by Hayley Long
After a while, my mum said, ‘Oh, Lottie!’ And then she went back to staring silently at my horde of stolen goods.
I sat next to her and tried to work out in my head what had happened. At first when my mum had opened the door of my wardrobe and all this stuff had spilled out, I’d wanted to deny all knowledge of it, say I’d never seen any of it before in my entire life and blame the whole lot on a mystery burglar who’d broken into our house, crept up to my bedroom and hidden his entire stash of loot in my wardrobe. But as I looked at it, I started to see things that I definitely remembered taking. Things like the giraffe and the LAYLA ballet pumps and some of the tights, and then, the more I looked, the more I started to remember other stuff. Like taking the bus into town some days instead of going to school, and wandering round the bigger shops and picking things up and not necessarily putting them down again. And that was when I realized that I’d been doing a lot of stuff lately without properly thinking about it. It was like I had a lever in my head that only had two settings: INTENSE and AUTOPILOT. Half the time I was thinking too much and getting really deeply into stuff like selling tights and being Goose’s friend and writing my English coursework, and the rest of the time I was spinning around doing a million things at once and thinking about NOTHING AT ALL. It was a very freaky realization.
I didn’t know what to say so I just said, ‘Am I grounded?’
My mum sighed and said, ‘Yes, I’d say you probably are.’
We sat there quietly for a while and then I said, ‘For how long?’
My mum shrugged her shoulders, sighed again and said, ‘Until you’re thirty-five.’
‘Sorry,’ I said and then, just because I was in trouble and it made me feel ever so slightly better, I started to rock a bit, and the sound my bed made was less a creak-thud kind of sound and more of an eek-eek kind of sound.
And do you know what? My mum still didn’t shout at me. Instead she put her arm round me and gave me a squeeze and said, ‘It’ll be OK, Lottie. We’re going to sort this thing out, I promise you.’
And even though that was dead nice and understanding of her, it was also just about the most frightening thing I could have heard, because I think it was then that I started to have an inkling that there was really something very wrong with me.
hOw i LOst MY heaD fOr a MOmeNt But GOt MY COmPuter BaCk15
It is nineteen days since I last went to school, eighteen days since I was arrested and one day since a doctor told me that I am suffering from a mental disturbance of a reasonably significant nature.
To be honest, it’s quite a big deal to get to grips with.
My mum is needing some time to adjust to this news as well. She hasn’t been to work ever since she had to pick me up from the police station, and this is most unlike her. My mum is the type of person who has to be clinically dead before she’ll take a sickie, and even then she’d probably go in for half the day until someone sent her home for being a public health and safety risk. Last night, I told her that she should go back to work because the criminal population of Cardiff must be causing total havoc and chaos by now. My mum said, ‘I’ll go back to work when you are ready to go back to school. And anyway, they owe me some holiday time.’
I said, ‘It hasn’t been much of a holiday though, has it?’
And my mum smiled a bit then and agreed that no, it hadn’t.
Because ever since that afternoon when me and my mum looked in my wardrobe, our lives have been well and truly and totally and utterly turned upside down. Instead of going to school, I’ve spent most of my time in bed and when I haven’t been in bed I’ve been at the hospital answering billions of questions.
Quite a few times when I’ve been at home, the phone has rung and my mum has told me that Goose is desperate to speak to me but I’ve either pretended to be asleep or begged my mum to say that I’ll call her back when I’m feeling better. So far I haven’t called her back. It’s not Goose’s fault; it’s just that I’m really NOT in the mood to speak to anyone at the moment. I think you could say that I’ve been having a series of EXTREME EXISTENTIAL DAYS.
I’m not making this all up to excuse myself for being a thief, by the way. I was caught red-handed and I’ve been officially told off for it. Fine. But the thing is, there actually IS something wrong with me, and it’s as real and actual as mumps or chickenpox or whooping cough. Which brings me back to my earlier point:
I HAVE A MENTAL DISTURBANCE.
And this has been severely affecting my behaviour. Which, I think, is a relief in a funny kind of way. Sort of.
The day after I got arrested, I couldn’t get out of bed. After days and days of either not needing or not being able to go to sleep, I suddenly found myself with the total opposite problem. It was like an OFF button had been flicked in my head. I couldn’t stay awake. It wasn’t like that Tuesday-morning feeling where I never want to get up because my bed is all warm and snugly and I’ve got double science with Mr Thomas first thing which means talking about amoebas for two hours; it was more serious than that. I couldn’t have got out of my bed even if I’d woken up to find that I was sharing it with a particularly hungry, gigantic girl-eating spider and my life depended on it. Overnight I’d turned into a zombie. It felt like my brain had been kidnapped out of my head and replaced with a big cloud of soul-sucking smog. I’d become a bit like that old talking doll of mine, except that there was absolutely nothing funny about me. It’s making me miserable just thinking about it.
My mum had barged into my bedroom at half past eight, opened up the curtains and said, ‘You’re not staying in bed all day. Your father is on his way down from Wrexham to talk to you.’
And I’d yawned a bit and cried a bit and then I’d just gone back to sleep, and when my dad showed up three hours later I could still barely keep my eyes open. And from somewhere, filtering faintly through the thick cloud of smog in my head, I heard my dad’s voice say, ‘This isn’t normal, is it? I think she should see a doctor.’ Pretty soon after that he went away again.
Then a really weird thing happened. I got it into my head that if I got out of bed, my house would collapse. I know this sounds seriously very strange but I honestly believed it would happen. I kept on having images of the roof caving in right on top of me just because I’d slammed a door too hard or thumped down the stairs a bit too heavily. Then I started imagining my house on the Wales Today news and it was just a great big pile of dusty rubble and all the neighbours were out on the street telling the reporters how sorry they were that me and my mum were still trapped underneath it all.
This freaked me out so much that I stayed in bed and didn’t move except for when I absolutely desperately needed to go to the bathroom – and when that happened, I got really overanxious and started muttering, ‘Please, God, don’t let our house collapse . . . Please, God, don’t let our house collapse . . . ’ over and over again until I was safely back in bed.
I stayed in bed for the next four days, only getting up when I needed the bathroom. I didn’t even eat or clean my teeth. Every now and then my mum barged in to try to steal the duvet off me, and I’d just cry and tell her I couldn’t get up because our house was in serious danger of collapse. And then Dr Crosby appeared. I’ve known him all my life, but I wouldn’t say that he is a friendly man, exactly. He’s one of those people who always seems to be in a colossal hurry and doesn’t really have time to talk. This time, though, it was a bit different. He sat on the chair next to my bed and said, ‘What’s all this about, Lottie? You know you can’t stay in bed forever.’
I pulled the duvet up over my head and told him to shove off.
There was a short pause and then Dr Crosby said, ‘Lottie, I have to ask you this: you haven’t taken any drugs, have you? Cannabis? Magic mushrooms? Anything like that? I’m not going to have a go at you, I just need to know.’
Something about this question made me really cross. From beneath my duvet, I shouted, ‘NO, I HAVEN’T ACTUALLY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.’
; There was another pause and then my mum said, ‘She hasn’t eaten anything since Saturday. She hasn’t washed. She hasn’t got dressed. She keeps crying. Quite honestly, she’s frightening me.’
Underneath my duvet I pressed my hands hard over my ears. I could still hear them though.
Dr Crosby said, ‘We’ve had similar episodes before, haven’t we? Of course, it could just be adolescent depression. Sometimes a new hobby and a chat with one of our mental-health counsellors can be enough to get things back on track. But I think that Lottie really needs a more definite care plan. She has a history of these depressive episodes and it’s important to understand that she may well need proper treatment to help get things under control.’
My mum said, ‘I tried to make her see a counsellor last year, but she wouldn’t go.’ Her voice was very quiet and a bit wobbly.
Dr Crosby said, ‘Lottie, are you listening? I am going to arrange for you to see a specialist at the hospital who can help make you feel better. It’s very important that you go.’
I said, ‘But what about our house?
Dr Crosby said, ‘Pardon?’
I pulled back my duvet a bit and said, ‘What about our house? I just know that our house will collapse if I get out of bed.’
Dr Crosby looked at me for a long time and then he said, ‘Your house is not going to collapse, Lottie.’ For once he didn’t sound too busy to talk to me. ‘I’m going to arrange for you to see someone at the hospital as soon as possible, and when I’ve gone I want you to get dressed and try to have a little something to eat. Will you do that?’
I shrugged my shoulders. I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do.
Dr Crosby and my mum left my room, but I could still hear them talking outside on the landing. Dr Crosby said, ‘I’m going to organize a priority referral so that Lottie can be seen by a paediatric psychiatrist as soon as possible. It’s very important she gets there.’ And then he went downstairs and I couldn’t hear any more.
The next day I was taken to see a doctor at the hospital. I’d eaten half a jacket potato and a few baked beans by then, but I still hadn’t washed my face or cleaned my teeth. When we got to the hospital, me and my mum sat in a waiting room in front of a television which was showing a programme about little children dancing in a ‘Baby Ballroom’ competition. The whole thing did my head in so much that I started to cry again. I don’t know why.
After several million hours a youngish woman with a smiley face and a pair of Adidas YOGA shoes on her feet touched me on the arm and said, ‘Lottie? My name is Dr Edwards. Shall we have a chat in my room?’
I did a clockwork walk through the waiting room and into Dr Edwards’s room. My mum put her hand across my back and did the clockwork walk with me.
Dr Edwards’s room was small and untidy with cream walls. It reminded me a bit of the room where I had the interview at the police station. This time, though, there wasn’t a tape recorder. Not one that I could see anyway. I sat down in a plastic chair and looked at the floor.
Dr Edwards said, ‘Have you been feeling rotten, honey?’
I was so surprised that I stopped crying for a second and lifted my head up to look at Dr Edwards. She had one of those faces which can smile and look worried at the same time. All of a sudden, I desperately wanted her to help me.
‘I’m a freak,’ I said.
Dr Edwards smiled her nice, worried smile and then said, ‘I must ask you, Lottie: have you taken any drugs? If you have, it would save a lot of time if you’re honest with me.’
Instead of being cross, I said, ‘I’ve never taken drugs ever. I don’t need to. I’m going nuts all on my own.’
And then I started to cry again.
We stayed with Dr Edwards for quite a while. A lot of that time she spoke to my mum and sometimes she spoke to me, but I was feeling too terrible to talk much. If you want to know the truth, I was feeling a bit like I was a cartoon-scribble-person disappearing into a grey fog. Like this:
All the time she was talking, Dr Edwards tapped stuff into a computer on her desk. I could tell that she had a lot of private information about me on that computer. I could tell this because she knew all about the time I’d had to see Dr Crosby after I got excluded from school for trying to throw Samantha Morgan’s desk out of the window.
After she’d finished talking and typing, she said, ‘Lottie, it may not seem like it just yet, but you’ve made a big step towards getting better by coming here. What we need to do now is build as clear a picture of you as we can so that we’re able to help you. You can help us by filling in this questionnaire, which will tell us exactly how you’re feeling.’
It took me over an hour to fill in that questionnaire. Somebody brought me and my mum tea in plastic cups, but I barely touched mine. I was too busy trying to think. It reminded me a bit of those stupid questionnaires we sometimes have to fill in at school, except that this time there were no questions about how old I was – just loads and loads about how I felt. Questions like:
It was a lot more interesting than the questionnaires we get given at school, but I can’t say that it was fun exactly. When I’d finished, Dr Edwards told us to make another appointment for next week and then we went home.
When I went back the next week, Dr Edwards was wearing a pair of eighteen-hole Doc Martens on her feet, but other than that she was just the same as she’d been before and I was pleased to see her again. Me and my mum sat down in her room and she said, ‘I’ve looked at all the information we have, Lottie, and that information, together with your past medical records, suggests very strongly that you are suffering from a mental disturbance of a reasonably significant nature.’
Me and my mum went very quiet.
Dr Edwards smiled her worried smile and said, ‘What that means is that there is a medical reason why you’ve been feeling so up and down just lately. The episodes of unusual behaviour, the problems with sleeping, the recent depression . . . these are all the results of a mental upset. What we need to do now is monitor the situation so that whatever it is that has been making you feel so terrible doesn’t get any worse.’
I clapped my hand over my mouth and looked at the floor. I didn’t know where to look. I definitely didn’t want to look at my mum though.
Dr Edwards said, ‘We see and help many, many people every week, Lottie, who are having to work through similar problems. It’s a part of life. The mind is a complicated thing, and it’s just as likely to have function difficulties as any other organ of the body. You can no more help having a mental upset any more than you can help having a high temperature or asthma or acne. The important thing to remember is that we are here to support you with this so that you can carry on going about your life successfully.’
Dr Edwards paused. Me and my mum continued to sit in silence on our plastic chairs. I noticed that my mum had taken hold of my free hand and was squeezing it, but I still couldn’t bring myself to look at her face.
Dr Edwards said gently, ‘I’ve asked you so many questions recently, Lottie. Is there anything that you’d like to ask me?’
I started biting my thumbnail. There were actually quite a few questions going around in my mind and I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to ask first. After a moment or two I decided to ask the question that was worrying me the most.
‘Are you saying that I’m a schizo?’
My mum made an exasperated noise and looked up at the ceiling. Dr Edwards leaned forward slightly in her chair and said, ‘The answer is no, Lottie. I’m not saying that. Schizophrenia is an illness which leaves people feeling cut off from reality. They may hear voices that don’t actually exist or they may see things that seem very real to them but actually aren’t at all. You haven’t presented us with any of these symptoms. If anything, it seems more likely that you may be suffering from some form of a mood disorder, which would account for the episodes of up and down behaviour you’ve had. There is something called bipolar disorder, or manic depression, which is diagnosed when it becomes clea
r that the individual has regular patterns of extreme elation and extreme depression, but—’
‘Is that what Lottie has?’ my mum asked.
Dr Edwards smiled at my mum and didn’t seem to mind that she had been interrupted.
‘The truth is, it’s far too early for me or anyone else to be able to know exactly what the problem is—’
‘But I’m definitely not a schizo?’ It was me interrupting this time. I was really worried. Everybody at school calls Elvis Presley a schizo, and I didn’t want them thinking I was going to end up like him.
Dr Edwards said. ‘Schizophrenic is the term I prefer, Lottie. I’m not sure that schizo is very polite – or actually has very much to do with schizophrenia.’
I saw my mum nodding.
‘Sorry,’ I whispered. For some reason I felt like I’d been told off even though Dr Edwards’s eyes were still twinkling at me.
And anyway,’ she added, ‘even if it did become clear that you have a mild form of schizophrenia, we would help you to manage it.’
‘Oh my God!’ I said.
Dr Edwards reached forward and patted my hand. ‘Don’t worry, Lottie. We can sort this out. We have an adolescent centre set up to help young people just like you, and I’m going to get you talking to a counsellor there as soon as possible so that you can learn some ways to cope with your episodes of extreme or unusual behaviour.’
‘How?’ I asked.
Dr Edwards actually grinned. ‘Well, that’s a little question with a big answer. For now, let’s just suggest that you try to focus as hard as you can on something nice whenever you start to feel a bit anxious or unhappy. But this is what a counsellor will be able to help you with. I’ll also be seeing you on a regular basis to make sure everything is OK. To begin with, we’ll see each other a fair bit but, all being well, I should soon be out of your hair before you know it.’