Sleeping Awake

by Noelle, Gamali

  Something cold fell into the crevice between my breasts. I jumped.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  He laughed. “You tell me.”

  I looked around for the source. At first I couldn’t find anything in the tangled mess of my sheets. Out of the corner of my eye, something caught the light and my attention. A gold necklace. I pulled it out from where it laid hidden; there was a heart-shaped pendant attached.

  “What is this?” I dangled the necklace before Nicolaas.

  “That…” Nicolaas reached across me and took the necklace from me.

  I remained still as he sat behind me and placed it around my neck.

  “This…” He fingered the pendant.

  My eyes automatically closed as his fingers made contact with my skin.

  “…This is my heart…” He kissed the side of my neck. “…And now you have it.”

  My eyes opened, and my breathing stopped. “What?”

  He turned me towards him and pulled me closer. The playful expression was gone from his face. “I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  “Is this a joke?” I eyed the pendant and then Nicolaas.

  “I love you,” he said simply.

  I froze. My skin became a swamp of sweat as the mad pounding of my heart oozed through the surface of my skin and deafened me. Nicolaas’ mouth opened and closed, but I did not hear what he had said. My eyes snapped towards him as he shook me. The ringing gained decibels. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I slammed my hands over my ears.

  “You have to go!” I yelled over the noise.

  Nicolaas grabbed me again. I slapped him away, jumping off the bed and curling into a corner.

  “Leave!”

  Nicolaas got up and made as if to come towards me.

  “LEAVE!”

  He froze.

  I closed my eyes. “Please.”

  When I reopened them, he had gone. The necklace was still on my bed.

  *~*

  It was happening again.

  Dark Clouds.

  No light.

  No smile.

  No love.

  Nothing.

  It wasn’t as if I hadn’t expect it; the peace always got disturbed eventually. I reverted to my old routine.

  No sleep.

  Kept to myself.

  Drank whatever I could get my hands on.

  Turned off my phone.

  Wished that it were all over.

  Totally and completely numb.

  The anti-depressants didn’t work. The anti-psychotics didn’t work. The mood-stabilizers didn’t work. The sleeping pills didn’t work. The string of psychiatrists didn’t work. Attempting suicide didn’t work.

  I was living until I was allowed to die.

  *~*

  I awoke at dawn.

  My mind was racing; I couldn’t think clearly.

  Images raced across my mind, spiralling blurs of black, white and gray.

  There was only one thing to do.

  I grabbed my easel and paint and headed to the pool house.

  I drew the girl first—naked. She had her head in her lap. Her hair fell and covered her, trapping her in the dark.

  Next came the circle. Large and spherical; a bundle of missed opportunities. A murky gray filled the inside of this circle of despair; it looked like mud. Mud ruined everything.

  An owl sat in a tree outside her bubble and watched her with its yellow eyes as every pill imaginable fell from the sky.

  All day long, I painted. Joni Mitchell floated through the speakers. “I really don’t know life at all…”

  Amen, sister. Amen.

  I neither knew anything about life, nor what I wanted to do with mine.

  I graduated from prep school. I smiled for the camera, went to dinner with my family afterwards, and headed to Bryn’s suite at the Four Seasons Hotel for a graduation party.

  I did everything that my fellow seniors did. I was second (to Bryn) in the graduating class with a 1590 SAT score. My teachers forgot about the fact that I didn’t talk in class unless called upon along with all of my other surly qualities; they gladly wrote me glowing recommendations. My guidance counsellor forgot the fact that I’d been forced to see her for an entire semester in my sophomore year after a failed suicide attempt. Everyone was willing to do anything for me, so that when I inevitably went on to make a name for myself, it would also be noted that I went to Lycée Olivier Dumas, which must have contributed to my success.

  I went to NYU and allowed Maman to convince me that being undeclared was not unacceptable, even though she had her fifteen-year plan drafted by the time that she was sixteen and saw it through all the way to the birth of final baby number two, which had unexpectedly turned out to be babies two and three.

  Come the end of my sophomore year, I was still no closer to declaring my major or changing the world. I cracked. I had a nervous breakdown and showed the world just how sad of a creature I was. I went to Golden Ridge instead and passed that course with flying colours. I came home and what?

  Nothing.

  Still a failure.

  Still undeclared.

  I was almost twenty-three, and I would be the laughing stock at next year’s five-year reunion.

  *~*

  Some time later, someone knocked on the door. I imagined that it was Cienna coming for another talk.

  “I’m not really in the mood to talk,” I called.

  The door opened regardless.

  “That’s too bad, because I am.”

  Nicolaas.

  I froze. My heart started beating at an unnatural pace.

  “What are you doing here?” I eventually managed to ask.

  “I was about ask you that question myself,” he replied. His voice was annoyingly calm.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “May I come in?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He stepped past me anyway.

  “I said no!” I tugged on his polo. It was green, a colour that’s always looked delicious on him.

  He slapped my hand away. “I heard you. Is this the reason why you won't return any of my calls?" He sounded almost conversational.

  “Get away from it!” I yelled, covering the canvas.

  “Touchy, aren’t we?” His eyebrows arched to an almost impossible height.

  I hated it when he got like that. He was reading my mind and violating me; toying with me until I broke. I reached for my box of cigarettes. I refused to be turned into his guinea pig.

  “Why have you been avoiding my calls?” His voice got softer.

  I knew what he was doing. He was trying the “Noira, I care about you,” approach.

  I wasn’t going to fall for that one either.

  “I had no desire to speak to you.”

  “And why is that?” he continued, not at all affected by my comment.

  Why. Why. Why.

  “Because I wanted to be alone. If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t really spoken to my sisters either.”

  “It doesn’t.” He took two steps and in an instant, was crushing my cigarette under his size thirteen shoes. Fucking giant.

  “Why did you do that?” I shrieked.

  “Why don’t you be a nice girl and tell Daddy what’s wrong?” He sat on the sofa and pulled me onto his lap.

  “You’re not my father.” I said. I made no effort to try and move, because I knew that it would be futile.

  “Alors, il y a vraiment un problème, non?”

  “Stop it!” I demanded. I didn’t care if he thought that my not wanting to talk to him was a problem.

  “Comment?” he asked innocently.

  “Quit speaking to me in French!”

  “Pourquoi?” he asked. He clamped his hand over my mouth and stifled my scream before it could even escape my throat. “Now are you going to tell me what’s wrong, or do I have to spank you first?”

  “Fuck you!” I hissed when he released me.

  “Bend over, and I will.”<
br />
  His hand once again suffocated my new scream of frustration. This was why I didn’t get close to someone. They got to know me too well and pushed all my buttons, even when I didn’t want them to.

  “If you’d just tell me what’s wrong with you, Noira, then everything else will be fine. Is it your mother?”

  “Don’t speak about my mother!” I glared at him.

  “Then what is it? Why have you been avoiding my calls?”

  “Because I’m sick of you!”

  “Sick of me?”

  “Yes!” I shrieked. “Sick of you and your fucking big feet crushing my damn cigarettes—”

  Nicolaas interrupted me. “My big feet crushed those cigarettes because you need to stop smoking.”

  “The only thing that I need to do, Nicolaas, is die.” I wriggled around in his lap trying to pry myself free. His cologne was making me nauseated.

  “Well keep on smoking those damn cigarettes of yours and you’ll end up like your mother, battling cancer.”

  I slapped his face. I could hear the sound of the wind as my hands spiraled through the air and a loud “splat” announced contact. He let me go, and I backed away from him. There was a large red imprint of my hand on his face. I felt torn between wanting to caress his cheeks and wanting to punch him.

  He stood. "I didn't mean it."

  "Yes," I replied, "you did."

  "No. I didn't."

  “Then why did you say it?” I asked. I watched as his shoulders sagged and he ran a hand through his hair.

  “Because you scare me,” he admitted.

  I laughed. It started at the very bottom of my belly, and erupted into every corner of the room as I threw my head back. I had to lean against the wall in order to steady myself. Nicolaas watched me the entire time, squinting as if a sharp pain was shooting through his body.

  “Not returning a few phone calls scares you?” I pursed my lips.

  “No,” he whispered.

  “Then what?”

  He walked over to my easel. “This.”

  My breathing stopped again. It felt as if he had peeled off my skin and was watching my heart beat. “Stop it,” I commanded.

  He turned slightly. “Is that girl supposed to be you?”

  “What does it look like?”

  He looked back at the painting for a while then quietly replied. “It looks as if you're suffering; like you're trapped.”

  “Well I am,” I replied. I walked over and blocked the painting. I picked up the box of cigarettes. This time, he didn't stop me. I watched him stare at me, silently daring him to tell me to not smoke once again.

  “Noira, why are you doing this to yourself? Why won’t you let me love you?” he asked. The pained expression was back on his face. I ignored the urge to take him into my arms.

  “Does it matter? You think that I'm killing myself, so what's the point of knowing?”

  “I never said that,” he said.

  “Okay, fine. You never said that.” I exhaled again and watched as the smoke curled and floated towards the ceiling. “Moving along.”

  “What's wrong with you?” He asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Don't give me that look. You wouldn't be doing this to yourself…” He pointed to my painting. “…You wouldn't feel trapped if nothing were the matter.”

  I felt as if I was about to jump out of my skin and maul him with my bare nails. “I'm sick, okay?” I screamed.

  “What?”

  “You know all those rumours that I told you about?”

  “What?”

  I began pacing. His sudden stupidity was infuriating! “The ones about me being crazy and what not. Well they're true.”

  He still looked confused.

  “I'm Bipolar,” I snapped. “A mental case.”

  That wasn't exactly the way that I planned on telling him. I hadn't even planned on telling him at all. But now he knew the truth.

  “Well?” I placed my hand on my hips.

  His eyes returned to me. “Well what?”

  “Aren't you going to leave?”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  “Yes.”

  Big lie. Huge lie. Possibly the biggest one I'd ever told. I stared straight ahead.

  Wordlessly, Nicolaas turned and left. I watched him close the door and reached for my cigarettes.

  They always left in the end.

  **~*~*~**~*~*~**

  ¯CHAPITRE DOUZE¯

  WELCOME HOME, SON

  I barely made it to my room after Nicolaas left. After crossing the threshold, I fell to the floor and instinctively curled into the foetal position. My face became wet as hot tears splashed their way down my cheeks. I tried to raise my hands to wipe them away, but I could not move. There’d been a period at Golden Ridge when I’d been so depressed that the only physical movements that I could manage were to blink and to breathe. For one month, I lay in bed, my brain seemingly detached from my body. I was diagnosed with psychomotor retardation. It was if I was taking part in someone’s sick puppet theatre as I was stripped naked, bathed, fed various cocktails of medication without my consent, hooked up to a feeding tube, and left to the general mercy of whichever nurse had been assigned to my care that day. All the while, a persistent voice rang in my ear: Get up. Get up. Get up. It was a fate worse than any death that I’d imagined.

  As I lay on the floor in my bedroom, I did something that I hadn’t thought of doing in well over eleven years: I prayed and made a pact with God that if I was spared from another episode, I’d get help.

  The next morning I woke up in my bed. Cienna and Camelea sat on the chaise by the window. It was the first time that I’d seen them in such close proximity without verbal insults and daggers flying between them. As I struggled to speak, they rose.

  “Can you move?” Cienna asked.

  I tried to wriggle my fingers. Beneath the sheets, I saw movement. “Yes.”

  Camelea turned and went towards my closet. I watched as she opened the doors and pulled out a black dress.

  “Do you think that you can manage to shower on your own?” Cienna asked.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Someone is here to see you,” Camelea responded. “You’re not well.”

  “What?” It felt like pushing weights off my chest as I sat up in the bed.

  Cienna walked into the bathroom instead of answering me. A few seconds later, I heard the shower running and Camelea, having placed the dress and shoes that she’d selected on the chaise, gave me her hand.

  “If you called someone at Golden Ridge,” I warned. “The next that you see me will be in a coffin.”

  “No one said anything about Golden Ridge,” Cienna replied. She stood in the doorway between the bedroom and the bathroom, scowling down at me. “Your last stay there obviously didn’t work.”

  “Then who is here?” I demanded. Camelea tried to give me her hand again, but I ignored her.

  “Dr. Roth,” Camelea responded. “He’s a psychiatrist who specializes in Bipolar Disorder and schizophrenia.”

  I allowed Camelea to lead me towards the bathroom. Evidently, God was determined to keep me to my word.

  “I can shower and dress myself,” I declared as we entered the bathroom.

  Wordlessly, Camelea and Cienna left. It was a strange sight watching them together.

  I took my time getting ready. Western medicine had beyond exhausted me, and I doubted that anything that Dr. Roth prescribed me would work. Still, time waited for no one, and I eventually found myself opening my room door, dressed and ready to meet my fate. Dr. Roth, a prematurely gray man, who looked more like an aging Hipster with his oversized glasses and tight jeans than a psychiatrist, stood to greet me. I wondered where Cienna and Camelea had gone to find him.

  “Hello, Noira,” he crooned. “How are you feeling today?”

  “Like shit,” I replied.

  Camelea winced. Dr. Roth smiled. “That’s good. I’d have driven a long way for nothing
if you had replied ‘Fine.’”

  I fought the urge to return his smile. Instead, I turned and beckoned him into my room. Cienna and Camelea didn’t follow.

  “Sit wherever you’d like,” I said, closing my room door behind me. Unsurprisingly, I turned to find that Dr. Roth was making himself comfortable on the chaise. I took the window seat and waited until he’d gotten his iPad out to begin.

  “None of the medication that I’ve been prescribed has worked,” I announced. “I doubt that anything that you’re thinking of will do anything for me.”

  “I’m not just here to prescribe medication, Noira,” Dr. Roth replied.

  “You’re not?” I frowned slightly. What was his deal?

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “To help you. Tell me what’s been going on, if you don’t mind. Your sisters think that you’d stopped taking your medicine.”

  So they had noticed.

  “They’re right,” I replied, leaning against the window.

  “What were you on at the time and why did you stop taking them, besides the fact that they stopped working.”

  I sighed and began reciting my daily bread. “Lamictal, 150 mg. Geodon, 80 mg. Ambien CR, 12.5 mg. Cymbalta, 100 mg. Sometimes Xanax, which didn’t work, but I don’t remember the dosage.”

  “Any side effects,” Dr. Roth asked.

  “Geodon made my bladder overactive and caused me to sleep shortly after taking it. Ambien CR kept me awake, strangely enough. I gained weight with the Cymbalta. The Lamictal didn’t seem to do anything for the mood swings”

  “Are you currently in therapy?”

  “No.”

  Dr. Roth looked up. “You’re not in therapy?”

  I shook my head.

  “They discharged you from Golden Ridge without releasing you into the care of a psychotherapist?”

  I nodded. “I have…had a psychiatrist, but I never went to see him for a follow-up appointment. I weaned myself off the medication before it was time for my refill.”

  “You should be in therapy,” Dr. Roth declared.

  “I agree.”

  Dr. Roth set aside his iPad. I watched as he took off his glasses and ran his hands over his eyebrows. Nicolaas sometimes did that when he was tense and needed to relax.