My Bed is a Blackhole

by Hadley Wickham

  ‘Oh it’s been a hectic past couple of weeks; everything seems to be happening all at once,’ her voice dripped with a sickly and completely transparent tone of empathy which wasn’t entirely her fault. Of course she needed to sound like she cared, that was her job and I don’t know what made me angrier; the people who needed her or the people who thought we did and paid her. Anyone can care when you pay them to do it. Caring is no longer a question of do they? Or don’t they? It’s a question of sincerity; do they or don’t they mean it? The world’s too full of people caring. We’re told we need to care about everything. The man who was murdered in front of the cinema, the girl who became a paraplegic because of a car accident. Just care, it doesn’t matter what it’s about as long as it’s something. I don’t want to sound cruel but in the broader picture of things, how can a person care so much? I don’t understand it at all because I’ve cared. I’ve really truly cared about people when they needed me too and during that time I was so wracked with grief it almost killed me. It got to a point where just caring itself became the burden; it hurt too much. Caring about everything means that people care about nothing and the really sad thing is; they don’t even realise it.

  I managed to force out a tight smile before I turned and was confronted by Alison standing just a few feet away from me.

  ‘Hello there.’ Her voice was calm and I felt her eyes quickly dart over my body as she took note of my appearance. I was wearing the leggings that bunched up at my knees and my dirty high school leaver’s jacket. My hair was pulled into a top-knot and I hadn’t even bothered putting on deodorant.

  ‘Hi,’ I replied, trying to mimic her tone and failing miserably. Alison gave me a soft smile before turning sharply and walking back to her office, leaving me to follow and shut the door behind me. Alison was sitting in the armchair which faced the small settee and I routinely took my seat on the left side. For a few moments we sat in silence. I knew it was because Alison didn’t know what to say. From my appearance alone it wasn’t hard to guess the state I was in. I’d shattered my little glass world completely; every facade of normalcy and happiness had well and truly vanished. Now all I was, was nothing. Just the tiny shell of the girl I thought I was with a devouring emptiness inside that I called a Blackhole. I wanted to know if Alison could hear it roar? But more importantly, could she stop it?

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ Alison’s voice was firm. She’d chosen her words carefully as if she knew what I’d say back.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why aren’t you happy?’

  The question hit me like a train and I could physically feel the emptiness recoil; I hadn’t expected that. I had never been asked that question. That vital, all-important question whose answer escaped me. I began to panic and shuffled awkwardly on the settee, unconsciously pressing myself against the back of the seat and fractionally further away from where Alison sat. I had been reduced to a volatile mess of inertia. Not from the fact I now cared so little about my life I no longer saw the point in lying, but because I was wrong; again. Alison was the one person I thought I could lie to about my life almost perfectly. Our meetings, though regular were so detached from reality it almost felt as though didn’t exist. Miranda didn’t need a psychologist. Whether it was the perceptiveness of the question, or the defeated realisation that I was wrong, but my eyes began to sting with tears. In this moment I’d lost everything; what I thought I was, and what I pretended I was. Alison’s question granted me with the one thing that I didn’t even know I’d needed: freedom. Freedom from pretending everything was okay and that I was happy. All that I needed to do now was be honest. I looked up and gazed at Alison’s figure, blurred by tears.

  ‘I don’t know.’ A sob escaped from my chest and it shook through my body. Sticky tears began to laboriously gush down my cheeks and my nose pricked as it began to run. For a moment I didn’t understand why I was crying. I’d cried so much in the past month one would think I’d exhausted every excuse. I’d cried about everything; love, hate, anger, disappointment, everything but unhappiness. Perhaps the most obvious reason and yet I’d never thought to cry about it; I’d been so intent on fighting the Blackhole, crying would be like admitting I’d lost and once that happened what reason would I have to keep fighting? Certainly not Doug, or Mel, or Josie, or Abby, or my family, least of all my mother. Crying would have been acknowledging there was nothing left to fight against the Blackhole. For what felt like hours Alison allowed me to cry. She sat completely still in her chair and even though she never took her gaze off me, I didn’t feel the need to shut up or pull myself together. Alison watched me sob with an attentiveness she would have paid had I been perfectly articulating every tiny feeling in my body, instead of emptying them through hot choking tears and hysteria. The tide that I had so often repressed was just streaming out of me in an endless torrent that I had no hope of stopping, and Alison watched it pour. It was exhaustion that eventually led me to stop. After the initial rush had subsided I’d managed to ask myself why I was still crying. Yes it was because I was unhappy, but you can only cry about unhappiness for so long without needing another reason. The way I see it you can cry about unhappiness in grief, despair or exhaustion. Grief means you mourn the loss of happiness, I’d done that. Despair is when you realise that life means nothing without happiness, I’d done that too. Exhaustion is when you cry because you are exhausted of being unhappy. Sooner or later your mind just surrenders and you understand that you can no longer keep on pretending.

  ‘Can I ask you something again, a question that I really want you to think about?’ Alison’s voice was soft but she didn’t hesitate.

  ‘Yes,’ I choked out through my tears.

  ‘Do you want to be happy?’

  I scoffed and looked up, half expecting Alison to be smiling at the stupidity of the question, but she was looking at me intently. The question was serious but there was something in her gaze that seemed indignant, like she was daring me to say “yes”. Did she not believe me? My smile shrank; did Alison really think I didn’t want to happy? Thinking about it I couldn’t help but realise that she was more than fair in considering that a possibility. Did I really want to be happy? Despite all that I had thought about it, all that I had hoped for and wanted it, Alison couldn’t know that. I’d never given her the slightest inclination that I’d wanted to change. All she’d seen was my slow descent into the Blackhole and to her I’d appeared almost willing. Had I really done all I could to fight it?

  ‘You think I don’t want to be happy?’ I asked. My tone was cutting, no matter how fair Alison’s presumption was I couldn’t help but take offence to it. Fuck her. Alison shuffled, re-crossed her legs and gave her head a short shake.

  ‘The question doesn’t ask what I think. I’m asking you what you want; do you want to be happy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well okay then.’ Alison sat back and, noticing my perplexed look, gave me a small but comforting smile. ‘The question wasn’t meant to trick you, there was only one answer and you gave it.’

  ‘Then why ask me if there was only one answer?’ I asked.

  ‘That, you already know the answer too.’ Alison nodded her head towards me in emphasis and I back-tracked. Oh. I now felt bad for telling Alison to fuck herself. As if sensing my internal apology Alison searched for my gaze and I met her eyes. They had softened, their indignation replaced by a tenderness that I couldn’t place. They were no longer assuming but patient, she was waiting for me to start explaining and I felt an overwhelming sense of warmth swell in the direction of the woman I had constantly excluded from my life. Alison believed in me. She believed that I could talk about my Blackhole and she believed that I could be happy; I would go as far as to say she even wanted me to. Not just in her capacity as my psychologist, but I’d even go as far to say as my friend. That was all I needed.

  A deep breath shuddered through my chest; I wiped my nose with my hand, leavin
g a silver smear of tear-diluted snot which I rubbed off on my dirty leggings.

  ‘When I said I didn’t know why I was unhappy, I wasn’t lying. In truth I said it because that’s all I seem to say at the moment: I don’t know because I never think too much about anything. All thinking does is make me realise I don’t understand.’ I began hesitantly.

  ‘You don’t understand why you’re unhappy?’ Alison asked.

  I nodded my head. ‘How can someone not know why they’re unhappy? I mean objectively I have no reason to be?’ I stated.

  ‘What makes you think you need to have a reason?’ Alison countered.

  ‘It’s pathetic otherwise. Not just pathetic but completely ungrateful. I have a life that people would kill for, that people have killed for. I’m at university studying, I’m living with my parents, and I have no responsibilities. My study is paid for by my grandparents, so while all my friends are incurring massive HECS debt I’m coming out debt free. I have all that and yet I’m miserable. How does that make sense?’ My voice cracked towards the end and I sounded almost pleading, I had never felt more helpless.

  ‘You don’t need a reason to be unhappy, if unhappiness had an identifiable cause then I can assure you no one would be unhappy. What makes unhappiness so dangerous is that it depends entirely on the person it affects.’ Alison spoke softly but her tone was authoritative. Even if what she was saying didn’t make half as much sense as it did, I would be inclined to go along with it simply because she sounded so sure of herself. ‘What I want to know is why you feel like you don’t deserve the opportunities you have been given.’ Alison’s question, though harmless enough, cut through me and I almost gasped.

  ‘Because I don’t; I am nothing special. I am completely average and uninspiring in every single aspect of my life. I’m not a good student, I’m a terrible daughter, my brothers think I’m a bitch and I’m an awful friend.’ I hadn’t expected my declaration to hurt; this was nothing new to me, but there was something in saying those words that made them concrete. Keeping them secret had denied them truthfulness, at least in the eyes of others, but now they were spoken they could no longer be ignored or denied. The only thing worse would be if someone else had said them. Alison was silent, absorbing what I had said before a slow and timid smile began to stretch across her lips.

  ‘You’ve left me with nothing but clichés to answer with.’

  I smiled. ‘Well you’ve also got the truth.’

  Alison barked with a short laugh. ‘You know, you aren’t half pessimistic.’

  My grin widened. ‘I know, I’m trying to work on that.’

  Alison uncrossed her legs and appeared to settle back into her chair. ‘Why do you think you have to justify your existence?’ Alison asked after a pause.

  ‘Isn’t that what everybody does?’ I replied.

  ‘Well I suppose some people do. I mean celebrities, those who enjoy attention are constantly seeking to justify their existence to other people, but you’re not. You’re trying to justify your existence to yourself.’

  ‘Is that a bad thing?’

  ‘Not necessarily, but when it’s causing you this much emotional distress it can be a very bad thing.’

  I didn’t have an answer. ‘I don’t have an answer,’ I replied.

  ‘That’s okay, take your time. Think. This is important.’

  I couldn’t speak. My brain couldn’t find the words to articulate my answer, how can words ever truly reflect what someone feels? How can one word really mean the same thing for every single person? I’d never realised how horribly impoverished the English language was until this moment.

  ‘It’s a little hard to explain,’ I stated.

  ‘Do your best,’ Alison encouraged.

  ‘It’s because I want to be worthy of the opportunities I’ve been given. I want to make a difference; to make the lives of other people better. Everyone’s self-worth is measured and judged by other people. I mean look at Facebook, Twitter… why are people so dissatisfied with themselves? The only unselfish reason I can give for not telling anyone about the Blackhole is because I don’t want to cause anyone any pain. I want to see other people happy; in a way seeing other people happy was the way I could tolerate my own unhappiness.’

  ‘Blackhole?’ Alison asked the question sincerely.

  Alison’s comment jolted a shock though my body. ‘I’ve never said it out loud,’ I breathed. ‘That’s what I call it, my unhappiness. Giving it a name allowed me able to blame something other than myself.’

  Alison nodded in understanding and I took a moment. I’d said its name, out loud. It wasn’t just my secret anymore. We were both silent, Alison was fiddling with a loose thread on her blue cardigan, clearly thinking.

  ‘I need you to listen to what I’m about to say and realise that it’s not only the truth, but something you need to understand.’ I nodded my head in acceptance and Alison took a delicate but deep breath before she began. ‘You are an exceptional girl and I know this because I’ve seen you grow up over the past five years. I’ve witnessed you overcome great personal loss and still strive to make the lives of those around you better. There is nothing more devastating than realising a person you admire has no love for themselves. I’m heartbroken because if you could understand how I know your family and friends see you, then you’d realise how ridiculous it sounds when you say you have nothing to fight against the Blackhole. Me telling you all this makes no difference however; unless you sincerely believe it, it can’t help you.’ Alison’s words hung suspended in the space between us. It was like they were waiting, waiting to see if I’d take them, or brush them away. I just stared at them. Stared and turned every word over in my mind; wringing them of their meaning. Deconstructing them to ensure I had understood every line, every word, every syllable and every letter Alison had uttered. At the end I let out a gush of air, blowing them aside. Alison was right, the words meant nothing unless I believed them and I didn’t believe in anything. Alison straightened her shoulders and directed a probing look at me.

  ‘Well?’ she asked. I shook my head in response. Alison sighed softly. I couldn’t help but feel she was disappointed and suddenly felt the urge to lie again, to pretend I had listened and understood. The Blackhole seemed to have politely knocked on my mind, reminding me it was still there.

  ‘Why do you struggle to accept that people care deeply about you?’ Alison asked.

  ‘Because I hate myself,’ I stated flatly. Alison tried to hide the flash of shock at my nonchalant revelation of something that I suppose most normal people would find quite devastating. ‘I can’t accept the fact that people care about me because not only do I genuinely not understand why they would. To also consider that people care about me… when they realised how I really felt about myself, wouldn’t that be horrific for them? I can’t do that to someone.’ Alison was silent. If I had sensed disappointment before, it had now become something quite different, something that I couldn’t quite place. I thought Alison was angry. Angry that I hadn’t accepted what she had said, and angry that I hated myself or perhaps she was angry because I was unhappy when I had no reason to be. I felt her gaze focus on my downturned face and unwillingly brought my eyes up to meet hers. They were serious again, probing and relentless. I felt my stomach begin to slowly slide down the immense slick slope of the Blackhole again.

  ‘In my experience…’

  Jesus.

  ‘… people who have these feelings…’

  Christ.

  ‘… have them because they have lost someone close to them; someone who meant something to them and a part of their identity and self-worth rested upon.’ Alison wasn’t accommodating anymore. She’d abandoned the soft approach because it wasn’t working but what she didn’t realise is that perhaps nothing would.

  ‘Have you thought about Laura?’ she asked.

  My gaze turned cold and unappreciati
ve. In this moment I hated her for thinking this was about Laura. Did she not understand it wasn’t that simple and that it wasn’t about my friend.

  ‘In connection with this? No,’ I replied curtly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she died; she has nothing to do with it.’

  16

  Laura Bewick and I had been best friends since we were eight years old. She’d moved to Australia from South Africa in the middle of second term and our teacher lumped us together because she’d thought we’d get along considering my family was also South African. Turns out she was right. Laura quickly became my best friend. She was the person who I told everything too: my deepest secrets, embarrassing thoughts and trivial worries. These were all shared between us, whispered between bent heads at school desks or shrieked in a fits of hysterical laughter as we sat on her living room floor. Laura had been my first real friend. A friend who’d made me laugh and who’d made me cry, who was honest and dishonest when I needed her to be. Yet perhaps the most important thing about Laura is that she’d cared about me and I’d let her. I let Laura see me angry and upset as much as I did happy and laughing, though back then the former rarely occurred. Despite the fact that we looked nothing alike – Laura was dark-haired, tall and all arms and legs – when we went to high school nearly all of our new classmates assumed we were twins. It was in high school that I had met Mel and Laura had befriended Josie. I remembered the only feeling of jealousy I’d had in our friendship was when Laura and Josie first became close, when she chose to do athletics rather than swimming for PE. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a friend to do swimming with, that was how I met Mel, it was just the shock of realising that we were both perfectly capable of existing without each other. A few weeks later Laura confided in me her own jealousy at my relationship with Mel. When I’d revealed my own feelings we resigned ourselves to the fact that we’d never be free of each other and I was the happiest I’d ever been. In that moment I thought that nothing would ever change and I suppose that’s why it hurt so much when it did.