Because We Are Bad, OCD and a girl lost in thought

by Lily Bailey

  My counselor is a lady in her thirties, Gail, who has brunette mid-length hair. I have three appointments with her over the next few weeks, during which time she asks me about my childhood, my family, and my life now. What do I find stressful about college?

  She mmms a lot. She says “Uh-huh,” “Why’s that?” and “How did that make you feel?” Her specialty is nodding.

  I answer her questions, and she doesn’t respond.

  “Why don’t you talk? You ask me, like, ten questions a session, and the rest of the time you just nod and don’t say anything.”

  “That’s how psychotherapy works. I’m trying to give you the physical space to verbalize your feelings, with no interruptions or time constraints. Silence isn’t bad. This is a much-needed window of tranquility for you.”

  “Well, I don’t mean to be rude. You’re very nice. It’s just . . . This isn’t really helping me.”

  “Mmm-hmm. What makes you say that?”

  College is a thirty-minute cycle from the dorm, so I purchase a bike in the hope that cycling will free me from routines.

  Unfortunately, the bike is a useless therapist; Blank Slate will not come. Instead, getting on the bike means more time to review the day’s words. This is how I come to be crossing a notoriously dangerous junction, muttering the categories:

  LIAR

  RUDE

  SPOILED

  BODILY FUNCTIONS

  and

  UNKIND

  over and over under my breath. Around me, traffic whizzes by in a whir of color and noise that feels near but not near at the same time. I am fully in tune with the hum of my head, homing in on the points that make me SPOILED:

  BOARDING SCHOOL: I told Molly I went to boarding school.

  GAP YEAR: She asked me if I took a gap year, and I said yes.

  FUNDING: She then asked me—whoosh!

  A black four-wheel drive starts to turn left and hits my right side. I spin over the handlebars, landing splayed under the bike in a heap of torn jeans, grazes, and bike chain.

  Cars swerve to avoid me with emergency screeches, horns blare, and a woman, who turns out to be the driver of the black car, screams. I sense the screaming may stop if I can demonstrate that I am alive. Am I alive?

  Yes, I think so. Incredibly, nothing seems to hurt. Though I am lying still. Perhaps the pain will come if I move?

  What categories should I sort this event into?

  “It’s okay.” I stand up, surveying the damage, which does appear to be only some holes in my jeans and multiple scrapes. “I think I’m all right. . . . It was my fault.”

  “No, it bloody wasn’t!” yells a man in a white van.

  “The driver didn’t signal!” says a man in a Corsa, who is so aggrieved he has parked his car on the pavement and is screaming at black-car woman.

  “Genuinely, I think I’m fine,” I reply, trying to keep my voice level.

  Black-car woman is wailing.

  “I’ve never done anything like that before,” she howls. “I honestly don’t know what happened. I’m so sorry.”

  I try to evaluate the situation, which is difficult, as my half-finished routines are tugging at my sleeve like an annoying child in want of attention.

  “I’m fine,” I manage.

  I get back on the bike, pedaling furiously to the tutorial I’m now late for, beginning my routines from scratch and adding ATTENTION SEEKER to the category of SELFISH for causing such a scene. Later, when I see my bruised and cut body in the shower, it occurs to me that I was quite lucky.

  This evening I am drunker than I’ve ever been. I call Dr. Finch. She doesn’t pick up. I text. I tell her that she clearly doesn’t care.

  I get the tram into town with friends. I drink more. I dance. I drink more and pass out. Someone takes me home. Crawl into bed.

  When I wake up, it takes a couple of seconds to remember what I’ve done.

  Dr. Finch. My phone. Shit.

  I fumble on the bedside table. My phone’s not turning on. I wobble across the room to jam it in the socket to charge. The screen stays black.

  This phone has all my lists since I’ve arrived in Dublin saved on it. I haven’t backed them up because I’m scared about replicating them. Hundreds of hours of meticulously crafted documentation of all the things I’ve done wrong in this academic year. Inaccessible. And I’ve been getting so drunk, I definitely can’t remember them without it.

  There is no way I can take it to be fixed, because what if the people at the phone place see my lists, pick out my worries about being a pervert, and call the police?

  A vague memory of me throwing the phone at a wall when Dr. Finch didn’t reply takes shape . . .

  Dr. Finch!

  I need to know what I said. If I know her at all, she will have replied by e-mail. Usually I hate her stuffy professionalism, but thank god for it now! I jab the power button on my laptop, waiting nervously as my e-mails kick into life.

  One unread message. E-mail to Lily:

  Hi Lily,

  Me not picking up the phone is nothing to do with whether or not I care, but is about whether or not I’m in a position to talk. I always warn people that if they ring me outside office hours I can’t guarantee to be available, and I’m sure you realize there are many possible reasons why that might be the case.

  If you had left me a message the first time you rang, saying that you needed to speak to me urgently, then actually I almost certainly would have rung you back on that occasion. However, I had gone to bed by the time you sent the text telling me who you were.

  I am sorry that you feel so negatively about your relationship with me. I did and still do genuinely care about you, and I think between us we did develop quite a good understanding of what was going on for you. Our relationship was different from friendship in some important ways, and these differences are what actually made it valuable, so meeting in another situation would have been very different.

  You’re clearly in a painful place at the moment, but I hope that, in time, you will be able to hold on to the positive aspects of the work we did together.

  With best wishes,

  Rachel

  The e-mail is like a smack. I don’t reply, as it would generate words and I don’t have a phone to write them down on. Instead, I swig from the vodka in my top drawer and try to forget about it for a bit. Only when I am fully fired up with liquid courage do I type:

  I don’t want your best wishes, they stink. I don’t think you have ever cared. I have been too upset because of you for too long and it must end. I know I have been unreasonable. Good-bye.

  I have been arrested for stealing a handbag from under a table in a nightclub. I got caught because rather than bothering to leave, I carried on dancing with it.

  Two burly officers push me into a cell and order me to strip to my pants, so they can be sure I don’t have anything bad on me.

  I don’t have any money for bail, and I can’t think who to call, so I stay in the cell overnight, reading the desperate messages people have carved on the walls (and wondering what they wrote them with if they had been properly strip-searched):

  I only did it because I Love Jenny

  Why the fuck won’t they bring me any toilet paper? CUNTS

  Please god anybody somebody help

  Jo was not here

  Facebook me;) Tim Lincoln #thisplacesucksass

  Tracey likes black men’s cocks

  I start pulling out clumps of my hair. I don’t know why. I suppose it is something to do. I pull more, until it’s all over me and the floor.

  An officer comes in. “Stop doing that please,” he says. “You’re hurting yourself.”

  I keep going, ripping at my scalp. Hair, hair, everywhere.

  “Stop doing that please, you’re hurting yourself.”

  A few more hours later another officer comes in.

  “All right,” he calls, “time’s up! You can go now.”

  I don’t move.

  “I said
you’re free to go. Come and sign your release papers.”

  I shake my head.

  “Don’t want to go home?”

  “No.”

  “Who’s at home that you don’t want to see?”

  “No one.”

  “Well, then, there’s no reason to stay here. Besides, you can’t. This isn’t a hotel!”

  He leads me down to the office, where tired-looking policemen and women with gray skin are chugging coffee. I look at the clock on the wall: 4:50 a.m. A woman gets my stuff, which is in a little box with a sticky label on it, saying in felt-tip L. BAILEY.

  I exit the police station and find myself squinting into the cold, walking in the direction of the river Liffey, where I use my last ten euros to pay for a cab back to the dorm

  “Long night?” asks the cabdriver, craning round and grinning at me with yellow, tar-stained teeth.

  My head is spinning with words, phrases, and categories, but there are so many, I don’t know where to begin.

  I try to focus on the facts.

  I got so drunk, I decided that it was no use, all this trying to be good. So I did a bad thing to end all bad things, because scratching your nose or wondering if someone thought you were boring just doesn’t seem so bad once you have broken the real and true law of the land.

  But I got caught doing it.

  And now, in the morning, my rebellion seems both pathetic and terrifying. The years I have spent trying to be good are dwarfed by this thing.

  My lists are still gone.

  Dr. Finch does not love me.

  Now I know what to do. I am admitting defeat. I have lost.

  Previously when I toyed with the idea, the possibility, I had all sorts of vain ideas about how it might go.

  I imagined I would listen to Pachelbel’s Canon, because I always wanted that to be played when I walked down the aisle. And if I’m not going to get married, it will at least have an airing. I thought I might write letters to the people I loved, containing apologies and some sort of explanation. I pictured myself putting on my favorite outfit and doing my makeup with extra care, as if I were about to go somewhere important. I planned to take my things in suitcases to the dump, because I couldn’t bear the thought of everyone going through my stuff, trying too hard to understand.

  I suppose I thought it would be a landmark event that I would need to prepare for. But now the time has come, it’s not like this. It’s just a normal December day, cloudy with a chance of rain, nothing special. The memories of my life will not montage themselves into a great black-and-white crescendo.

  I am just tired, and I have had enough. My phone is still broken. I could continue to write my lists on paper, but it feels futile, knowing that I have lost so much vital content. It is like finding out your house has been burned to the ground, wandering round naked, lost, and cold, and then being told to build another house, despite having no money or resources.

  My brain feels broken.

  I write an apologetic note to Dr. Finch so that she knows it isn’t her fault, and put it in my desk drawer. Then I shower and shave my legs, because I don’t want the coroner to think I am disgusting. I do several nervous pees, like a child about to embark on a long car journey with limited toilet access.

  On the whole, I feel quite calm. It is as if I am about to write an unappealing essay that I’ve put off for a while but am now relieved to be finally getting on with, finding it easier than expected.

  I put on my pajamas. Then I take every pill in my bedroom and get under the covers, ready for the long sleep.

  · 19 ·

  It Is My Fault

  There is a man by my bed, his voice coming to me in waves.

  Lily?

  Can you hear me?

  Can you tell me how many pills you took?

  I can’t.

  I can’t do anything.

  I can’t sit up.

  Deirdre is in my room, along with lots of other people I don’t know. “Oh my god,” I can hear her saying, “I should have checked on her earlier—it’s just she often sleeps for a really long time—shit. I should have—shit.”

  They must have called an ambulance. How long have I been in here for? A day? Two days? When did I go to sleep?

  Can you tell me how many pills you took?

  Pills.

  Pills.

  There are all kinds of popped blister packs around me in the bed. I am lying on some of them. I took so many. How am I awake again? This was not supposed to happen.

  Can you tell me how many pills you took?

  I try to make words come out. I—

  don’t—

  know—

  I am remembering.

  Me: I don’t believe in failed suicide attempts.

  Dr. Finch: Why not?

  Me: I just don’t. It’s the sort of thing you have to get right first time round. Otherwise you obviously aren’t completely sure.

  I have failed. I couldn’t even get this right.

  Can you tell me where you are?

  I—

  I’m—

  dark?

  My body shakes like the aftershock of an earthquake rippling through every part of me. I feel myself palpate on the white sheets. A nurse swims into my line of vision, tightening something round my arm that goes vvvvzzzrrr and squeezes like too many people on the Tube. I try to tell her that a natural disaster is occurring inside me. She says that’s the aftereffects of the pills, and that it’s my fault for taking so many of them.

  It is my fault.

  The thought rushes through me, chasing after everything like a wild wind in a carless tunnel on a very black and cold night.

  It

  is

  all

  my

  fault.

  Very high blood pressure, she says. I see the words jiggle in front of me and remember the letter magnets we had on the fridge when I was small.

  V e b l o o s u r e

  r y h i g h d p r e s

  I’m not sure if she is talking to herself or me.

  I’ g o i n g e t a t o r

  m g t o d o c

  She calls for someone, and the color drains from everything until everyone around me looks like a sketch. A mad, bad picture. Knowing that any second now there will be—blackness again

  · 20 ·

  Mental Ward

  I’ve been transferred from intensive care to the psychiatric unit. It’s a state place, and the rumors are true: it feels like a scrapyard for brains.

  I’m in a room with four other people. The woman opposite me is screaming that the nurses are monsters and the doctors are devils pretending to be gods and even the orderlies are demons. Someone has given her flowers, but she has thrown them and now they are lying dead like soldiers on a linoleum battlefield.

  Next to me is a nice middle-aged woman who keeps repeating the same things and forgetting what she said five minutes ago. She has asked me my age four times. Four times I have told her: nineteen. She can’t stop dribbling; the front of her sweater is drenched. She tells me I am pretty over and over. She says I don’t look crazy, and that I am too young to have troubles. She asks me if I have “the anorexia.”

  On the far side of the room is probably the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen. She is sweaty and vast, with wrinkles that look like they’ve been chiseled in by a drill. She has been staring at me and farting for the last half an hour. She sits on her bed in a hospital gown, with her legs crossed. She isn’t wearing any underwear. A nurse keeps pulling down her gown and talking about “modesty,” but it’s no good, it just rises back up. I try not to see the thick bush and saggy pink folds of skin, but I already have done. I am a PERVERT.

  I can’t believe I’m not dead.

  The most effective method would be to throw myself in front of a car or train, but I don’t want to ruin someone else’s life too. I need to jump off something, and make sure I don’t land on anyone. I need to get to the top of the hospital. The windows may be locked, but that’s okay.
I can smash one. I get out of bed. I walk down the corridor to the end of the ward, where I encounter two security guards in front of a coded door.

  “What do you think you’re doing, girlie? This is a high-security ward. You don’t just leave. Go back to your room.”

  Deirdre and Nessa visit. They have brought me clothes, a wash bag, and a book.

  “We brought you Peter Pan,” says Deirdre, handing me my tatty blue copy. “I know it’s your favorite.”

  I flick through the pages, staring at the black-and-white illustrations I used to trace with my finger when I was small.

  They are kind to me. They don’t judge. They stay with me, sitting on the end of my bed. I am grateful they are here, but panicking—because words are arriving on my list thick and fast, and without a pen and paper to write them down, I feel stranded.

  “You scared us, Lily. I mean, you really, really scared us,” Nessa says.

  “We called your parents. We had to,” says Deirdre. “They’re on their way.”

  The psychiatrist is about fifty, with a gray mop of hair. He wears shabby brown trousers and a shabbier shirt.

  We talk for half an hour. He seems friendly enough. He asks me what drove me to the edge. His voice is lilting, firm but soft at the same time.

  “I’m a bad person. I spend my life trying to be good, and it’s never enough.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “I love my doctor. I’m obsessed by her. It’s not an OCD thing. Actually, I think it is. Oh, I don’t know anymore.”

  It shocks me that I have said these words out loud. I want to undo them; Command Z the air.

  “Mostly, I’m just a very, very bad person. I don’t deserve to exist.”

  “Do you know what I see?”

  I shake my head.

  “I see an intelligent girl who has a decision to make. Are you going to pick yourself up and do something with that intelligence, or are you going to throw it all away because right now, at this point in time, you don’t feel like a good person? Anyway, I can’t see anything bad. I mean, sure, you’re English. But you can’t help that now, can you?”