this look,’ he said, then flicked back to the page full of ties and asked which one I liked best. They all looked the same so I arbitrarily pointed at one.
‘Yeah, that one’s nice, but I wanted more of a knitted texture. It’s so hard to tell from the pictures.’
It was getting harder for me to take this as seriously as he was.
‘Why not order a couple and send back the ones you don’t want?’ I suggested.
‘I have ordered one, but it’s coming from China so it might not get here on time.’
I laughed. Because obviously that was a joke. But he didn’t join in. He just looked up at me in puzzlement. I opened my mouth to speak and just then my mother, who had been watching this entire exchange, called me over to help her with the dinner.
I joined her at the kitchen sink and we stood side by side peeling potatoes, her hands flitting deftly from spud to spud like a bumblebee on flowers. Long, thin strips of rusty-pink potato skin fell from her knife, while I clunkily chopped off large, uneven chunks.
‘Jesus, love. Go easy. There’ll be nothing left to cook.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘You know I’m useless at this.’
‘Well, I’m only good because I had to be,’ she said. ‘You don’t have much choice when you’ve got three mouths to feed.’
I’m never sure what to say to these self-pitiful remarks – That sucks? Well done? Sorry? – so I said nothing.
‘You’ll understand one day,’ she added, but I wasn’t sure I would.
Outside the window, the kids were still running and throwing and ducking and shrieking with delight as the sun set behind the house and the heat seeped out of the afternoon. My mam opened the window and shouted to them to come in soon, ‘before they caught a chill’, she said. None of them listened.
We continued peeling.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
‘Have you two talked about kids?’ she asked.
I glanced over at Theo, who had by now put his head-phones in.
‘Not in a while, no.’
She nodded, fair enough.
‘Look,’ she said, emptying a bowl of potatoes into a pot of water. ‘The writing’s going well for you at the moment. Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So keep at it,’ she said. ‘You’re good at that.’
Scrape.
‘I’ve started seeing a therapist again,’ I said.
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. I just felt bad brain creeping in a bit.’
This is what I call my depression around people who don’t understand it because it separates me from the illness, like a broken leg or a wobbly tummy. ‘Just a bad brain day,’ I’ll say, and in doing so I remove any expectation that I could magically think the problem away.
‘I thought you were better now,’ she said.
Scrape. Scrape.
Better?
What most people don’t seem to get is that when it comes to mental illness; better doesn’t actually mean ‘better’. It’s a scale. And with enough hard work you can slide yourself all the way up from suicidal to functioning human to fucking fantastic. But it works both ways. And if you don’t stay on top of it you can slide straight back down.
Years ago, when I still lived in Dublin, I saw a therapist named Nadia for just under a year. I adored Nadia. She helped pull me out of a very rough patch and by the time I stopped seeing her I felt more mentally stable than ever before. It was like I’d just been handed a map that I should have had all along. And suddenly it made sense, why the world seemed so confusing to me and so clear to everyone else; they all had maps. The point is that for a time, I was better, but I wasn’t ‘better’. We really need a better word for better.
Nadia always said that healing isn’t linear. She told me there’d be relapses. And that they were all part of the process. She even made me promise, when I left Ireland, that I’d see another therapist in London if I ever needed to. Now I was finally making good on that promise. I probably should have done it a long time ago, but relapses don’t turn up one day and announce themselves in front of you, they creep up slowly on your blindside.
‘I’ve just been struggling a bit,’ I said. ‘I’m having anxiety attacks again.’
‘Well, we all get a bit anxious sometimes, love. Sure I got anxious in Dunne’s Stores yesterday trying to get all the groceries packed.’
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
‘Have you thought about taking a holiday?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Maybe that’d help.’
I love my mother with all my heart. She’s the woman you call when your heart’s been broken or your car’s been stolen or you’ve accidentally killed someone and you need help burying the body, no questions asked. Once, when I was twelve years old, a teacher grabbed me by the hair and shouted in my face. My mother had her fired. When I was sixteen, I missed a flight to Kerry for my school trip and my mother drove for six straight hours to get me there. And a few years ago, when my shithead ex turned up on her doorstep, begging to see me, she had the bastard arrested. Actually arrested. He spent the night in Coolock Garda Station.
My mother is great in a crisis, but if there are no extenuating circumstances – if you have a nice job and a nice boyfriend and a nice house – she struggles to understand how you could possibly be sad.
‘Do you need some money? For the therapy?’
‘No, I’m all right,’ I said, ‘but thanks.’
She tries.
We hugged one another then, both of us careful to keep our hands, now sticky with starch, out to either side.
‘Are you two all right?’ she whispered, glancing over at Theo.
‘Not really.’
She held me a bit tighter.
‘We’ll talk later,’ she said. But we never did. The day took over, as days tend to do.
I added my measly pile of potatoes to the pot and went to the bathroom, but when I opened the door I found Sally leaning over the toilet with her water gun dipped right into the bowl.
‘Hi,’ said Sally.
‘Hi.’
She carried on what she was doing, pulling back a plastic lever which sucked water up from the toilet bowl and into the gun.
‘Sal,’ I said.
Sally looked up, casual as fuck, as though I hadn’t just discovered she’d been soaking the other kids in toilet water all day.
‘Yeah?’
‘Put the gun down.’
Dinner was postponed until every child was bathed and changed into whatever dry clothes we could find. Some settled for old, baggy t-shirts, but a few chose items from the dress-up box. Lily, Sally’s older sister, insisted on squeezing into her pumpkin costume from last Halloween, and once Sally saw this, she demanded to be allowed to wear the Batman outfit. I couldn’t say which was funnier, but they were equally impractical for dining purposes; one unable to move her arms and the other unable to see. Their parents didn’t care because the kids were quiet and content. This, I’ve discovered, is the nirvana every
parent seeks: a happy, quiet child.
The usual chatter ensued and the topic seemed to find its way, as it so often does, back to the children. I don’t mind, I like to hear about them, but I’ve never felt fully part of the conversation. I can’t understand the middle-of-the-night feeds, or bitch about school fees or offer my advice on sterilising bottles or the teething process. I have no hilarious anecdotes about putrid nappies exploding in public or school plays gone disastrously wrong. If anything, I feel ashamed, listening to all this, about the fact that I get plenty of sleep and my vagina is as tight as ever. So I try to steer the conversation towards film – a topic we all used to have in common – but these same people who introduced me to Star Wars and Spielberg and Hollywood musicals, who shaped my love of storytelling and in doing so inadvertently determined my career, now laugh when I ask if they’ve seen a new release. When you have kids, they tell me, you don’t go to the cinema any more. This makes me feel both sad and selfish. Sad that they’ve given it up. Selfish that I don’t think I could.
When they asked, once again, about me leaving my stable office job – with its pension and maternity leave and onsite gym facilities – to pursue something that to most people must seem like a hobby, I felt the need to explain myself. Yes, I work from home, and yes, I sit on my arse all day and write, but it’s not that easy, I tell them, to be creative. It’s exhausting, pouring your heart out onto a page, building entire worlds and people to inhabit them, motivating yourself to write every day, running a business alone, worrying where your next pay cheque will come from, pitching your precious ideas to people who probably won’t remember you … And then I heard myself, describing my life as exhausting, and I stopped talking because I know that anything short of being responsible for the physical and emotional well-being of non-fictional human beings who are entirely dependent on you does not classify as exhausting in this room.
