The Anti-Cool Girl

by Rosie Waterland

  And here I was again, twenty-four years old, getting the hug I desperately needed. Inside, Rick was already cooking me dinner, and the couch had been made up like a bed. Neither of them said anything about why I was there or where I’d been, they just welcomed me into their home and got to work looking after me. I flopped down on the couch and didn’t get up again for my entire visit. They brought meals to my lap so I wouldn’t have to move. My mum sat with me at night, and for the first time ever, we drank together. She sat with me at my laptop and listened as I read aloud the insufferable, long emails I was planning on sending Luka. She nodded earnestly and told me that they definitely weren’t ridiculous or desperate when they absolutely were. We laughed about my sisters and watched TV together, and I snuggled into her shoulder while I fell asleep. We talked about how nobody understands what it feels like to have such pain and emptiness inside you that you can barely move or speak. We talked about how the brain in your head when you try to kill yourself is different from the brain in your head when you feel fine.

  As I sat on that couch in Dubbo, eating roast chicken and cheesy potato bake and drinking cheap wine, I realised that I was so lucky to have a mother who understood what it felt like to be surrounded by darkness. As she took care of me and cleared my plates away and didn’t complain that I hadn’t showered once since I’d arrived, I realised that she was the only person in my life who really understood what it felt like to have no control over your brain. Just like when I was a baby, she was the only one who could comfort me now. She had failed me so many times before, but this week, this one week, she was there. And I couldn’t help but think about how I had seen her in just as much pain a few years before, and I’d left her on her own. Just a few years earlier, when I was twenty-one and staying with Mum for a few weeks while I looked for a place of my own, I had stood by and watched through a window while she tried to kill herself.

  Thirty seconds earlier and I would’ve walked straight past that window and not seen a thing. Thirty seconds earlier and I would’ve made it to my bedroom, never noticing that my mum was outside, trying to hang herself in the darkness.

  But it wasn’t thirty seconds earlier, and as soon as I saw her through that window, dragging a flimsy dining-room chair towards the front yard’s only tree, I knew what she was doing.

  And I had so been looking forward to watching Letterman.

  I should have known that the evening was going to end in a particularly dramatic suicide attempt. After starting on her first bottle of wine mid-afternoon, by the time she finished her fourth at 7pm, she had already reached what I like to call her ‘Dignified Royal’ stage (a stage which involves far too much faux indignation for someone who only makes it to the toilet half the time).

  It usually consisted of her sitting in the living room like a freshly crowned beauty queen, head held high and movements so fluid she was practically floating. Her cheap wine might as well be Cristal, her pleather couch a throne.

  And there she would sit, taking grand, calculated sips from her mug of booze as she held her cigarette between her fingers like a sexy Disney villain.

  ‘Rosanna,’ she would say, in an accent that fell somewhere between her North Shore childhood and the cockroach-infested Liverpool rental where she currently sat. ‘You, darling, have gained so much weight.’ (No response.)

  Or, ‘How did I end up surrounded by so many fucking bogans?’ (No response.)

  Or, ‘Why can’t I fucking just send a fucking text to your fucking sister without the fucking thing being a fucking fuck?’ (Sympathy shrug.)

  I tried to keep her company for a while that night, but after a few hours of being picked apart by someone wearing green eyeliner and no pants, I decided it was probably in my best interest to bail out. I went to my room, turned on the TV and closed the door.

  Nothing ever made me feel quite as safe as the sound of my bedroom door closing. TV and bed had been my refuge since childhood. As long as I had a door that closed and a show that made me laugh, I could pretend the mother in the next room was the perfect mix of Carol Brady and Lorelai Gilmore. I would have even settled for Roseanne, to be honest. I was pretty much just aiming for someone who didn’t drunkenly listen to ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ on repeat (usually while snot-crying and eating olives out of a jar).

  I’d had a TV friend in my room since I was four years old, and it was still keeping me company in my twenties. But on this particular night, just minutes before Letterman was about to start, my body betrayed me. I was forced to leave the confines of my free-to-air sanctuary. Basically, I needed to wee.

  And it was on my way back to bed, as I walked past the upstairs window, that I spotted her dragging that bloody chair to that bloody tree.

  Damn you, bladder.

  I could tell she was thinking about how fabulously tragic the whole thing would look. She was wearing a pink satin dressing gown and nothing else – no doubt hoping that it would fall open dramatically as she hung, displaying the body that always got her through tough times.

  The glow of the streetlights revealed that she had placed her frizzy curls into as elegant an up-do as she could manage, and she was definitely wearing more jewellery than she had been just hours earlier.

  I stood silently at the window and watched as she positioned the chair under the tree. I was surprised to see she’d had the forethought to take rope, although I had no clue where she’d got it. I’d like to say she’d been on a morbid version of one of her shoplifting sprees, but considering the lack of planning that had most likely gone into this, I assumed tonight’s hardware probably came from a store called the Neighbour’s Clothesline.

  She hoisted her mystery rope over the sturdiest-looking branch the tree had to offer, and carefully climbed up on the chair (as best as a person who’s been drinking for nine hours can). Her dressing gown slipped open – perhaps a little too early for her dramatic reveal, but impromptu performances like this rarely went to plan.

  She put the makeshift noose around her neck. She tightened it.

  I knew I should be moving by now. But my feet were frozen to the floor, my eyes fixated on her face.

  What if I just let it happen this time? What if I pretended it was thirty seconds earlier? What if I had never seen anything through that window, and I was already sitting in bed watching Letterman bounce jokes off Paul Shaffer? Nobody knew I was standing there. Nobody knew I was watching. Nobody knew that I left my room to wee. That thirty seconds was my clay to mould.

  She was struggling with the chair now, trying to tip it over. She couldn’t use her hands, and the rope was too short to readjust, so she just ended up rocking her whole body from side to side, trying to build up enough momentum to get the bloody thing to move.

  And just as I was thinking that attempted suicide, along with coughing and vomiting, was probably one of the more unattractive things a person could do while naked, the chair tipped over.

  She hung from the tree, gown open, feet shaking. And I didn’t move. I just stood there, watching.

  I just stood there.

  I thought back to the time, years before, when I was just a kid, and I sat with her on the side of the road, desperately trying to think of the right response to, ‘But, Rosie, I just want to die.’

  I told her that her daughters needed her. That she needed to see us grow up. I told her I was going to write books and win an Oscar and become a millionaire and buy her a house and then she’d never have to worry about anything again. I told her I would take care of her, but I was only nine, so she needed to wait just a little longer.

  I told her I was cold and wanted to go inside.

  I thought back to the time I found her in a random park in the middle of the night, a slit in her left wrist so deep I was actually a little impressed she had managed it with such a flimsy kitchen knife. She sat on the grass quietly, staring blankly ahead as I tried to hold the gash together with a tea towel. I walked her home and put her to bed, then spent the entire night trying not to fall asleep s
o the grip I had on her wrist wouldn’t loosen.

  ‘Move, Rosie. Move.’ I silently willed my body to leap into action, but it remained frozen in front of the window. It felt heavy. Tired. The glow of the TV was luring me to my room, and the idea of rest seemed too good to pass up. Rest for her. Rest for me. Rest, finally, for all of us.

  I could pretend I’d walked past that window thirty seconds earlier. And I could just let it happen.

  My mind was grappling with the complexities of a decision I should not have been attempting to make while wearing Hello Kitty pyjamas. But before I could make a choice, before I could decide whether I wanted those thirty seconds to exist or not, it happened.

  The branch broke. The fucking branch broke. My mum fell to the ground, gasping for breath and ruining her frizzy up-do.

  The decision had been made for me.

  I watched as she slowly rose to her feet and (in what I considered an odd moment to suddenly feel modest) closed her dressing gown. She took the rope from around her neck and dropped it on the grass. Then she just walked back inside.

  And that was it.

  I heard the downstairs TV switch on, and the unmistakable clink of a wine bottle hitting a glass. I took one final look at the branch lying on the front lawn, before heading into my room and closing the door.

  Thirty seconds earlier, and I would have missed the whole thing.

  Her feet were only off the ground for a fleeting moment, but that branch breaking meant I never got to make my own decision. Was I just about to move? Was I just about to snap into action? Was I just about to run to her aid, like I had so many times before?

  That branch breaking means I’ll never truly know if I would have saved my mother’s life that night.

  Thirty seconds earlier, and I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life wondering if I’m the kind of person who would just watch her mother die.

  And as I sat on that couch in Dubbo a few years later, desperately clinging to every ounce of comfort she was giving me, I felt so guilty knowing that once I had given her none. Even though I knew that her comfort wouldn’t last, and that once I got home it wouldn’t be long before the drunken, abusive phone calls would start up again. But she had given me this one week. She knew she was the only one who understood, and she flew me out to her couch in Dubbo and fed me and tucked me in and stroked my hair and called me darling.

  She gave me what I needed that week, and if the branch hadn’t broken, I’d have been all alone. Just like she was the night I watched her nearly die.

  You will gain ninety kilos, and it will be the best thing that has ever happened to you.

  I officially knew my weight had gotten out of control when I realised I could no longer wipe my own arse.

  I was so big that my arm was not physically long enough to reach under my belly and wipe the area behind my vagina otherwise known as the butt hole. For a while, I had solved the problem by hoisting one foot up on the toilet seat – that gave me a little wiggle room to reach down. But, eventually, even that wasn’t enough. I had actually reached the stage where if I needed to poo, I would have to take a shower afterwards.

  And I’d never had a more healthy sense of self-worth in my entire life. I couldn’t wipe my own arse, and I loved myself more than I ever had.

  After strutting out of the mental institution with my head held high, I had a minor setback and spent a week crying on my mum’s couch. Then I had another minor setback, and barely left my bedroom for three years. My bad. I somehow, miraculously, managed to finish university and walk away with a degree in creative writing, then I got a job in a call centre so I would never have to see anyone, and that became my life.

  Go to work, answer phones (and by ‘answer phones’, I mean read the paper and hang up on people as soon as the call gets too difficult), go home, eat myself into oblivion, throw up, watch TV, go to sleep. That was all I did for three years after that mental ward gave me ‘a new lease on life’.

  Don’t get me wrong, I had learned a lot about myself during the time I spent self-reflecting there (sighing and staring wistfully out of windows can actually be helpful). I’d also continued with weekly therapy, working really fucking hard to understand my fear of abandonment and PTSD symptoms. Mentally, I had reached a profound place. My panic attacks had mostly subsided, my anxiety was at an all-time low, and I wasn’t particularly depressed (unless, of course, the internet was out and I couldn’t download 30 Rock). I spent those three years learning how to be my own saviour, how to feel comfortable being single and how to be mentally healthy. But I was terrified to put any of these lessons into action.

  I felt like my life until that point had been one giant clusterfuck after another, and if I could just stay in my room and not rock the boat, then nothing could go wrong. I completely took myself out of the game, because you can’t lose if you don’t play.

  The weight gain began pretty much straight after leaving hospital. My disordered eating and messed-up attitude towards food had started back with that ‘I’m pretending to be worried about nutrition, but really you’re just getting fat’ talk in drama school in 2006. It was now 2013, and I’d been on a cycle of binging and purging and starving that entire time. I’d spend three days eating only apples, then I’d be so starving that I’d stuff myself to the point of exploding and vomit everywhere. Whenever I was depressed, I’d buy ice-cream with Ice Magic, and I wouldn’t mess around – I’d eat an entire litre of vanilla with three bottles of topping. Then I’d spew in the empty container and hide it under my bed. There were times when I had vomit hidden in secret places all over my room. Eventually, I’d screwed around with my body so badly that I developed hypothyroidism and completely fucked up my metabolism, which meant weight was easy to put on and very difficult to take off. The kilos starting piling on at a scary rate. Even with the purging, which had kept me in the ‘chubby but still kind of attractive’ safe zone in the past, I was just getting bigger and bigger.

  Before I knew it, I had gained ninety kilos, and that was the perfect excuse to never leave my room again. I kept promising myself that I would start living my life the way I had planned three years earlier just as soon as I ‘got my old body back’. Being fat was my new shield against the world.

  And trust me, when you’re fat, you need a shield. I was shocked by how differently I was treated as an obese person. People treat you as if you’re subhuman. Particularly if you’re a woman, since a woman’s entire worth is almost always primarily based on her appearance. My very presence on earth seemed to offend people, particularly men. That I had the audacity to venture out in public as a fat woman really infuriated them. I was yelled at as I walked down the street (‘fat bitch’ being the most common). I was abused for taking up too much space on the bus. I was laughed at whenever I ate in public. Romantic attention was a thing of the past.

  I felt so stupid that I had never realised my looks played such a huge role in what people valued about me, and once they were gone, I began to seriously question whether I had anything to offer.

  Then I read a crappy article on the internet. I can’t even remember what it was about to be honest, probably ‘27 reasons why brunette Gen Y’s should get married in winter’ or some bullshit. And it made a bell go off in my brain. I read it over and over, finding it so hard to believe that it had ever been published. Then I just thought, ‘You know what, I can write a million times better than that. How come I’m not published on the internet?’ Then I remembered, ‘Oh, that’s right, because your life revolves around waiting to stream your favourite TV shows and what take-out you’re going to have for dinner.’

  So, on a whim that afternoon, I wrote a piece for the internet. I made it purposefully provocative so that it had a chance of being published. I created a basic WordPress blog, registered the domain name ‘rosiewaterland.com’ and posted it. Then I sent the link to Australia’s top women’s website, Mamamia, and asked if they’d be interested in publishing it. I had no idea if you could just email editors lik
e that, since I had studied creative writing at uni and not journalism, which basically meant I had no vocational skills whatsoever. I’d once handed in an assignment that listed fifty synonyms for the word vagina, said it was about minimalism and feminism, and got a high distinction. That’s what my entire uni course was like – laughing my head off the night before an assignment was due, drinking half a box of wine, scribbling something onto the page and thinking, ‘How the fuck am I getting a degree out of this?’ Then I’d just shrug my shoulders and finish the rest of the wine. So, unlike the journalism graduates, I had very little clue about what approaching editors or publications entailed, or even how to write a proper column. I just went with my gut.

  That afternoon, I got an email reply from Mamamia’s then managing editor, Jamila Rizvi. They loved my piece and wanted to publish it. I started to cry. I couldn’t believe that I had barely dipped my toe in the water of life, and already something positive had happened. This is the very first piece of mine that was ever professionally published:

  I once had a boyfriend who told me he thought I’d be less of a woman if I didn’t want to give birth ‘naturally’.

  Of course, this was the same boyfriend who literally threw up a little the one time in our two-year relationship I dared to fart in his presence, so in hindsight he had some serious issues when it came to his ideas about women.

  I was telling him one day about my sister’s experience with childbirth. She went through such excruciating pain during her labour that she still maintains with all seriousness that if someone hadn’t been in the room with her the entire time she would have jumped out the third-storey window.

  I then went on to tell him that when I eventually get pregnant, I have a genius c-section/tummy-tuck plan that involves waking up with a gunk-free baby in a fluffy blanket sleeping peacefully next to me. Brilliant, no? I waited for him to applaud my practical approach to childbirth. He would never want the woman he loves to be in so much physical pain that she would jump out a third-storey window. Right?