A Fool, Free

by Beate Grimsrud

  The staff are now going to work either in the unit or in a day centre for when the patient has been discharged. They will no longer have responsibility for specific patients. Community care and hospital care will now be two separate entities. Community care and day centres could also be privatised in the future, as has happened in several places already. I think that the new system, which gives the staff less responsibility, less freedom and less variation, will lead to a deterioration in care. Perhaps I should say something. Perhaps I should contact the politicians and tell them that it’s a step backwards not forwards. That all mental health care providers think so too, but don’t dare to say. One of the problems is that the patient organisations for psychiatric care are so weak. Either patients are too ill, or they want to keep the fact that they’ve been there secret. Which is true of me, as well. I don’t want to represent those who are ill. I want to be an author. But perhaps I should. Perhaps I’ll dare one day.

  But now I spend the day sitting, or rather lying, on the sofa. Talking a bit, listening to music. I send a ‘Happy Sunday’ text to Mum. I want to see what happens. What she knows and what she doesn’t know. No one can see me here. I pop a smiley face in at the end of message. A reply plings into the phone. Mum says ‘Happy Saturday’ back. ‘I’m tidying the drawers and cupboards.’ What does that mean?

  ‘She can’t see you, that’s what it means,’ Elsa says. I look at her. ‘You’re so sweet,’ I say. She really is sweet. Sweet and serious and wise. ‘You’re a professional wailer for your mum, and you have to stop that. You can’t pre-empt what she’s going to feel. Your mum is proud of you and the fact that you write. And she’ll be proud of this book too.’ ‘Don’t say that. It might trigger something awful. Is sacrificing a life lie worth it for one book?’ Elsa says nothing.

  Mum knows nothing, and whoosh, suddenly everyone can read about it. No, I don’t want her to know, I don’t want her ideas to be shattered. A parallel life beside a life. The voices, angst, madness and wish to die. Elsa says I don’t need to decide anything right now.

  *

  It’s suppertime. I’m sitting opposite a woman I know well. We’ve been here together many times. She has a borderline bipolar disorder and is as usual dressed in a grey hoodie zipped right up to the neck, with the hood on. She looks a bit stiff. She doesn’t look at me when I say something to her. But I don’t worry about it. Maybe she just wants to be left in peace.

  It’s stew today. I pour garlic dressing over everything. A nurse is sitting beside me who is a bit more alert than I am. Suddenly she leaps up and leans across the table. ‘You’re completely red in the face,’ she says to the woman opposite and pulls off her hood. And reveals that she’s wound the cord from the hood twice round her neck. She’s about to strangle herself. The nurse dashes away to get some scissors and cuts the cord.

  The woman is watched constantly. I say: ‘You’re not allowed to die. I like you.’ Two of the patients I’ve met here in the unit have taken their own lives since Christmas. One with drugs, the other with pills. ‘I know,’ says the woman. ‘I’ve got family and friends who love me, I don’t want to die. But do, at the same time. And it changes so quickly.’

  I stay lying on the sofa until evening. Even though unpleasant things happen here, I still feel safe in the unit, with people I know around me. I don’t know whether to go home. Think they think I should go home and look after myself. Then Olof says: ‘You can stay here for the night, if you want.’ He’s the sort of person you want to parry with and hug. Someone who whistles on his way home from work, no matter how difficult the day might have been. You feel protected when he’s near. I bumped into him once when he was driving a bus to make a bit of extra money. The fact that I got on his bus was a good sign.

  They give me a room. The other person in the room is out on leave, so I’m on my own. It’s room number thirteen at the end of the corridor. I close the door and try the bed. I first shared this room with Kassandra over three years ago. I miss Kassandra. It’s good that she’s not here, but it would be nice if she was. The room feels quite isolated and lonely.

  I get up to take my night pills. I get too much: 150 mg Nozinan, Stesolid, Imovane and Propavan. Plus the depot injection that’s already in my system. I won’t sleep more than one and a half hours tonight. That dose could knock out a cow for a week. But I’m so wired I can’t be turned off.

  It doesn’t matter that I don’t sleep. Because something wonderful happens. I’m given something. I’m given stories. Four. Often I lose the thought before it gets to the pen. But now they keep a gentle pace all the way down onto the paper. Sometimes I get frustrated, when the words and images come so fast that I can’t catch them. But this time I do. Open my hands, throat and pelvis and receive. It doesn’t matter where I am, I just write. I think about the old American who in his dotage was ‘glad to be anywhere’. It’s the same when you write. Prison or heaven, cushions or a bed of nails. If I’m writing I’m at the centre of my own life. At home in myself.

  Every now and then through the night I go out into the corridor and chat to the night nurse. She’s kind, happy and tired. I tell her of the gifts that I’ve got in the dark. That I caught them. That everything is there on paper. She says she would like to read it, and asks when the book will be finished. ‘Maybe never,’ I reply. And think about everything I’m still going to write. That I’m never going to stop. Never retire and never put down that final full stop until I’m on my death bed. I’m so excited by my gifts and have to celebrate. Lie on the bed and enjoy. Look at the paper. Say some sentences out loud. I certainly won’t be able to sleep now. There’s only a few hours left of the night.

  I get up and go out into the corridor. As so many times before, I sit outside the dining room and wait for the morning coffee to be ready at a quarter past five. I’m not alone. The coffee doesn’t come until six o’clock. When the sleepless patients are served, the night is over and the day has begun.

  *

  I wait. You get used to waiting. Just sit. Talk a little to the voices. Empty my head and stare into thin air and let time tick by. The day shift comes on at eight and breakfast is served. Three of my mental health workers are there. Olof makes porridge. Not all shifts have someone who can make porridge. It’s up to each team. I love Olof’s porridge with raisins, nuts and stewed apples and milk. I would never think to make something so good for myself at home. Have never made porridge.

  There’s a calm morning mood in the unit. I sit and chat to Olof and Ingemar. Olof tells us that he’s looking after a little dog. When they went for a walk down to the square, the little dog was so frightened that it began to tremble. Olof has that kind and considerate expression on his face. ‘I felt so sorry for him,’ he says, ‘he was so frightened.’ I think that Olof chose the right job, a place where he can use his empathy. I think what an important job the nurses do. What would I have done all these years without them?

  Elsa comes into the dining room with a diary in her hand. She’s always planning. Wants to know what I’m thinking of doing, what I’ve done when. We all get our diaries out and I book a meeting with each one of them in the weeks ahead. They make my everyday easier.

  Jonathan comes early. I don’t like it when he comes late, but still like the fact that he’s not always there on the button. There are small details that make this therapy different from previous therapies.

  I hold my head in my hands. ‘You’ve felt like your head is splitting for twenty years now. But it still hasn’t actually split,’ he says. ‘You say yourself that when you read back through your medical journal, the voices are the same. They say the same things that they’ve been saying for twenty years. To put it simply, they haven’t kept up. You don’t need to be afraid that they’re going to change.’

  He’s said this before and I agree. ‘But what good is that? Knowing?’

  ‘Over time, it helps to know,’ he says. ‘That the police are after you is just paranoia. Once upon a time you might have needed the voices
to survive, but you don’t any more. Say no, tell them to wait.’

  They will still be there. He wants so much, Jonathan. He believes in change. At best, we know who we are, but not what we can be.

  I’m running with my mental health worker, Mats. He knows everyone. Says hello with every step. He knows everyone who supports Hammarby and they live in this neighbourhood. He knows everyone who works outdoors. He’s worked in the parks himself, and on the roads, as a rubbish man, clearing snow and in restaurants. A good foundation to have when you’re working with mental health.

  We run over the bridge. It’s a long bridge. He’s running ahead. Something drops in my stomach. It’s the same bridge that I planned to jump from. Now, all I need to do is throw myself over the railings. Fly through the air as the last thing I do and hit the ice at great speed. Life is an obstacle. Death is a jump. Mats! I want to shout. He’s over on the other side. He’s too far away. My thoughts move in small spasms through my body. Now, now. Mats has to run between me and the railings. Or I’ll do it. Will I do it? I’ve thought this so many times that soon I’ll have to do it. You can’t want to jump and then not do it. I wasn’t thinking about it half an hour ago. It’s the actual possibility that triggers a pain, a spontaneous ‘want to disappear’. A spontaneous ‘what if...’ A door out into the air. A sleep without dreams. If I don’t die in the fall, I’ll die in the cold, and Mats can explain what happened. I don’t need an ID card.

  Is this the end? Will I never live again? I imagine that everything will be white when I die. I’ve thought about how it would be not to be alive. But have I thought about what it means to be dead? Will books be published and films shown afterwards? Unfinished. Will I manage to be gone forever? Dad wasn’t frightened. He’s gone. I’m sure Marit was frightened. Sometimes I think about all that she hasn’t experienced. That she never experienced the year 2000.

  Mats comes jogging back. ‘I want to jump. Can feel the pull,’ I say. ‘Everything is dangerous and nothing is dangerous,’ Mats says. ‘You have to be friends with your fear and situations you can’t control.’ Now he runs on the outside. When we’re over the bridge, he says: ‘I think your new book should be called Running Away From My Illness.’ He says that he’s going to write a book. But he’s barely read anything. ‘That’s not a great starting point,’ I say. Even though that’s what it was like for me. ‘You won’t revolutionise writing by not reading any books. Good literature is good for you.’

  The flat is silent. It’s night. I’m lying under the duvet, but can’t sleep. ‘Come on,’ Emil says, in a soft voice. ‘Get up and come out into the kitchen.’ It sounds like I’m going to get sweets. My body is suddenly alert. I leap out of bed. When I go into the kitchen, Erik says: ‘Do your movements.’ Espen laughs: ‘Fooled you there, didn’t we?’

  Drink some Coke and have a smoke. Back to bed. You’re much smaller when you wake up in the night. Up out of bed again. Take a bag of crisps back with me. Seek comfort in trivialities. Get thirsty, so I get up again. Drink some Coke. Back. Listen to music. I have to sleep. Listen to the radio. Set the alarm. Now it’s too late to go to bed early. Maybe I should phone someone. It’s too late for that too. Could ring the unit, but don’t want to. Get up and eat peanuts three times. I have to write. I sit down at the kitchen table. Light a candle. Get some paper and a pen. Remember that I need to iron some trousers, which have been lying there for about six months. Get out the ironing board. I should write. Or sleep. More peanuts. I sit down with the paper in front of me. I’m not supposed to write at night unless a story comes to me. When it just comes like a gift. Not like now, sitting here blank and waiting.

  I go back to bed. Think about colours. That the colours in a room have to match and contrast in the right way. Jump up and go to the bathroom, clean the toilet. Might as well do something useful? In the end, around three o’clock, I make some coffee. I’ve agreed with Jonathan that I won’t do that at night. But I’ve done it now. I have a smoke. I’m going to pretend that it’s morning and I’m having a nice time. Is it really nice? Try watching the flame on the candle. Fire is calming. What is it I think is going to happen when I get up? Just a little more. Of what? Cigarettes, peanuts, chocolate, crisps, Coke, beer. Jonathan says that I should wind down before going to bed. Listen to an audio book. I should just... Is all this supposed to be helping me in some way?

  I sit at the kitchen table. I’ve been at the unit over the weekend. I didn’t sleep then either. But I was given stories, gifts in the night. I liked the little girl who was me best, the one who tells stories to her classmates on the way home from school. She pees herself. Her point vanishes in a yellow puddle in the snow that everyone sees. An entire childhood filled with yellow puddles in the snow. I’ve written about it, and about the unit. But I don’t want to be a public patient. I comfort myself with the thought that a novel is a novel and only reflects slices of reality. How you think it was and how you wish it was. Slices of an unlived life. Selected moments, imagined moments. A story that spawns other stories. A personal story. That seems all the more real the further back in time it took place. The language. That flows into the pen when you practise. And yet writing a book is still letting a small part of me live a life I can’t control. A part of me that flies around like a child that’s flown the nest, and I forgot to teach her how to dress before she left.

  I’m writing now. Now I’m writing and there’s a value to the night. It’s like dancing. I see puddles of pee in the snow. Like a trail all the way back to my childhood. Like yellow stories in the midst of all the white. When I was walking through the park the other day, Tim said: ‘Eat the yellow snow, it might be beer.’ He laughed.

  I’m at home for a few weeks and then go back into hospital. I know what I want. I don’t want all this medication. I get there late in the evening. Have already taken my eight-o’clock medicine, two Propavan and one Stesolid. I say over and over: ‘Erik is well, Erik is well.’ I walk up and down and talk.

  I’m given two 15 mg Zyprexa, 100 mg Nozinan, two Stesolid and two Stilnoct sleeping pills. The nurse stands in front of me with the pills in her cupped hands, like a bowl full of sweeties. ‘That’s far too much,’ I say. ‘And also, I’m not prescribed Nozinan any longer. You can’t give me all this when I haven’t spoken to a doctor.’ ‘Just take them,’ she says. ‘We just want you to get some sleep.’ I have to. That’s the way it is, because even when I’ve made up my mind not to take the medicine, even when the voices have told me I don’t know how many times, a kind nurse or sister can easily persuade me. I think, just this once. Get it over and done with. I don’t want to make a fuss.

  And here I am again. In front of a cupped hand full of pills. Then suddenly the nurse says: ‘We girls should stick together.’ I laugh. She laughs. What’s that got to do with anything? And it only takes this slight distraction, and suddenly I’ve swallowed the pills. Popped them in my mouth and pretended to the boys. But there’ll be trouble, I know. I go to bed with my clothes on. Don’t wake up until half past four the next day.

  I’ve slept for eighteen hours. The doctors’ round came to see me, but I just said that Erik was well and fell back into the bed.

  Have to pee. I feel all glued up, stiff all over. Rickety and weak. My legs have no will. My arms can’t be bothered when I try to get up. I fall back down onto the bed. Heavy, as though the whole room was lying on top of me, pressing me down. The walls, ceiling, furniture, everything. I have to hold it up. Try again. Can’t open my eyes. But have to pee. With enormous effort, I manage to get onto my feet, take a few steps forwards, holding onto the wall. My legs buckle under me. I fall to the floor, haul myself up and try to make it to the door. Hit the wall again. Ow, my head. Collapse and crawl across the floor until I finally get to the door. Try, but can’t open my eyes. The toilet is out here on the corridor somewhere. It’s got a long support handle. I pull myself up. There’s even a support handle along the wall for people who can’t walk properly. I think I’ve got the right place. Tug and
pull. Try to open my eyes. See something white and shiny, but my eyelids slide down again. I take a few steps to the side. Finally, the toilet door handle. I pull open the door, it’s urgent now.

  I collapse. I collapse on the floor and wet myself, stay lying on the floor for a while. Manage to get up unsteadily and call the staff. I have to borrow some hospital trousers. ‘Come with me to the store,’ the nurse says. It really does smell like an old hospital in there. I prop myself up against the wall and force my eyes open. See restraining belts, sick bags, advent candlesticks, a small midsummer pole, towelling tube socks, towels, disposable toothbrushes that are hard on your teeth. Nappies, razors, cups for dentures, sheets, blankets. Unisex nightgowns, old-fashioned pinafores. Grey-blue, washed-out tracksuits, size large.

  And those are the trousers I’m going to have. A sack that can be tied tight round the waist. I take off my wet white trousers and change. Totter back to bed, lie there staring at the ceiling until the side effects start to ebb. Then I don’t sleep for three days.

  I share my room with a suicidal heart surgeon. When she realises that I’m an author, she says: ‘This is the VIP room.’ She’s obviously not used to being a patient. I understand indirectly that she finds it difficult to talk to an ordinary, lowly psychiatrist. How can she hold on to her status here amongst all the addicts and people who have never worked? She’s an ermine amongst street cats.