by David Burton
But it was only a matter of time before things went too far. A week before the formal, a showcase evening turned to near tragedy when a fire-breathing routine got out of hand. An inexperienced young man swallowed the fire accelerant. He believed that fire breathing meant you breathed the fumes of fuel to make the fire whip into fantastical shapes. In fact, fire breathing is spitting very small quantities of fuel onto lit torches, followed by intensive mouth-rinsing immediately afterwards. It shouldn’t be attempted by anyone who hasn’t had extensive training in performing the stunt.
The victim of stupidity and poor supervision was rushed to hospital to get his stomach pumped, and the drama club became the focus of concerned parents and teachers. The principal had to fight off cancelling it altogether. Fire breathing was banned.
I was disappointed, but my mother took it further. The day before the formal she put her foot down and said I wasn’t to attend anymore.
I was horrified.
‘Mum! No way! It’s the best part of the week for me!’
‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘You’re not going. I don’t trust Mr Coates. It’s dangerous and irresponsible.’
‘You can’t do this. I’ll go anyway.’
‘Then you’ll walk.’
I was furious.
‘Fine.’
Mum had a lot going on at the time. Her depression now manifested as acute stress migraines, and her nights were often interrupted by visits to hospital for injections to relax her muscles. I woke up regularly to red beams of light flashing through my bedroom windows. Mum would call an ambulance and attend the hospital alone, asking them not to turn the siren on so they wouldn’t wake the rest of the family.
Teenagers aren’t particularly sensitive beasts, and so I didn’t take any of this into account when I threw a petulant adolescent tantrum, stating repeatedly that I would be going to the drama club with or without her permission. Our argument escalated.
‘I cannot believe you’re doing this to me,’ I said, growing in anger.
‘David, it’s not safe.’
‘It’s like you want to make me miserable.’
Down the hall, on a coathanger, was the purple suit that Mum had now been stressing over for months. It had all the markings of a zoot suit: a silk lining, interior pockets, a pleated waist band. It was a work of art. I had said thank you on a number of occasions, but now Mum was saying that I wasn’t nearly as grateful as I should be. Soon we weren’t talking about fire breathing at all, but about how she, somehow, in my teenage mind, didn’t understand or support me. I declared that she never supported me.
‘If this were the twins asking,’ I said, ‘you wouldn’t have a problem.’
Her eyes flew wide open with tears and anger.
Dad said, quietly, from his corner, ‘I think that’s enough now.’
Mum started yelling at me. Really yelling. Properly yelling. I had never heard her voice so high and vicious before. I remember her eyes: wild, bloodshot eyes that burned out at me from a body rigid with fury. She got up and stormed out of the house. She slammed the car door, backed out of the driveway at a God-awful speed and raced down our street.
This had never happened before. Our family’s first defence was to avoid conflict. In a choice between confrontation and silence, we chose silence every time at all costs. No one in the family had ever argued the way Mum and I just had. Certainly, no one had ever stormed out of the house and straight-up left.
Dad and I were suddenly alone, stunned. Our first concern was the boys who were in their bedroom. They must have heard the yelling. If they knew that Mum had left in a distraught state, they would likely have an anxiety attack that would need a significant boost of meds to calm them down. Dad and I went in and assured them everything was fine. They nodded their understanding with complete and oblivious trust.
It was a strange afternoon, waiting for Mum to come back, worried that she might never return. Dad and I went back to our routines without talking. He went to the computer; I went to my room.
What had just happened? And what was going to happen? Would Mum come back?
We didn’t have to wait too long. I was in my room when I heard the car pull in and Mum storm out. She opened the front door to find Dad.
‘I’m packing my bags and going!’ she yelled.
‘I think you need to calm down, love,’ Dad said.
‘Don’t PATRONISE ME!’
I knew Mum was headed for me. She was sure to come to my room. I had to hide. More than that, I had to get to the boys. What would they do if they saw Mum in this state? What would Mum do? I quickly ran the long way to the boys’ bedroom, hiding from the escalating argument between Mum and Dad.
I raced in and closed the door. The boys were sitting in their second-hand lounge chairs, staring mildly at the television. They looked up at me calmly.
‘What’s wrong?’ Andy asked.
‘Nothing,’ I smiled. ‘Nothing.’
I heard movement in the lounge room, Mum screaming.
‘What’s that?’ Chrissy asked.
‘Let’s put some music on.’ I went to the CD player and turned up the music. A plastic pop tune blared out from the speakers. The boys and I danced and sang wildly; all the while my heart was pounding in my chest. We could no longer hear what was going on outside.
I felt a part of me break. The boys were happy and beautifully ignorant, but I went a little nuts, singing and dancing with them. Pretending everything was fine while the world was ending outside. Pretending, for a moment, that I was some kind of protective brother, or a good son.
The song ended, and there was no noise.
Silence.
Safety.
Right. I should get back to my bedroom. If Mum comes in to confront me in front of the boys…
I make a quick duck to my room and close the door. I don’t run into Mum. I think she’s up the hallway, in her own bedroom. I wait, breathing heavily by the door. I’m scared. I’ve never been scared of Mum before. It’s never been like this.
I hear her stomping up the hallway and then the terrible pounding of her knock. She swings the door open and I jump over the bed, out of the way, away from her.
I’m sure she’s going to hit me. I’m almost positive it’s going to happen. My mind races to those kids at school with their dark bruises. I tell her, I scream at her through tears that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I said. I was angry and I was stupid.
She stares at me with cold, wild eyes. She’s not my mum. I don’t recognise her. She’s not my mum. She opens her mouth to speak. There are tears in her eyes. The sharp shrill of anger has disappeared, and it’s replaced by a deeply certain and guttural tone.
‘You’re a horrible, awful son. You’re ungrateful and you do nothing for this family.’
She turned around and left, slamming the door behind her.
I punch myself repeatedly in the head as I cry.
It’s about 5pm, and I don’t leave my room until the following morning to go to school.
My mum is there, like she always is. We don’t speak of the events the previou
s evening. Everything is normal.
That night, I put on my purple suit. Tiff comes to my front door. Her parents are driving us in their vintage car. I give her a corsage and she gives me a peck on the cheek. We pull off a seamless performance in front of our parents. Her dress is dark blue. I take her by the arm. Side by side like this, we look like a bruise.
Everyone laughs at my suit, and I laugh with them. I am funny and energetic. I mimic joy perfectly. I am expected to dance with my mother for a song or two. I take her by the hand and lead her round the floor. Other mothers have tears in their eyes. We are awkwardly stilted, false.
Then I danced with Tiff. I was in a gigantic purple suit, playing a madman, dancing with my ex-girlfriend who I’d let down and my mother who hated me. This was so stupid. I was so stupid. I’d never felt more like a fraud.
I kept expecting another conversation between my mother and me, but it never came. School and family life moved on. My Crazy Drama Dave performance continued at breakneck pace.
Then, a month before school was scheduled to finish, in the middle of my final exams, I woke up to a startling realisation. It sunk into me like a freezing cold wave.
If I got out of bed, I would die.
I was paralysed from head to toe.
8
Doctors and Depression
Of course, this had been coming for a while. It had only been a matter of time before I went into a full-on meltdown.
Crazy Drama Dave had not fooled my parents all these years. I had been a different version of myself at home. I arrived at the end of every school day completely drained and exhausted, and retreated to my room for hours on end to watch meaningless television. I had little motivation to do or say anything when I was in this state of mind; I would usually only get up when I was called to dinner. I’d sit silent at the table, have a couple of mouthfuls, mumble that I wasn’t hungry and return to my room.
After the GP visit back in the Mary days, Mum repeatedly tried to get me to go and see someone. But I wasn’t budging.
‘I’m fine,’ I would insist, even fooling myself. I thought this was how I worked, normally. I certainly wouldn’t have said I was happy, but then I didn’t think happiness was even possible.
Besides, it wasn’t like I didn’t have experience with psychologists. In fact, I’d seen a handful of doctors before I’d gone anywhere near high school.
‘You know, it’s okay to be depressed,’ she says, gripping my knee and looking into my eye. The young psychologist is pretty. Her hair is tied back in a ponytail; her clothes are inoffensive and sensible. She exudes good intentions. The office is an altar to the idea of sound mental health: it’s all warm inviting reds, couches of brown academic leather, cartographic art on the walls. (I’ve been to a lot of psychologists in my time; I don’t know why they’re obsessed with hanging old maps on the walls. Are psychologists ye olde sailors in their leisure hours? Do they know there are new ones available? I imagine them lost in suburbia, yelling into an olde scroll: ‘Which way is north, Goddamit? North?!’)
I’m ten at this stage, by the way.
‘You shouldn’t feel bad about feeling sad,’ she continues.
It sounds like she’s about to break into song.
‘That rhymed,’ I say, smiling. She returns the smile, but I detect pity. It’s slight and small, with a gentle nod.
‘It’s okay to feel depressed,’ she repeats. ‘I mean, David, you’ve got a lot going on for a ten year old, don’t you? Two brothers with Aspergers, you’re picked on at school, you’ve got no friends, both your parents are on antidepressant meds so, you know. It’s okay to be depressed.’
‘Um…thanks?’ I reply, uncertain. I wait for her to add to the list: ‘You’re pretty shit at sport too, and soon you’ll have to go to high school, which will be a nightmare, and you don’t know if God exists and what the purpose of life is and—OH, GOD!!’ She bursts into tears and leaps out of the window, the glass shattering as she falls and kills herself on the bitumen below. I calmly exit the office and tell the receptionist that my psychologist has killed herself, and I look at my mum in the waiting room as if to say: ‘See? I told you something like this would happen.’
But that doesn’t happen. And I’m being unfair to this particularly nice woman. She’s just trying to let me know that I have permission to feel sad. Even at this age, I’ve somehow picked up that it’s less trouble if I just say ‘I’m fine’ when someone asks how I am. My stubborn denial of my real feelings has led me to this room. I’m not fine. There are lots of reasons I shouldn’t be fine.
Sadness is one thing. Depression is something else. I have clinical depression. I know this because another psychologist told me a couple of years ago, when I was seven.
I was in grade three. I was experiencing anxiety that normal seven year olds weren’t experiencing. I was outright paranoid.
Whenever Mum and Dad would leave me in a car even for just two minutes, I was certain something awful would happen to them. I’d imagine them being kidnapped or murdered, and even their safe return wouldn’t convince me that they were safe. I was certain that impostors had killed my real parents and were adopting their skin as a disguise. I can’t remember voicing these fears, as I was never sure that my parents were my real parents. I would occasionally accuse them of trying to poison me—a tantrum that my parents put down to exhaustion.
If I made the mistake of watching the news, I would instantly believe that my family was destined for whatever sorry fate the television exposed—nuclear disaster, fire, murder and robbery were the most common fears. I barely slept.
So Mum and Dad took me to a psychologist who talked to me about ‘stress’. ‘Stress’ was a new word in my vocabulary, and in my seven-year-old mind it was something that made me special. The following week at show and tell, I got up in front of the class, explained what stress was, and how I have it sometimes, and I even talked through some of the tools the psychologist had given me to relieve it. My seven-year-old peers seemed indifferent. I remember the smile on the teacher’s face. It was the same as the one the psychologist would give me a few years later, when I pointed out that she was accidentally rhyming. It was a smile that said: ‘I don’t know what to do with this information. Who the fuck is this kid? Is this inappropriate?’
I’d learnt something new about myself and I wanted to share it. I didn’t understand that you weren’t supposed to get up in front of your class and talk about your mental-health difficulties. I got a sense of it that day though. No one said anything to me.
The psychologist who diagnosed me with stress was one of the very first psychologists my parents sent me to. His name was Lachlan. I was seven. I worshipped him. A person who would sit and listen to me…for a WHOLE hour?! He would sit and ask me questions and WANT to listen to my answers. Amazing.
The conversations with Lachlan quickly uncovered my incredibly low self-esteem. I was the victim of ongoing bullying at school, and I had begun to believe that the world was punishing me for being worthless.
Wisely, Lachlan and my parents were a little wary about giving a kid with anxiety and a case of the blues any mind-altering drugs. They sought different strategies. Lachlan gave me an exercise book. This was to be my ‘positive thinking’ book. Affirmations and lists of stuff I’d done successfully were to
be written down in this book.
The only thing I really remember about the book was its cover. I’d wrapped it in bright red paper and stuck a picture of Genie from the Disney film Aladdin on the front alongside a picture of Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting. I admired Williams’ artistry. He could play extroverted, joyful and silly, but also sombre, understated and lonely. I can’t remember what I wrote in the book, and I don’t know if it worked. But there must have been some kind of effect, because I didn’t need to go back to Lachlan for a while.
I was an easy target at school: I was crap at sport, and I was regularly mistaken for a foreigner. I had dark skin and a surprising abundance of hair for a prepubescent. A lot of the class insisted that I must be from England. My family had been Australian for a handful of generations.
‘But you talk like a Pom!’ they’d say with disdain. I was speaking English. They were speaking an exotic dialect known as ‘Bogan shithead’.
According to them (and, eventually, to myself), I was a girl. Gay. I wore the wrong things. I said the wrong things. I was just wrong.
My insomnia mutated into a significant problem. For about eighteen months I survived on very little sleep. As a nightly ritual, I’d go to the kitchen at around midnight, having attempted sleep for a few hours, cry for half an hour, and go back to bed. It went on for months. Mum and Dad tried every strategy under the sun. Some nights Mum would come out and make some toast, or give me special chocolates that she’d kept hidden. Other times she and Dad would ignore it, not speak of it, trying to deny my cry for attention. It may have been a cry for attention. I don’t know what it was. Mum and Dad tried everything.