I can’t burn off my energy here in the unit. As patients, we spend the whole time waiting for the next meal. Some medicines increase your appetite, you can almost see us swelling. My weight goes up and down like a yoyo. I change medicines all the time. My body is hopping. I shadow-box and kick. Go to boxing four times a week in a gym, but am not allowed to go by myself, so I’m taken and collected like a child by Harald. The days when I can’t go out, I’m fit to burst. One of the hourly paid staff, a solid and humble young man, says he’ll teach me to do prison gym. He came and shook my hand and introduced himself the day after he’d helped to carry me from the basement up to the unit. ‘Having to use force is one of the downsides of this job,’ he says. He’s training to be a therapist. We stand in my tiny room and do exercises. I’m tired and sweaty by the end of it. Sleep well that night.
The next day I’m hyper again. In the evening, I run up and down in the corridor. ‘You’re disturbing the others, calm down,’ the nurse says. Then the German karate teacher who works nights suggest that I should go out with him. Even though patients are not allowed to go out in the evenings or at night. ‘Put on your trainers.’ We run up one of the steepest flight of steps on Söder. ‘Come on,’ he shouts. I love trainers’ voices. What would I have done without all my trainers over the years?
I run up the steps until my thighs are burning. Then I carry on a bit more. Up and down. This is what I’ve been longing for, I don’t even consider escaping. The nurse would have caught up with me in a flash. We got back to the unit exhausted. Everything feels a bit better.
I write well when I’m in the unit. I’ve been able to borrow a small desk again, which I’ve put in my room. I’ve taken my computer with me and sit squeezed between the bed and the desk. Lisen comes to visit every day. We’ve been commissioned to write a TV series for children. Lisen’s not that familiar with film, so she wants me to write. Scenes flood into my head, I can concentrate for longer and longer periods at a time. There are so many balls to keep in the air and I grow with the job. When Lisen is here, when we only talk about the manuscript, I feel a clarity that I don’t have for the rest of the day. I remember my scrapbooks, collages and events. It’s like burning a wire. The flame rushes on and all that is left is red, knotted copper wire. A secret relationship between a boy and a girl, where, towards the end, they have to defend their friendship and shared fantasy world with their lives.
I sit in the corridor with my coat on. Want to leave. Have an appointment with a skin specialist, have got a rash. ‘You can cancel it,’ says Jonathan, who’s come to visit. ‘What’s decided is decided,’ I say. ‘I’m not going to cancel.’ If things don’t happen as planned, I crack. Ask Mum. ‘You have to learn to cope with changes. Practise saying no,’ Jonathan says. ‘No,’ I say, defiantly. I’m determined to go. ‘You don’t decide. You’re here now,’ Jonathan says.
I can’t let go and listen to his side of the argument. Suddenly he stands up. ‘All our work is in vain, I don’t have time to sit here and listen to this nonsense. I’ve got forty other patients to look after.’ He’s obviously irritated and almost shouting. Then he rushes out. The door clicks behind him. I’m locked in. What if he doesn’t come back? He comes back.
I’ve been discharged again and am out running with Mats. We’ve got a circuit that takes about an hour. I’m the slowest runner in Sweden. It’s great to be running, and I would never have done it on my own, if Mats wasn’t there talking me on. We’ve run in all kinds of weather. Winter and summer. In rain, snow, sun and dark. We’ve been doing this for more than two years now. It’s great, once we’re over the dangerous bridge. Sometimes I run as far away from the railings as I can, with Mats on the outside. A shield between me and my thoughts.
When we get about halfway along the lake, I want to swim. I tell Mats that I’m going to take off more than he’s comfortable with. I haven’t really thought about it, it’s more of a joke. Think that it doesn’t matter to him how much I’ve got on. He carries on running. When he comes back ten minutes later, I’ve thrown myself naked out into the water and am fully dressed again. He says nothing. He says nothing for the rest of our run.
When we get home, he says what he always says: ‘Remember your three-step routine. Stretch, shower, eat.’ I can feel that something’s wrong. Then he says: ‘I don’t want to run with you any more, after what you did. You don’t swim naked in the middle of the city. You knew that I wouldn’t like it, and that I could lose my job as a result.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, surprised. He seems to mean it. This is serious. He doesn’t want to run with me any more. I didn’t realise it was so risky. ‘I accept your apology, but we won’t be running together any more.’ And that was his final word.
I don’t know what to say. I want to defend myself, but don’t know how. I go in to the flat and lie in the bath. I start to understand, but don’t understand all the same. You can’t swim naked in the middle of the city with your carer. I’m a grown woman. Not what I feel, which is neuter. For me, it could easily have been Espen, aged six, who was swimming. Mats should have said: ‘No, you can’t.’ He ran off. He didn’t see me naked, but it wouldn’t have bothered me if he had. I don’t understand that seeing a woman naked can trigger all kinds of feelings in men. When I’m in the unit, I pull my trousers down and bare my arse to male nurses without thinking about it, so they can give me injections. I lie in the bath for a long time. Should I call him and apologise again? Have I learnt a lesson or am I just sad that we won’t go running any more? I feel a knot in my stomach. I realise that I’ve made a mistake. I duck under the water and hold my breath.
I feel better and want to cut down on my medication. In fact, I don’t want to take anything at all. ‘This is one of the leading clinics in the country,’ Olof says. ‘Yes, at pumping people full of medicine,’ I reply. My doctor, Manne, is in a good mood and wants to negotiate. We do this regularly and I always leave with the feeling that I’ve lost. He’ll reduce the Trilafon, if I take Cisordinol, Acutard and Stesolid as injections. I agree to the deal as they only stay in your system for three days, whereas the Trilafon depot injection lasts for three weeks.
The day after, I go to a vernissage. I stand outside the small gallery with some friends. I can feel that my jaw is completely stiff, and moving without me wanting it to. My neck locks. I’ve got a glass in my hand and raise it to my mouth. I can’t control my lips and drink properly, it runs onto my jacket. I don’t know what to say. Can I speak at all? We’re in the middle of an interesting conversation. Does it show? I’ve just arrived. I have to go again. I don’t dare to talk. Have to hide away. Have to go home.
I go into the gallery and wave to the artist. ‘Are you going already?’ she asks. I nod. I run to the metro, sit in the carriage, grinding my teeth. My mouth twitches uncontrollably. Saliva dribbles down onto my shirt. It’s as though my face is twisted. When I get home I look at myself in the mirror. My cheek is being sucked into my mouth on one side. I go to bed and try to sleep. It hurts and my mouth keeps moving. I hear my jaws crunching. Get up and take some Akineton to help with the side effects and more sleeping pills. I will never take those injections again.
Phone Lolo and talk to her. I’m just slurring. It’s difficult to talk when you can’t control your mouth. I’m trembling from somewhere deep inside, as though my nerves were strings that are vibrating. ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes.’ One of the boys wants to come out. ‘Get up,’ Prince Eugen says. I quickly stand up. ‘Go into the corner of the kitchen and move your arms.’ The shaking continues. I do as he says. Lift my arms up and down, from my knees to over my head. ‘Again.’ I do it again. ‘You’ll go to pieces if you don’t do what I say. Carry on. You can’t be anywhere other than the corner.’ I don’t know how long I’ve been standing there. I don’t know how to stop. But in the end I’m allowed to go and lie down in bed. Still shaking. Turn the volume on the MP3 player as loud as it will go, listen to music. Prince Eugen’s voice lies underneath like a whisper.
I’m sta
ying at home with my mum in Norway. We’ve just eaten my favourite cake with home-made ice-cream, which she baked because I was coming home. She’s old now. Has aches and pains, but is still clear in the head. We talk, but there are still holes in the conversation. The ones that have always been there. I think that she’s matured. That I admire her. Believe that I’ve got some of her strength to never give up. To never allow yourself to give up. For better or worse.
She’s a survivor. Lost her own mother when she was only four years old. Grew up in Oslo during the war. In and out of the air raid shelter. Wore a red woolly hat and had paperclips on the collar of her jacket, and was interrogated by the police time and again. Got married and had children instead of studying to become a mathematician, as she wanted to. Had five children, of whom one is no longer alive. She looked after her old father and let him live with us even though there was not enough room. She stockpiled tins of food in the cellar, in case there was a war. She went to university when she was around fifty. She looked after her sick husband. Perhaps I’ve not wanted, but hoped she would look after me too. Didn’t believe that she could.
She’s lying on the bed resting. Her lined face that I’m getting closer to with time, that will one day be mine. The bedroom window is open. ‘Marit and Dad are in the birds,’ she says. I stand in the doorway. I don’t want to think about death now. Or that the dead live in other forms of life nearby. Then Emil says: ‘Can’t you hear what the birds are singing? Here comes death, that’s what they’re singing. Here comes death.’ He says that they asked him to tell me. I no longer trust Emil, who once promised to help me avoid death. ‘Hide yourself in the game,’ he said. Perhaps I’ve hidden myself too well in the game. I have others to turn to now when things are frightening and difficult. I no longer need him, he weighs too little. He repeats it and I’m just as at a loss. Time will tell whether he dies before me or not. I look at my old mother and feel scared. ‘They’re singing about other magic things too,’ Emil says. ‘You can talk to them if you want.’ I don’t want to. Mum is asleep. When she dies, and our childhood home is sold, a new era will begin.
While Mum sleeps, I go out into the garden to dig up Torvald’s trophy. The one he won in a skiing competition, when he was such a coward that he stuck to the ideal time category, which meant doing two laps in as near to the same time as possible. He went as slowly as he could. I competed in my normal category, went as fast as I could until I threw up, and got a thimble as a prize. Torvald won the biggest trophy of all. I couldn’t lie in bed and look at his big cup beside all my small ones, so one day it disappeared. I was forced to bury it in the garden. Now I want to give it back. I no longer want to be him.
I think I remember where I used to put things I could no longer bear to see. But I’m wrong. Dig one hole after another and find nothing. What’s done can’t be undone. The people who buy this beautiful garden in the future will get a secret hole into the bargain. When they dig up the whole garden to build a bigger house, they will find my things and piece them together like a jigsaw puzzle to make a whole story.
5
I’m at home again. The transition between being away and being home is the hardest. Stockholm, Oslo. Family, friends. Having two countries, to never be done with going home to visit. To never be done with the fact that I’ve swapped country. I have phantom pains in the severed root that remains in Norway.
‘Go over to the dangerous window,’ Prince Eugen says. ‘Get up.’ ‘Go and sit in the kitchen corner, by the sink,’ Espen says. ‘Turn on the water. Then you’re safe.’ ‘The outside world is enormously overrated,’ Prince Eugen says. I close my eyes. The boys talk all evening. The same old exhortations. Then suddenly it’s silent. I turn on the radio. It feels so lonely. It’s the weather forecast. On sea and land. The weather makes me sad.
Then the boys are there again. They chat to each other. It’s not directed at me. I am just a body for them to be in. I have no control over my thoughts, their voices run free. The words fly between them. They discuss things. ‘Eat. Don’t eat. Dare. Dare to jump from the bridge.’ ‘No,’ I shout. ‘Not tonight.’ They stop me in my tracks when I speak. ‘Shh, don’t say anything. We’re on the phone to each other. That’s why it can get a bit confusing sometimes.’ Erik laughs. I laugh. I’m an entire orphanage. I think that one day it will be razed to the ground. And I alone will be saved from the smoke-filled rooms by an enormous fireman in a smoke-diving helmet.
Ingemar, my mental health worker, comes from the hospital at around eight in the evening. He sits at the kitchen table. I’m hyper and want to say everything at once. Show him my new clothes, tell him about my childhood which I’m writing about at the moment, show him the postcard I got. I stop mid-sentence and start to talk about something else. ‘You should try to wind down now,’ Ingemar tells me. ‘As you didn’t sleep last night, you should go to bed early tonight.’ I carry on telling him half stories, changing the subject all the time. Ingemar has to go soon. I take my night medication, two Imovane, two Propavan, two Stesolid, two Heminevrin and 100 mg of Nozinan. He turns off all the lights and I put on my pyjamas.
Ingemar sits by the bed and I try to sleep, but then sit bolt upright and turn on the bedside lamp. Some sentences have come to me that I have to write down. ‘Turn it off,’ Ingemar says. ‘Lie down, otherwise the medicine won’t work.’ I sit up a couple more times. New sentences. Prince Eugen orders me to get up, walk across the floor and slap my hands on my knees. Ingemar tells me to stop. I creep back into bed. ‘It’s not the voices who decide, I do,’ Ingemar says.
I fall asleep about half past eleven. Ingemar has left and dropped the keys back in through the letter box. I wake again at one, bright and alert. I take two more Heminevrin and smoke a cigarette in the kitchen. Go back to bed and try to sleep. My leg is shaking and my body twitching. Want to get away from my restless body for a while. And so the night passes, I get in and out of bed for what seems like hours. Can’t listen to an audio book, can’t think of anything to do apart from listening to the same old radio station as always on my headphones. The same songs and same adverts over and over again. The same vacuous presenter who tells you things like today is peppercake day. I’m addicted. Chatter that protects me from myself and the voices.
At four in the morning, I call the night shift and a couple of nurses come round. Take four more Heminevrin. Don’t say anything. I should have been knocked out by all the sleeping tablets hours ago. The nurses stay for a while and talk. Say that if I can’t sleep, I should phone them once every hour for a five-minute chat. They leave, and I charge around the flat. Lower the hem on a pair of trousers using a needle and thread. Turn on the computer. Ring the unit. Don’t want to be awake, I want to sleep. Take four more Heminevrin. Smoke and have a glass of wine. Drink hot milk and honey, maybe it can work miracles? I try to imagine that the milk has been heated by the Finnish angel in hospital all those years ago, but now I have to do it myself. That’s what being a grown-up is all about. Being good to yourself when you need it and no one else is around. I eat my third breakfast at six o’clock. Haven’t closed my eyes.
The next day I call Jonathan and scream down the phone. ‘Teach me to sleep.’ ‘Not on the telephone,’ he replies. ‘You can sleep. You’ve slept before.’ We end the call. He can take his papers and lists and stuff them right there. Sleeping routine and anxiety reducing measures. It’s just words. The lists might as well have been blank paper or a page from the telephone directory. I can’t put them into action.
I go up to the hospital. Am cross, even though the night gave me a couple of sentences. It’s not enough. I’m most angry with the sleeping pills. I get so nervous when I can’t sleep, get a stomach ache from all the cigarettes. I don’t find anyone to talk to in the unit, so I write a note to my doctor, Manne. ‘Fucking placebo medicine. Fata Morgana. Give me something that works or nothing at all. Everyone’s Eli.’
‘We need to talk about sleep,’ Jonathan says. ‘Put some of the belief you have in your wri
ting into sleep.’
‘You know, when I woke up at three, I looked at my right hand,’ I tell him, ‘and I really felt that my five fingers were me. Espen, Emil, Erik, Prince Eugen and Eli. Espen is the pinky. But I don’t know whether the index finger is Erik or Eli. And that makes me angry.’ I clench my fist. It’s going to go through glass. ‘You have your fate in your hand,’ Jonathan says. ‘You, Eli, are the force that holds it together. Think that it’s Eli who has the upper hand.’
‘Don’t call me Eli.’ I feel a sudden intense irritation, a burst of rage with Jonathan. I don’t want to hear him say the word Eli. It’s not the first time. Sometimes something turns in me when I hear that name. I throw several punches in the air. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. I imagine that I ball my fist and punch with the strength of all the boys’ voices. Have to stand up, the power comes from the hips. Hear my boxing trainer’s voice: ‘Go on, give it everything you’ve got. Are you here to train, or what? No relaxing.’
That applies to Jonathan as well. Why doesn’t he know when he should use one of the other names? ‘Why don’t you say Emil sometimes?’ ‘Because I want to talk to Eli the adult.’
I’ve become a pill addict. In the drug index for prescribed drugs it says that Heminevrin should only be taken for short periods. I have been taking it for over a year now. Want to be in control, but get so desperate at night that I get up and take another one. They say that it can have the opposite effect. I ask for medicine and ask not to get it. Every time I see my doctor, I try to have my medication reduced. But he talks me out of it because we negotiate in a way I don’t understand. The depot injections of Trilafon are protection, he says. But after nagging and nagging, one day I get the dose halved and feel very pleased with myself. I won a small victory there. I know that Manne doesn’t think it’s a good idea, but when I’m not sectioned, in principle, they can’t force me. He’s afraid that I won’t take anything at all, and he’s right.
A Fool, Free Page 27