Secrets for the Mad

by Dodie Clark

  FEELING SO MUCH

  Someone is potentially angry with me, and my whole world crashes. I’m the worst person in the world. Everything I have become is unbearable. I am awful and I must change.

  I like someone; I’m obsessed with them. They must adore me the way I adore them – we will be best friends. This is the start of something ginormous and I’ll look back on this first revelation and we’ll laugh at our journey.

  Someone gives me advice or shares an idea; I research it to shit and decide this will be the thing that changes me. I say goodbye to something in my life and mark it as a giant chapter, a pillar of experience, and I mourn as if a part of me has died. Maybe I just start waking up an hour earlier and I start dreaming of my new life as an early bird; someone who wakes up to watch the sunrise and goes swimming as a way to introduce the day. Today I watered flowers and was convinced this was a turning point in my life. I dreamed of the changes being a morning gardener would bring, and how I’d tell struggling people of the way that filling up a watering can as part of a routine saved my brain.

  I’ve been called dramatic. ‘Why does every little thing she goes through have to be some monstrous event?! She’s so pretentious. Chill out.’

  Yeah, it’s exhausting. I have the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, crashing in moments of despair and agony and then soaring up to incredible, epiphanic peaks of life where, suddenly, all the pain and hardship make sense and look just as beautiful as all the good times. Sometimes it’s unbearable; and yet I watch people do things like make sensible decisions, walking away from bad relationships because ‘in the long run, it’ll be better’, while I continue to damage myself and write about it, oddly addicted to the excitement of intensified emotions, be they happy or sad.

  So, though I don’t choose to feel so much all the time, and though it can be ridiculous and incredibly painful – I’m proud of it. I’m excited, I’m reckless, I’m terrified, and because I can hurt so much, I can love so deeply.

  MY GRANNY

  My granny was the sort of person who would always, always put other people before herself. If you were sick and there was one bed in the room, she’d insist on sleeping on the hard floor beside you in case you needed help in the night. She would be up early in the morning to make you sweet tea and bread fried in butter with peppery eggs, making far too much, and then offering you cake or biscuits, giggling and pushing it towards you when you laid your hands on your plump tummy and shook your head. If you wanted to paint pictures and play arts and crafts, she’d lay out a tablecloth, bring you the pots, and then wash all the brushes and wipe away the smears on the floor once you were bored and had ran away; until you’d totter back, asking to paint again and without a word or tut she’d lay it all out again, cooing with encouragement at your rainbow splotches.

  Granny was kind, but she was in no way weak. Her compassion was her principle, and she stuck by that no matter what. She would not tolerate shouting or telling off, and she would watch Dad get angry at our messy rooms stone-faced, fuming internally at the way he could bellow. As children, me and Iain enjoyed being tickled, but this was something else she was against; she would hear our squeals and panic, squeaking at us to stop as it was bad for ‘the nerves’.

  Granny would talk a lot about ‘the nerves’. When I had my stomach migraines she would sit on my duvet, stroking my head and holding my hand to try to stop the nerves from hurting me. She would buy us magazines and toys and tell us to stop doing homework, because it was too much for the nerves. I feel like Granny felt the nerves a lot, and she mustn’t have wanted us to feel them either.

  Right until the end, Granny stuck to her principles of goodness as best she could for someone who was losing herself slowly. She would bat the nurses away who would fuss over her, and insist on getting out of her hospital bed to hobble to the loos by herself. And once her brain didn’t let her recognise us when we walked in the ward with broken hearts, carrying flowers, she somehow knew it was time to go.

  My granny taught me the importance of true selflessness, and the strength of moral standards. I am proud to carry her empathy and giving nature, and I know I will pass down that part of her to my children, and their children too.

  I WON’T BE DONE

  I won’t be done,

  I think my head is fit to burst;

  which breakdown shall I deal with first?

  I have to close my eyes

  to keep my thoughts inside.

  How many palpitations can you take on?

  Ten confrontations and I’m still standing strong!

  I may not like my thighs,

  but at least my body keeps me alive.

  So let’s breathe one, two, three, four,

  till the world gives you some more.

  Do you think

  it’ll ever stop?

  Will I miss this

  when it’s all gone?

  Watch me beg

  for some peace!

  And when it comes –

  I won’t be done.

  How did I get on this path?

  Time and fate are trying to make me laugh.

  A woman with a teenage brain

  attempts to play the grown-up game.

  So let’s breathe one, two, three, four,

  till the world gives you some more.

  Do you think

  it’ll ever stop?

  Will I miss this

  when it’s all gone?

  Watch me beg

  for some peace!

  And when it comes –

  I won’t be done.

  We can take it!

  We might break, but

  I’ve broken before, and I will break again,

  so give me some more –

  I’ll be here till the end.

  Yeah, we will lose it,

  you know we’ll use it!

  I’ve broken before, and I will break again,

  so give me some more –

  I’ll be here till the end.

  HOPES FOR THE FUTURE

  I will always grow. I will hurt and change and I’ll get better at knowing when it is time to be sad and when it is time to try to be happy. I will learn how to find love for myself by myself, and not to look for it from people who give it out rarely as a way to convince myself I am special enough. Younger Dodies will sit in my head and come out when I need them: seven-year-old me will burst out whenever there’s a swimming pool or a playground nearby; fifteen-year-old me might take a little look around when I’ve forgotten how to talk to people who recognise me online; eighteen-year-old me will remind me that I am never alone, and my wonderful friends will always be around to make me feel better. And twenty-two-year-old me will stand strong against madness, proof that pain can be used to learn, and to create wonderful things.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to my English teachers in school – Mrs Phillips, Ms Truman, Mrs Tedman and Mrs Croft – for showing me how writers craft hidden stories and messages into their words, and inspiring me to do just that. To Jaqueline Wilson for the worlds I grew up reading about and have carried around with me.

  Thanks Josh and Richard for making all this happen. To the Ebury team (Sara, Michelle, Clarissa and Kealey) for their support, understanding and encouragement; Ben for his wonderful illustrations; and Dave for using the aesthetic eye that I lack and designing something beautiful.

  Thank you to the people who have listened to my music, watched my videos, read my Instagram posts; there will never be a kinder, cooler community to be in.

  Thank you to my family for encouraging my creative endeavours; thank you to my friends for helping me through my madness; and thank you to my brain for somehow managing to finish writing a book in a depressive state.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dodie is a twenty-two-year-old musician from London. She began sharing her life through her songs and videos online in 2011, and since then she has gained a fan base of more than one million subscribers.

  A
s well as selling out her first-ever headline shows, she has toured the UK, USA, and Australia. Dodie released her debut EP, Intertwined, at the end of 2016.

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  Copyright © 2017 by Dodie Clark

  Cover design by Dave Brown Apeinc.co.uk

  Cover illustration © Benjamin Phillips BenjaminPhillips.co.uk

  Originally published in Great Britain in 2017 by Ebury. Ebury is one of the Penguin Random House group companies.

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  First Keywords Press/Atria Paperback edition November 2017

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Clark, Dodie, author.

  Title: Secrets for the mad : obsessions, confessions, and life lessons / Dodie Clark.

  Description: New York : Atria/Keywords Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017043514 (print) | LCCN 2017035858 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501180118 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501180101 (paperback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Clark, Dodie. | Bloggers—United States—Biography. | Authors, English—21st century—Biography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs.

  Classification: LCC PR6103.L37253 (print) | LCC PR6103.L37253 Z46 2018 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017035858

  ISBN 978-1-5011-8010-1

  ISBN 978-1-5011-8011-8 (ebook)