Secrets for the Mad

by Dodie Clark

  I somehow got through the shoot, desperate to get home to my flat in London, hopeful that the return to familiarity would fix whatever this was. I lugged my suitcase up the stairs, put my key in the door, walked in to my living room and saw a stranger lying on my sofa.

  ‘Alright, babe? How was Wales?’

  I couldn’t compute Hazel’s face in my head. My flat looked humongous and tiny at the same time. I struggled to reply in the same way I would if I were hammered and was trying to act sober.

  ‘Hazel, I’ve gone mad.’

  * * *

  I called every helpline I could find. I remained calm and rational, somehow still putting on my ‘phone voice’ when talking about an extremely personal situation. It was probably quite a comical juxtaposition; a girl with a tear-streamed face and snot running down her nose hyperventilating to hold music, composing herself just in time with a clear spoken ‘Hello there, yes, I’m just calling about my worsening mental state?’

  For some reason I couldn’t get the help I really needed. I was sure I needed more than just someone to talk to – so the Samaritans weren’t much help. The medical numbers I called asked me if I was signed up to a GP – which I wasn’t – and then told me if it was an emergency, and if I was suicidal, I should hang up and call 999.

  The word ‘suicidal’ to me had always meant something different to what I now know it to be. I thought that people who were suicidal wanted to die, and that they weren’t scared of it.

  I didn’t want to die, I very much wanted to live. That’s all I wanted, and I was desperate to find out how to do that again, because I wasn’t; and that was the problem. I felt like I was in this weird limbo where I was technically ‘alive’, but not getting anything from existing but pain, and I knew that if that’s all life was from now on I couldn’t possibly do it any more. Death was still absolutely terrifying and far too big to think about; so my head would dodge around the actual concept of somehow performing the action and suppress it with the idea that it was the best option. In between hopeless calls, it would poke its ginormous head around the corner, arrogant and overbearing, like Truth: the one solution that had a definite outcome of relief.

  Nevertheless I kept trying. I’d dug through the bin bags Hazel had placed outside to try to find a proof of address for me to use to sign up to the doctor’s down the road. I’d found an old, ketchup-stained gas bill from the beginning of the year, walked briskly with it clutched in my hand, my passport and keys in the other, and opened the door, telling my body to talk and move in the way humans do.

  ‘Hello, I’d like to sign up to this practice, please.’

  The receptionist swivelled on her chair and grabbed a pen and two pieces of paper from a drawer.

  ‘You’ll need to fill these in, and bring them up with a proof of address and some form of identification.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I tried my best to give a polite smile, my heart racing. ‘Oh, I couldn’t find a very recent bill. Will this one be alright?’

  She unfolded the crumpled paper from my hand and stared at it blankly, chewing on her gum.

  ‘Yeah, this is from January?’ – as if I didn’t know – ‘You’ll need to bring one that’s from the last three months. Thank you.’ She looked behind me at the next person. I stepped to the side, my throat closing up. I tried to say a pathetic ‘please’, but nothing would come out. So, of course, I bolted out the door before I started sobbing in front of everyone.

  * * *

  I sat alone in my flat, wondering if there was a way to detach my brain from my body so I could go on a walk and get a break from the spiralling. I knew that I was sinking deeper and deeper, but unfortunately my rotting brain was very much stuck to my neck and shoulders, and so I stayed in the same spot for hours, snot and tears pouring out while I filled my room with loud, ugly crying. If you’ve ever been alone and let yourself cry as much as you need to without judgement, you will know how horrific and guttural crying as an adult can sound. The many friends who knew about my darkness and had made me promise to ‘call at any time if I ever needed someone to just spill out to’ sat in my phonebook, smiling ignorantly at me. The idea of trying to explain what was going on to any of these people was ridiculous; my pain had made me bitter, and I didn’t want any patronising ‘do you need me to come over? I’m dropping everything and coming over NOW (because I am a GOOD friend)’ or ‘I understand, we’ve all been there’ sorts of phrases. What I was going through was absolutely incomparable, and I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone telling me ‘it was going to be okay’ because they just had no fucking idea.

  I cancelled all my plans for the next few days and ended up going home to Epping. I was still clinging on to the idea that familiarity would help; I suppose when I said I wanted to go home, I think I meant the period of time rather than the place. Mam did her best to look after me – layering me in blankets and making me tea after tea. She placed her hands on my body and tried to will away the pain, like she used to do in my childhood days of stomach migraines; except I wasn’t a little girl with a poor tummy, I was a woman in her twenties who had completely forgotten who she was and how to exist with black holes in her head. And my bedroom wasn’t my little room with arts and crafts club dreamcatchers and pink curtains, it was brown and full of boxes, envelopes and the shell of the human who once lived and loved.

  The next few days were weird. I visited my old primary school with my sister Hedy (‘visited’ is the wrong word; we broke in to the playground, as the grounds had been shut down for years). We wandered around the incredibly familiar place that seemed to have sprouted foliage and rotted wood in seconds, and I showed her the hopscotch where I fell and scraped my knee in year four; the tree where Amelia Martin had dared me to swear; the wall Jessica Monikendom and I had performed handstands against at break time. We sat in the middle of the playground and I cried, angry and upset that I couldn’t find the happy me who ran around in a summer dress in the same spot a decade ago. I travelled back to London and did a lot of walking around, staring at smiling people in parks and wondering how they weren’t mad like me. I had no idea where to go or what to do or how to live – I had completely lost myself, and I was terrified I’d never find her again.

  I can’t remember the order of the ways that I found myself again, but there were three distinct pillars that grounded me and gave me enough hope to claw my way back.

  I went through my contacts, searching for someone who might understand so I didn’t have to waste time explaining how bad it was. I messaged my friend Tom, who I knew battled severe depression.

  ‘Are you busy?’ It looked so pathetic.

  It took less than ten seconds for Tom to reply.

  ‘Wanna call?’

  I guess my message had a familiar tone.

  I video called, neither of us giving a crap about my crumpled blotchy forehead or the amount of slime coming out my nostrils. It was unbelievably relieving to talk to someone who understood so deeply. We even laughed about the lunacy of the situation.

  My friend Steven came over. He listened while I cried. Then Hazel came home. Hazel is usually one to give tough love; you come to her with a problem and she’ll immediately tell you straight, blunt advice – incredible for heartbreak, where logic can combat emotion, but useless where there can be no logic, like a spiralling brain. She recognised this, and instead gave me company and compassion, sitting me on the sofa, giving me a glass of wine (though I didn’t drink it), placing a cushion in my arms and sitting across with Steven, listening and nodding to my wails.

  My rotting brain had lied to me; of course talking would help. Of course my loving, caring friends telling me it would get better would help. They fed ropes down the hole I’d been digging, and even if they couldn’t pull me up, they at least reminded me that there was a world beyond this, where I’d been before.

  Steven hugged me goodbye, leaving me with the same ‘I am here whenever you need me’ promise he had made before; except this time I accepted it, and logg
ed it in my head as a lifeline for when I next sat in my room, stuck with my thoughts. Hazel wished me goodnight and left her door cracked open, an invitation for company at any point in the night. I sat cross-legged on my carpet, distracting myself online while scratching up and down my legs softly and looking around my room every now and again, still aching and desperately trying to hold on to my existence. As I scrolled up and down the page, a face that caught my attention flashed on my screen. I scrolled back to find a thumbnail of a video Tessa and I had filmed a few weeks before that I had completely forgotten about. In my struggling state I had taken a few days off from the internet, and so had missed the memo that this would have been uploaded today – so I curiously clicked, took a deep breath and leaned closer to my laptop.

  And there she was.

  I watched her laugh. I watched her dance around a hotel room with someone she loves, I watched her sing and smile and play and express emotion, and I knew that I was looking into a face of genuine happiness. This girl had put on make-up in a hotel bathroom and had grinned at her reflection; not to make sure that it was really her she was looking at, simply pleased about her choice of T-shirt and excited to make music with her friend. They had finished writing a song together, both brains spinning healthily, ideas and talent woven together to create something fun and beautiful. This happy girl in the screen was wearing a pinafore dress that lay crumpled in a corner of my room, hanging out of a suitcase the same functioning girl had packed before. There was evidence of her everywhere: she had stuck pink Post-it notes up on her walls as reminders of the tasks she would complete; her wardrobes were full of spontaneously bought scarves, cardigans and flower crowns thanks to encouraging pals on sunny shopping trips; there was a keyboard, a guitar, two ukuleles, all of which had been sung along with and written feelings-heavy songs on. There were endless signs that the happy, human girl in that video lived in this room and had enjoyed a functioning, joyful life.

  I paused the video and looked in the mirror. I saw dark eyes that sat in a pale face, a straight mouth and a tangle of brown hair.

  I stretched my lips up, and she smiled at me.

  She almost looked like the girl in the video.

  I closed my laptop, found a fresh page in a notepad and a purple pen, and started to write.

  ‘LITTLE BUT IMPORTANT THINGS.’

  I ran through moments in my head that would spark any sort of joy in my heart and jotted them down, numbering them so I could count them up as a collection. On the surface they looked stereotypical; something you would read in a teen magazine, or on a relatable Tumblr page. But each of these things was a reminder of who I was, what made me happy, and a reason to live. I’d found myself again in ‘opening a window when there’s rain’ and ‘first kisses’ and ‘good books and the worlds you get lost in’.

  I was the girl in the video. I had lived and loved in this bedroom and this world, and if I had been happy before, I could be happy again. I was still intact – despite feeling as though my brain had burned through my body and left me as an unrepairable skeleton. I had all the parts and resources to get back to a place where I could sing and dance around in a room with a friend again.

  * * *

  I woke up the next day feeling lighter. I crept around my flat, giving myself little tasks. I made myself breakfast and tea, I showered and moisturised my skin for the first time in a few days, I put on cotton clothes and opened the blinds. It was like the day after food poisoning – taking life in little bites, being cautious and gentle to myself, worried I was teetering on the edge of relapsing again. But I was okay.

  I was just okay.

  I went to a friend’s picnic in the park in the evening and sat around with my friends, staring at my hands most of the night and wishing I could join them in the vivid world I seemed to have lost. We walked to the shops after the sun had set and while they babbled and skipped around each other, I hung back, staring at cars driving past and wondering if they were moving fast enough to knock me down. But I had gone outside. My friends had placed daisies on my head to make me giggle, pulling me by the hand and daring me to cartwheel on the damp evening grass. As a percentage, I probably felt 20% good and 80% terrible.

  But I felt 20% good. And the next day I went on a waterslide with my mum and little sister, and I raced them down a hill, tripping over my feet and landing in a heap of limbs in a swimming costume, relishing in the sounds of my family laughing around me. And then the day after that I did a little bit of work, and over a few more days I managed to ease myself back into life, and I had days where I was far more than just okay, and I cried about the idea that I wouldn’t have experienced the things I did if I hadn’t held on.

  There have still been times when I have crashed back into the same dark hole I was in during my breakdown, and I have sat and cried in the same spot on my floor as I did then. But then I bring out the list of little but important things, I climb into Hazel’s bed for her to stroke my hair, and I remember the lessons I have learned since last hitting rock bottom; the main one being that I have been here before and I have got up and out of it every time.

  LIST OF HAPPY

  * Bare feet in a lift

  * Wet mud and wellies

  * Perfume from a few summers ago

  * That 2011 tune (throw my hands up)

  * Cold playground poles combined with a runny nose and fresh air

  * Sound of planes in the sky

  * Clusters of daisies in bright green grass

  * The first glass of prosecco

  * Sitting at the front on the top deck of a bus

  * Bare sunshine

  * A sympathetic back rub

  * The ‘pop’ of opening a new jam jar

  * Waking up to morning giggles and chatter after a sleepover

  * Apples, honey and cinnamon combination

  * Passionfruit lip balm from the Body Shop

  * A friend-made cup of tea

  * A borrowed unfamiliar but cosy jumper

  * Cat’s noses

  LUNCHTIME OR 4 A.M.

  * You’ve just awoken from a twenty-minute nap, your eyes dry and heavy, your brain swollen. Noises are uncomfortable and cut through silence right through to the core of your brain. Time is wrong, and confusing; has it been a minute, or an hour, since that thing was said? It wouldn’t be surprising if it was lunchtime or 4 a.m.

  * The film you’ve been watching at the cinema has just ended, the credits are rolling, and suddenly you’re trying to pull yourself back to reality. You exit the theatre and look around at your friends, trying to regain some familiarity. But they’re not the characters you’ve been empathising with for the past few hours – they’re solid and real, and, for some reason, weird-looking.

  * It’s the hottest day of the year so far and you’ve been lying on a towel in the garden, staring up at the blue sky and listening to the sounds of planes, breezes and the ice cream truck. You get up to go get a glass of fruit juice, head inside and suddenly your eyes don’t work. Your pupils are struggling to dilate in time and your kitchen seems as though it’s pitch-black; even though you technically can still see, everything has lost its clear outline and your vision is filled with fuzzy specks.

  * It’s your turn in the loo queue at a party, so you stumble in, clearly intoxicated, and try to lock the door with numb hands. Your face is buzzing and you giggle to yourself as you turn around and slam your hands on the basin, staring at someone in the mirror. They have scary eyes and a red mouth that’s curved upwards, creating wrinkles that sink around the smile. You comb your hands through your hair and they copy. So you make a face, and their nose crinkles up, their eyebrows furrow and their eyes become blacker. Panic creeps up your chest as your mind struggles to compute the familiar stranger in the glass, their expression now turning cold.

  Depersonalisation disorder, (DPD), or dissociation, or derealisation (DR), is described as the feeling of detachment from reality. Growing up, I had never heard of it, and so when it started to feel like I wa
s dreaming all the time, I had no idea what was happening. I at first thought it was due to lack of sleep. Then I thought it was just what happens when you grow up; then I figured it was just depression, as I wasn’t getting any joy or feeling whatsoever from activities any more. It took me a few years to find a Wikipedia page about it, and then I spent a good day crying about the idea that there were other people who felt like I did. I was officially diagnosed with depersonalisation earlier this year.

  It affects me in different ways, one of which being my eyesight. The world looks flat and fake, and my peripheral vision seems very dark, or very light, as if I’m looking through a vignette filter. When I look at big buildings, or giant natural features of the world, like mountains and sunsets, they don’t look real, and so rather than triggering admiration at beauty I feel overwhelmed by sadness and disappointment. DPD also affects my memory. I compare the sensation to feeling drunk (although it is different in many ways), and so in my dazed state I find it difficult to feel present and grounded in the moment, and unable to log time or experiences as clearly and easily as I used to. I constantly have to ask my friends about the moments we spent together, movies I’ve apparently seen, things I apparently said or did. Because of these symptoms, I also find that it causes depressive episodes and anxiety.

  Travelling, parties, sunshine – things that would usually bring me joy now created confusion and disappointment.

  Conversation was also met with panic – ‘Can they tell I’m spaced out? Do they think I’m weird because I keep staring off into the distance? Did I say that already?’ So I started to cancel outings and travelling opportunities to stay at home in a safe and familiar space, where I could be in a daze by myself and not worry about it too much. I spent a few years grieving the past, and the days of clarity, happiness and carelessness. It felt as if I was stuck like this forever, and that the only place in the timeline of my life when I felt okay was before any of it had seeped in.