“They make me feel more desperate,” I cried. “I’ve never felt this awful, ever.
“We’ll tell the doctor, but you have to have a bit of patience. It’ll take time before they build up in your system,” Dad said. He sounded like a robot when he spoke. There was nothing of my actual father in the room with me other than his body. He must have had to check his emotions at the door with any sharp objects.
Mom could barely talk. When Dad stopped talking, she handed me a couple of letters she’d been holding. They felt warm and damp from her hands. She looked like a frightened rabbit. I think she was relieved when our visit was over.
The last thing I yelled at them as they left was, “It’s like jail in here. You have no idea.”
Then the nurse, or guard, or whoever she was, took them to see my shrink. They probably needed serious counselling after seeing me there.
The letters were from Gisele and Mariam. They were careful and short and mostly said how much they loved me and missed me, and that they would be there for me when I got home. They said I didn’t have to do it alone. I appreciated that they bothered to write, but it didn’t cheer me up to read them. It especially didn’t cheer me up to think about having to go back to school. I knew I’d never be able to look Kyle in the face again.
I used one of my calls that week to talk to Joe. I only had ten minutes so I had to get to the point.
“I can’t believe you ratted me out,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“You snooped through my room. And my computer!”
“Anna, get serious. It’s not like you ate the last cookie or broke your curfew.” His tone was biting and it threw me off. He’d been so understanding at the hospital.
“You’re mad at me,” I said. It wasn’t an accusation.
“I’m not mad. But I don’t understand. I want to, but I don’t. I don’t know what was so terrible that you wanted to kill yourself.”
“Does everyone hate me?”
“Nobody hates you. We all love you. That’s the point. You’re my sister. The thought of losing you is — well, it’s unimaginable. If you can’t understand that, then you’ll just have to believe me. The same way I have to believe you felt like you had a reason to do what you did. Okay? I don’t want to argue. Let’s just focus on getting you back to normal.”
“Whatever normal is.”
“It’ll happen. They said in a few weeks you’ll be more like your old self.”
“I don’t want to be my old self.”
“Okay, your younger self then.”
“I don’t want to be any version of me.”
The next week I called Joe again. Somehow it was easier talking to him than my parents. He didn’t analyze every word I said, he didn’t keep his tone of voice under control. I got a better sense of what he was thinking and feeling.
“Man, the people in here have some serious problems,” I said.
“Like what?”
“This one girl used to get locked in a kitchen cupboard when she was a kid, while her parents went drinking. She’s so messed up she literally eats the flesh off her fingers.”
“That’s awful.”
“And this other guy is basically a paranoid schizoid. If anyone gets near him he accuses them of trying to implant probes in him. He keeps screaming that we’re all part of the conspiracy and to keep away from his ears.”
“Weird.”
“I swear, everyone’s certifiable. I don’t belong at all.”
“No you don’t,” he said.
I hadn’t seen that one coming.
Every day in the loony bin was the same. They, the counsellors, forced us to talk about our feelings and we, the patients, did everything we could to avoid talking, or at least we avoided saying too much. It was like an unspoken contest to see who could say the least and get away with it. I thought I had the system all figured out, but it turned out they were just letting me settle in. Sometime during the second week they zeroed in on me. They kept asking for my opinion about things the others were saying, kept wanting me to talk about my feelings. They picked and prodded until I thought I was going to seriously lose it on them. When I couldn’t stand it a second longer, when I couldn’t swallow another pointed question about my stupid feelings, I screamed, “If I had feelings I wouldn’t be in this freaking place!”
Nobody flinched. Either they were too caught up in their own foggy dazes or they were used to more drama than just a bit of harmless screaming.
The counsellor didn’t miss a beat. He said in a deadpan voice, “So you are saying you don’t feel things.”
I slumped in my stinky vinyl chair. “I guess.”
“That sounds like progress,” the counsellor said and then turned to the cupboard girl and asked her how she felt about what I’d said.
“Fine,” the cupboard girl whispered.
The following week Mom and Dad brought me a plastic container. Inside was a piece of homemade chocolate cake.
“Joe came over for his birthday last night and we saved you a piece. I know it’s your favourite.”
She handed it to me with a plastic fork and they watched while I devoured it.
“It’s good,” I said. “Thanks. The food here is worse than at the hospital.”
“I guess we should have sprung for the deluxe package,” Dad said and tried a tentative smile.
I nodded, then smiled back at him. “That’s okay. We get popcorn every night for a snack.”
Every week after that they brought me a little something, a small treat like a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips or a chocolate bar. One time they brought me running shoes with Velcro fasteners like I had in kindergarten. They were the ugliest shoes I’ve ever seen, but at least I didn’t have to worry about kicking them off by accident if I lifted my foot off the ground.
“I know they’re awful,” Mom apologized. “But I thought they’d be better than what you have now.”
I pulled them on and threw my old runners in the garbage can.
“They’re good, thanks.”
There were also more cards from Gisele and Mariam and a couple of times there were letters from Aliya. Aliya was more upbeat. I knew she was trying to cover up how she really felt, but still I laughed when she accused me of going too far to get out of our math exam. It was probably an inappropriate comment and I was sure it wouldn’t have been approved by my counsellor, but it was better than everyone pretending I had the plague.
One day when we were outside for our mandatory march, which is how I thought of exercise time, I noticed it was spring. There were tulips in the flower beds and an apple tree in bloom. The petals had fallen on the ground and made a carpet of white. I sat down and picked up a petal. It was cool and soft and I rubbed it between my finger and thumb, then smelled the perfume.
“Pretty day,” one of the nurses said when she came near.
“I like spring,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows at me, but kept walking.
“What was that about?” I muttered. Then it came to me, slowly, like a flower yawning open in the sunshine. I was enjoying sitting on the grass among the flower petals. I was actually enjoying myself.
When Mom and Dad came the following week, I had letters for them to take back to Gisele, Mariam, and Aliya. They were short and trivial because I insisted on using a pen to write with, rather than the crayon I was allowed in my room, which means I had to write during supervised free time. That also means I didn’t have much time to fuss over them.
“I’m sure the girls will be happy to get these,” Mom said. “They call and ask about you a lot.”
“Did you tell them when I get to come home?”
I wasn’t brave enough to ask the question straight up.
“Not yet, but the doctors say you’re doing really well.”
“Yeah?”
“They said Joe can come and visit if you’d like.”
“Does he want to?”
“Of course he does.”
Joe was there next visiting day. He signed me out and we went for a walk outside. More and more I wanted to be out in the fresh air instead of breathing all that crappy institutionalized air. It was worse than the hospital, because instead of just smelling antiseptic, it was stale too. You’d think they could open a few windows now and then, especially since it was spring. But I guess they were afraid one of us would figure out how to dematerialize, squeeze through the metal grates covering the windows, and jump to our deaths.
“They don’t let us out here enough. An hour in the morning and afternoon, and if you can find someone on staff to come out with you then you can manage another hour during supervised free time,” I said to Joe when we got to the outside door and flung it open. I took in a huge breath, tried to get the smell of the place out of my nose.
“Supervised free time? Isn’t that an oxymoron?” Joe asked.
I laughed, “I guess you’re right. The whole place is an oxymoron if you ask me.”
“So what’s the rest of the time?”
“You mean, if it’s not supervised free time?”
“Yeah.”
“We have to be in the common room quite a bit. That way only a couple staff have to be on duty to watch us. We eat. That takes about fourteen minutes, three times a day. Then there’s a lot of talking about our feelings in groups and one-on-one. We go to bed pretty early.”
“Whatever they’re doing, it’s working, I guess.”
“You think?”
“Definitely. I mean, I didn’t notice it so much before, like the last year or so. I guess it was gradual. But seeing you now, you’re so much lighter. You seem almost happy.”
Another patient and visitor approached us on the path so we stopped talking until they passed.
“I think I feel better too. I’m sort of afraid to say that, you know? But I don’t feel so, I don’t know, desperate. I guess it snuck up on me and I got used to it being there. I felt like I was carrying so much weight around. It was hard to pretend that everything was okay every day.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Joe said.
“It’s not that I’m always feeling better. I mean, I felt like total crap this morning. I guess I was stressed about seeing you. But at least I have moments where something shifts and I get this little glimpse that things can be better.”
“And you can talk about it.”
“Yeah, I suppose. At least to you, I can. I couldn’t talk to Mom and Dad like this.”
“Then promise you’ll talk to me. Like if you’re upset or something.”
“Or if I feel like killing myself?”
Joe didn’t respond and I was hurt he didn’t want to engage in our usual sarcastic jabs.
“It’s okay to say it. It feels worse holding it in.”
“Then don’t hold it in,” Joe said.
At my exit interview, the shrink asked me if I still had thoughts about harming myself. I was pretty sure he’d know if I was lying so I tried a bunch of answers in my head before I said anything out loud. I mean, I didn’t want to get it wrong and get sent to jail without passing GO and collecting my two-hundred dollars.
“It’s not that I really wanted to harm myself before. I mean, I’m terrified of pain and the thought of blood makes me pass out. It was more that I just didn’t want to be alive than I wanted to kill myself.”
“And now?”
“Now, even if I just had to flip a switch, I don’t think I would. I still think about it. I might always think about it, but there’s more to consider now.”
“Like what?”
“My parents, my brother, my friends. There’s stuff I want to do.”
“Such as?”
“Get the hell out of here,” I said and laughed.
He smiled. It was faint, but there it was, a little human smile.
“Seriously, I guess nothing is really any different. I always had people who loved me and needed me. I just didn’t see it before. It was hard to see much of anything.”
“That was the depression. You know that now, right?”
“I do, now. Yes. But it wasn’t easy to see.”
“That’s why it’s important you stay on your medication, even when you’re feeling good. Especially then.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“So I’ll see you next week?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not if you want to walk out of here today.”
“Then I’ll see you next week. I don’t think I can stomach another Monday meatloaf.”
“Hang on to that thought.”
Anna’s Mom
When my parents were killed, my email overflowed with sympathy notes. The phone rang so often we had to turn off the ringer and let the answering machine pick up. But when Anna tried to commit suicide, there was silence. Eventually her friends called for updates, but we didn’t hear a peep from our family friends, and my long-time girlfriends avoided me like I was a terrorist. To tell the truth, I didn’t mind the exile. It gave me time to try and order the thoughts swirling in my mind. I might have imposed the same sentence on myself anyway. Who can face listening to stories about your friends’ kids when your own kid is in a mental health facility after trying to commit suicide?
While Anna was in the treatment centre I was a wreck. Had she been home with us, I could have peeked in on her and reassured myself she was still alive. But when I couldn’t see her or touch her or even talk to her each day, there was a hole in my chest that nothing could soothe. I lived in constant fear that they wouldn’t watch her closely enough and she’d find a way to kill herself after all. Whenever the phone rang, my blood froze. Each day when I woke up the feeling was the same: I had to catch my breath. I remembered where Anna was and my mind spit out a million questions that started with “why?” I saw the questions in my husband’s eyes too, yet we didn’t ask them aloud to one another. I was afraid to talk to him. I was afraid I’d detect blame in his tone and I couldn’t stand the weight of any more guilt on my shoulders. I knew I was to blame without him spelling it out. It was stupid, I know, but I felt like if I could just talk to her, hug her, and tell her how much I loved her, I’d make her see reason. The psychiatrist told us many times that she didn’t try to kill herself because of something we did or didn’t do. He explained to us how depression is a disease and needs to be treated like any other illness — with medication and therapy. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I could make it all better if I tried hard enough.
During the time Anna was in treatment, a single letter came. It was from Mrs. Mahoody, an old neighbour from my childhood. I was sitting in bed, propped up against the headboard and a mound of pillows, when my husband came into the room with the mail.
“You’re still in bed?” he asked when he handed me the envelope.
I glanced at the clock beside the bed. It was three in the afternoon.
“I’ve been up. Had lunch. Took Sherlock for a walk and all of that. I just felt chilled and came to warm up.” It was sort of the truth. I’d had a coffee and let Sherlock in the backyard.
He sat down on the side of the bed and picked up my hand.
“Please don’t do this,” he said. “You’ve missed two weeks of work and you’ve barely stepped outside since we got home from the hospital. I can’t do this alone. I need you.”
I couldn’t watch his eyes fill up with tears. I didn’t have the strength to prop anyone up, not even myself. Instead I looked down at the shape of the comforter stretched over my knees.
“I’m sorry. I just can’t face anyone right now,” I whispered, surprised to hear that two weeks had already gone by. I’d forgotten to pay attention to time.
“I kn
ow you want to find someone to blame. So do I. I want to blame you. I want to blame myself. I want to blame Joe. I look at my boss and I want to blame him. But we both know it’s not that simple.”
My body tensed up when he said the word blame. My throat closed so tight I couldn’t speak. So I picked up the letter from where I’d dropped it on the bed and read the return address. I fluttered the envelope in the air and my husband nodded.
“How on earth could Mrs. Mahoody have heard?”
“I guess it’s not such a big city after all,” he said.
My parents lived beside Mrs. Mahoody for fifty-one years, right up until they died. She watched me grow up and my kids grow up. The last time I saw her I was cleaning out my parents’ house and I still called her Aunt Maggie. She brought me over a loaf of banana bread that day. She always made it special for me, the way I liked it — with chopped walnuts. When I said I couldn’t believe she remembered, she laughed and said, “That’s the way I like it too.”
Aunt Maggie was like a second mother to me. When my mother took her extended leaves, Aunt Maggie filled the gaps. I went to her house after school until Dad got home from work and called me to come home. Then I would run across the two yards in the dark and slam into the safety of our house. When he worked late, she brought me home to give me a bath and put me in my pajamas. She’d put his dinner on a tinfoil covered plate in the oven then sit with me until he got home and kissed me goodnight. Sometimes she took me for doctor’s appointments or new shoes, and I still remember her taking me to get my first real haircut at a beauty salon.
When we were together, we never talked about my mother. I was about five when Mom disappeared the first time. I asked every day where she was and when she was coming home, but Aunt Maggie always said something vague before she changed the subject. As I got older, I didn’t bother to ask anymore. I knew I wasn’t going to get a straight answer and I think I was afraid to find out. My father would sometimes make reference to her being in a hospital, but he’d never be able to explain what illness she had or what operation she needed, so I never believed him. When she returned home after a few weeks, she wouldn’t have any visible scars or look any different. She’d hug me tight and spend long hours watching me play with my toys. She’d tell me how much she missed me. Then we’d go back to our regular routine as if nothing had happened. I’d be suspicious for a few days, maybe a week, then I guess I’d forget she’d ever been away. But I grew up not trusting what anyone told me, especially where my mother was concerned.
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