Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 104138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
“So what changed?”
A voice in my head tells me to stop talking, but I can’t. It feels too good. “Max caught me cutting again, saw the extent of the years of damage I’d caused to myself. That time he came with me to see the GP, a different one than I usually saw. He told her about the self-harm because he knew I wouldn’t.”
I stare up at the wall, struggling to make eye contact with him. “She referred me for a psychiatric assessment. Max came with me. According to the notes the guy had my GP had raised concerns about bipolar type two.”
“There are different kinds?”
“Type two causes milder episodes of mania, but more intense periods of depression. The man who assessed me, however, said he didn’t believe in that diagnosis, said it’s a fad brought over from America.”
“He actually said that?” Theodore sounds as disbelieving as Max did when he heard it straight from the mental health assessor’s mouth.
“Then he went on to say bipolar diagnoses are only usually made when someone ends up being sectioned or brought in by the police. He made me feel like I was wasting his time, but I wasn’t there through choice. I didn’t ask to be referred. I only went for Max’s sake. Anyway, he diagnosed me with chronic depression and off I went.”
“But what about the self-harm? He helped you with that, right?”
“I was too old apparently. Their services are only available to under twenty-five’s. I was twenty-six.”
“So…they just left you?”
“Pretty much. Max got me another appointment with the GP, and by this point I was exhausted. I felt like a fool. Maybe even a hypochondriac. But I went. For Max. She sounded surprised by what we’d been told, but her hands were tied. Max did all the talking. I couldn’t. I was so tired. Resigned. Hopeless. She referred me for cognitive behavioural therapy, switched my antidepressants, and that was that.”
“Did it help? The therapy?”
“It made me feel stupid. Patronised. CBT is all about changing the way you think, teaching yourself alternative choices. But I already know what I’m supposed to do. I know if I feel low I should go for a walk, talk to someone. I know if I feel the urge to hurt myself I should wait for it to pass, take a bath or, again, talk to someone. I know all that, but I choose not to do it. So, no, it didn’t work. I’m sure it does for some people, but not for me.”
There is no help for me.
Silence follows, but it’s not awkward. It’s peaceful. Calming. It surprises me that I don’t feel embarrassed. Judged. I feel completely at ease in Theodore’s presence.
“What caused it?” Theodore asks, his eyebrows knitted together in concern, and maybe a little curiosity. “Did you have a bad childhood?”
Sometimes I wish that were true. If I could pinpoint an issue I could work through it. It would be easier than knowing I was born this way. “I had a good life, great parents. I was brought up exactly the same as Max. Some people might say I have a screw loose in my brain, but I think that screw is missing altogether. It can’t be tightened. I can’t be fixed. It was never there to begin with.”
His thumb draws small circles on my back and I feel it all the way down to my toes. “You mean you’ve always felt this way? Even as a child?”
“I’ve been fucked in the head for as long as I can remember.”
“Don’t say that. You’re not fucked in the head.”
He can’t say that. He doesn’t know. “I’d fake being sick from six years old, just so I could stay home. Not so I could watch TV or play on my Nintendo…so I could wrap myself in my quilt and cry until I fell asleep. I saw my first psychiatrist when I was eleven. I-”
“I thought you said nobody knew?” he cuts in, confused.
“My mum cottoned on to the fact I was pretending to be sick. After that I would point blank refuse to go to school. Eventually, when I reached eleven and went to high school, she had the head teacher on her back. They thought she was allowing me to play truant and didn’t care about my education. But she did. She tried. I pushed her to the end of her tether. I had this ability to switch off from the world, even then. At first, she tried talking to me. She’d cry. Beg me. But I couldn’t hear her.”
“Because you’d switched off?”
I love how he’s trying to understand. It’s almost therapeutic. On some level I feel like he’s starting to heal me…but that thought is dangerous. “It was like I wasn’t even inside my body anymore. I could see a hazy vision of her in front of me, but I wasn’t there. She’d plead, she’d shout, she’d shake me. But I was gone. She sought advice from the family GP and it was decided I had some kind of school phobia. That’s why they sent me to a psychiatrist.”
“And what did they say?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t really remember what we talked about, and my mum’s never spoken to me about it. All I do remember from those appointments is staring at a bookend shaped like a cat on the shelf behind my psychiatrist, closing down while she did all the talking. Sometimes my mum would be in the room with us, sometimes I’d be alone, and sometimes I’d be in the waiting room watching the younger kids play with the plastic doll house while my mum spoke to the doctor without me. They put me on a course of anti-depressants and the appointments stopped.”
“At eleven?”
“Yes.”
“So then what happened? Did you go back to the GP?”
“No. I learned to hide it better after that. I learned how to be more convincing about being sick. I taught myself how to vomit whenever I needed to. I found out which parts of my body bruised the easiest, and I’d hit myself and conjure up a believable ‘accident’ so I could stay home.”