I leaned over the railings on the deck to look at the deep black sea churning beneath. Wind whipped hair across my face. The cold was not so much bracing as murderous. I staggered back inside as the ferry rose and fell, rose and fell. I stumbled down the steps to the toilet but the smell of vomit was so strong, I walked straight out before I was sick too. The corridors were filled with people stretched out under blankets and sleeping bags. Bodies were curled up in doorways, on tables, on windowsills. I found a spot on the floor, closed my eyes and tried to sleep. The motion of the sea soon did its job, sending me to sleep until a tannoy announced we were in Dublin Port.
I’d followed Helen’s advice and decided to go to Ireland. Money was an ever-present worry so I went by ferry (just £45 return) but I cancelled out any savings by checking into a cheap guest house. I figured I just needed a couple of days on my own before I saw Gemma. A couple of days on my own, without self-help, would get me back to ‘normal’. It didn’t.
For three days I lay on the synthetic yellow bedspread, feeling like I was falling, falling, falling.
I lay staring at the ceiling as the voice in my head told me for hours on end about what a mess I’d made of everything . . . I was failing at self-help. I was failing at everything. People hated me. Everybody hated me.
The only relief was the tinny sounds of the television, which I kept on low all the time. The Big Bang Theory. Friends. Frasier. The canned laughter sometimes felt comforting and sometimes felt like a menace. Were they laughing at me? At one point at 4am, when I couldn’t sleep and was holding on to sanity by watching infomercials for an abs cruncher, I had the thought: This is what it’s like to go mad . . . This is actually what it’s like.
Gemma had been texting every day and each day I said I’d call her the next day but I hadn’t picked up the phone. Then she arrived with baby James in the pram. She looked so beautiful, her hair shining in the winter sun. I felt ashamed that she could get herself dressed and out of the house on a few hours of broken sleep, while I was an unwashed mess.
‘Come on, get dressed. We’re going out.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘You have to. You need to get air.’
And so we walked slowly along the canal, through Baggot Street and up to Portobello. Then I went back to the guest house. I had said next to nothing. I had actually lost the power of speech. A couple of times I’d opened my mouth but no words would come out. So she kept talking and her words became a life raft. I clung on to her conversation and its connection to the normal, healthy, balanced world, as if my sanity depended on it.
The next day she came again and we walked some more. The same happened the next day. And then I started talking, slowly.
I told her about the voice in my head, the nightmares and the morning dread.
‘Some days I feel like my brain is on fire, like it’s burning. All I can think about all day is what a mess I’ve made of everything.’
I expected her to tell me that everybody feels like that sometimes and that I just needed a bit of time out.
She didn’t.
‘How long have you been like this?’
‘I don’t know – a while.’
I could see that these feelings had started creeping in again in late August, during all the money stuff. The middle-of-the-night panics ramped up and so did the constant television watching – I couldn’t handle being alone with my head. The self-loathing.
Then in September, with angels, there was a kind of manic attempt to keep the show on the road but the anger was building in me – anger at stupid angels and their stupid make-believe wings, anger at Geoff and his stupid American girlfriend, anger at life – and anger at me . . . and then I got sick and stopped answering the phone.
‘Why didn’t you say anything sooner?’ she asked. ‘I knew you weren’t right but you kept saying you were fine.’
‘I didn’t want to bother you. You have a baby to look after, you shouldn’t have to listen to me.’
‘I always want to listen to you,’ said Gemma. ‘I worry about you.’
‘I didn’t realize how bad I was getting.’
‘You’ve been here before.’
‘I know.’
I have always been prone to getting down. It starts so gradually I don’t notice it. I start waking up in the middle of the night with a feeling of non-specific panic and waking up in the morning with a feeling of dread and anxiety. Bit by bit this grows until it feels like the day – and the world – contains nothing but cliffs for me to fall off.
I get tired. I retreat. I don’t want to go out. I plug myself with more and more caffeine in order to get my work done, but eventually my brain slows down so much that getting from the start of a sentence to the end feels like a marathon. I get sick. I feel like I have a cold I can’t shake. I start to become obsessed with sleep. I feel that if I could just sleep some more, I’d be OK. If could just eat more broccoli, I’d be OK.
But it doesn’t matter how much I sleep or how much broccoli I eat, I don’t feel better.
At first I’m like a piano with all the top notes removed – nothing gives me joy, nothing makes me laugh.
Then even the low notes are removed. I am nothing but an empty box.
‘I hate that I get like this. Other people cope with really bad situations and they don’t get like this. People live in war zones and lose their parents or have cancer . . . they have a right to be depressed, I don’t have a right to be depressed. I just need to pull myself out of it. Helen thinks I should go back on the meds,’ I said to Gemma.
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
I’d been on antidepressants twice before – in my late twenties and early thirties. The first time the doctor suggested them I was horrified.
It was during my twenties, when I was working around the clock in my high-flying job with chronic tonsillitis. Every time I went to see him to get more antibiotics I would cry and he would pass me the Kleenex from the pink flowered box on his cluttered desk. He kept telling me I was depressed. I kept saying, no thank you very much, I am not depressed.
I thought it was normal to feel like the bottom of your world was falling out every day – I thought that was just how people felt. You just had to try harder, keep going, hope that one day it would get better. Also, being diagnosed as depressed was code for being a failure. For not being able to nail this life business.
Then he asked me a series of questions.
‘How often can you relate to the following – not at all, sometimes, nearly every day,’ he read out loud. ‘Little interest or pleasure in doing things.’
‘Nearly every day.’
‘Feeling down or hopeless.’
‘Nearly every day.’
‘Trouble falling or staying asleep, or too much sleeping.’
‘Nearly every day.’
‘Feeling bad about yourself, or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down . . .’
‘Nearly every day.’
Then the big one. ‘Do you sometimes think you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in some way?’
The doctor looked up at me. His hooded eyes showed a mixture of boredom and deep compassion. White hairs sprouted out of his nose and his pores were the size of craters.
‘I sometimes think that the only way to stop feeling like this would be to be dead,’ I said. I was shocked by my own words.
I was not suicidal. I had no plans to kill myself, no active desire to be dead at all, it was just that it seemed to me that the only way to stop the groundhog day of misery was . . . well . . . to not be alive.
The words hung in the airless, magnolia-painted room and for a second I was carried away with the magnitude of my own misery.
I looked at the doctor, tears streaming down my cheeks, waiting for sympathy and concern. Instead I got a response that punctured my melodrama perfectly.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,’ he replied. ‘I would sa
y that that was a perfectly normal response to life.’ He handed me a prescription for Seroxat.
Within four weeks I noticed a difference. I remember sitting at my desk at home and looking out of the window at a tree. And it looked beautiful. It was the first time in months I’d found anything pretty. An unfamiliar feeling of lightness settled around me and I tried to put my finger on what it was – then it hit me: Oh look, you’re happy! This is what it’s like to feel happy!
It had been so long.
I stayed on the medication for a year and the difference was night and day.
Then I decided I didn’t need it. I didn’t want to have to medicate myself just to get through life, and I was OK for a few years, until I had another dip in my early thirties. I went back on the meds and then stopped again.
I wanted to be able to figure life out on my own. I felt sure I could handle it myself, if I could just drink less. Do more exercise. Think more positively. But I’d been trying to do that, and look where it had got me.
‘I’ll give it till January. If I’m still bad then I’ll go to the doctor,’ I said to Gemma, who was the only friend who knew that I’d gone on antidepressants.
‘OK, until then let’s try to have fun – no books.’
‘But I am already behind – I said I’d do twelve books in twelve months, and I’ve only done nine.’
‘Who cares?’
‘I do! I have to finish. I’ll feel even more of a failure if I don’t get to the end.’
‘In what land are you a failure? In the newsagent’s today you had articles in two magazines and one newspaper. In what planet does that make you a failure?’
She was right. If someone had told me a few years ago that I would be in three publications in one day, I’d have jumped up and down with joy. Now it felt like a reflection of what an embarrassment I’d become.
‘Yeah, but they were shit articles and one of them was about how I can’t find a boyfriend.’
‘But it’s not even about work – you’re a good person. I love you. Everyone loves you. I wish you could see that. Why are you even doing any of this? You are driving yourself crazy and for what? You don’t need to improve yourself. You are a good person the way you are. When are you going to realize that?’ she said.
‘I don’t feel like a good person,’ I said, and my voice cracked. Tears poured down my face.
‘Marianne, these things you are saying to yourself about being a failure and a bad person, they are not true – you have to know that. I just want you to get to the end of all this and realize that you were fine to begin with. You don’t need to be anything more than what you are right now.’
I kept crying. I wished I felt like that.
‘I’m worried about you,’ she said. ‘Our brains are like elastic bands – you can pull them a lot and they’ll ping back into shape, but if you stretch too much, one day something’s going to snap. I don’t want you to snap.’
‘Me neither.’
I stayed in Ireland for three weeks. When I wasn’t sleeping, Gemma, James and I would go for blustery walks, followed by television by the fire.
As each day passed, I felt a bit better.
On 20th December, I got the ferry back to Wales and took a train to Euston. It was gone 8pm on a Friday night and my bag felt heavy.
I could either wait for the 91 bus or get a cab. I got in line for a taxi. An American couple were in front of me, with wheelie bags the size of coffins. They looked nervous. They got in their cab. I waited. A people-carrier pulled up. I hated people-carriers.
‘Where to?’ asked the small, bald driver.
‘Archway, please,’ I replied, looking out of the window at the lights and the crowds of people. Groups of office workers in Christmas jumpers, girls in high heels and goose-bumped legs. This was usually my favourite time of year. Strings of lights, whiskey and ‘Fairytale of New York’. Now I felt nothing.
‘It’s a busy night,’ said the driver.
‘Yeah,’ I replied.
‘Are you off out later, then?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘I’ll keep going till about 3,’ he said.
I felt rude to be so monosyllabic when he was in the mood to chat. ‘Nights must be hard,’ I said.
‘Not really. No traffic, people are less stressed and you can earn more. I only need to do three nights a week to keep me going.’
‘That’s good,’ I said.
‘Not a fan of work, me.’ He laughed. ‘A lazy bugger.’
‘Me too,’ I replied. He looked at me in the rear-view mirror and smiled.
‘I thought you looked relaxed,’ he said.
‘Really? I don’t feel relaxed, I feel like I’m going crazy,’ I said, and as soon as it came out of my mouth I wondered why I’d confessed that to a total stranger.
He kept staring at me in the mirror. ‘Why’s that then?’ he asked.
‘Oh, it’s a long story,’ I replied.
‘What do you do for a living, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘I’m a journalist – or I used to be. I’m not getting much work done these days.’
‘Why’s that then?’ His eyes were staring at me.
I felt embarrassed. What would a sixty-something cabbie think of the craziness induced by a year of manic self-improvement.
He kept looking at me.
‘Have you heard of self-help books? Those books that tell you how to be more confident, stop worrying and overcome your fears?’
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Well, I’ve been reading a different book each month and doing everything it tells me to do to see if they make you happy.’
His eyes darted between the road and the mirror. I awaited a blank, non-comprehending silence.
‘So you’ve been digging deep, then,’ he said.
I was stunned. ‘Yes, I have.’
‘It’s like the layers of an onion . . . you’re peeling off each layer . . .’ he continued.
‘Yes, exactly,’ I replied. Staggered.
‘It’s not easy, is it?’
‘No. I feel like I’m falling apart,’ and as I said it I could feel the familiar heat of tears running down my face. Jesus Christ, could I not get through a single day without crying in public?
‘What does that feel like, when you’re falling apart?’ he asked, seemingly unbothered by the tears.
The darkness of the cab felt like a confessional as we drove down the Caledonian Road.
‘I can’t do anything that I used to do,’ I blurted. ‘I can’t seem to get work done and I used to work all the time. I don’t want to go out like I used to. I have lost touch with my friends. I think the world hates me and that I am a bad person. I’m having nightmares, dreaming that I’m killing my parents. I am crying all the time.’
There was a pause as he took on board what I’d said.
‘Well, it’s big stuff you’re doing. Big brain stuff –’ he said.
‘It’s just bloody self-help books! I didn’t know that this was what was going to happen.’
‘You’d never have started it if you’d known,’ he said. ‘What you’re doing is kamikaze, love. You’ve been poking around in your head and that’s dangerous stuff. And I can say that because I’ve been there.’
‘You’ve lived your life by self-help books?’
He chuckled. ‘Worse than that; I did a PhD on Thomas Hardy. Miserable bloke. So I gave it up and moved to a cottage in Italy. Middle of nowhere. No running water or electricity. I stayed there for nine months and all I did was walk for seven, eight, nine hours every day. I’d just walk and think. I’d think about everything. I stopped eating. I had euphoric highs and crashing lows . . . Sometimes it felt like heaven but then sometimes it was hell. I had to come back or I’d have lost my marbles . . . I was touching the void.’ He paused. ‘That’s what you’re doing right now, you’re touching the void – and you’ve got to step back because you won’t be any good to anyone if you go under.’
Th
at’s exactly what it had felt like over the last few weeks – I’d been touching the void.
He kept talking. ‘I was around in the Sixties when all the hippies used to say: “Just let go, man . . .” but if any of them really knew what it felt like to let go they’d know it feels bloody awful. Letting go is terrifying.’
Tears continued to stream down my cheeks.
‘It really is,’ I said.
Letting go of the old me: the me addicted to work, to people liking her, to fitting in . . . didn’t feel good, it felt more horrible than I could explain. I’d started the year thinking that I wanted to change, but changing was terrifying. If I wasn’t the old me, then who was I? How did I know that I was going to come back together again? What if I was just going to stay a broken mess like this forever?
‘I feel like I’m having a breakdown,’ I said. ‘Like I’m losing my mind.’
‘Well, you are in a way,’ he said. ‘But that’s OK. I think it was Gide that wrote: “To discover new lands you must first lose sight of the shore.” That’s where you are now. You’ve lost sight of the shore but it’s OK. You just need to float a bit now. Take a rest. Look after yourself, do some normal things. And if you want to cry, cry. I used to cry all the time; I’d wear dark glasses so that people in the cab wouldn’t see. Sit in the park and cry . . .’
‘OK.’
‘Have you thought about speaking to anyone? A therapist?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘You might want to. They’ll just make it about your family – they always do – but remember this isn’t about them, this is about you: This is your bid for freedom.’
I got a shiver. Ever since angel month, I’d been wondering why the hell I was doing any of this. When I’d started, I’d just wanted to make my life a bit better – the way you feel better when you lose half a stone or get fit, or when you meet someone you like. But he was right. Without realizing it, I was looking for freedom: freedom from the feeling that there was something wrong with me, freedom from the never-ending feeling that nothing I did was ever good enough, freedom from being constantly scared of everything and everyone . . . freedom to just be me. Or just be.
Help Me! Page 21