That week, it is the birthday of one of my parents or grandparents—now, I cannot remember which.
I am angry at myself. I was supposed to have it together by now. I was supposed to be studying, telling my sisters to be quiet, celebrating a family birthday. Instead, I am lying facedown, crying into my pillow, trying to shut my eyes to the images that play in a never-ending film in my mind. I picture the scenes from childhood—the ones that these days elude me completely—over and over.
When my family and Kris come to pick me up that evening, we go out for dinner. Because it’s deemed safe to do so, the nurses have granted me special leave for a short outing. My family sing happy birthday and we all play our parts, with my sisters cut out.
The days pass, melding together.
I don’t remember any of the sessions I must have had with various doctors and psychologists. I email my father to ask him.
I have no idea, he replies. The only thing I remember about the staff is that nice nurse saying, ‘You and Chloe are from the other side of the road. She doesn’t belong here.’
I think, in hindsight, the nurse was speaking about our backgrounds. I come from a relatively privileged background, with parents and a boyfriend who visited every second day, grandparents who came regularly, friends who stopped by when they heard where I was. The other patients rarely had visitors. I didn’t notice this at the time.
I felt safe in the ward, not because of the psychologists and doctors, but because of the other patients and nurses like Jack. I felt like the danger was outside, like the whole thing was one big adventure and an escape from reality.
Not trusting my memory, I ask a friend, another writer who has spent time in psychiatric wards, about her experience. She tells me she came up against the same block when writing about her own treatment. She remembered little except feeling overwhelmed.
But then, in her emails to me, she writes:
I do remember more from my recent hospitalisation. We had twice-weekly appointments with the psychiatrist, who was a very kind but frustrating man—he spoke in riddles a lot of the time, but also spent a lot of the appointment just checking in to see how I was going in the program, how the meals were, if there was anything I wanted or needed. We also had group psychology sessions twice a day, and they’d cover things like assertiveness, self-compassion, vulnerability, body image, family relationships, coping skills, etc. And also art, horticulture, yoga. Mostly I remember feeling bored and sad and angry and weirdly listless.
It does sound vaguely familiar.
When I’ve been here almost two weeks, Jack knocks on my door.
‘Chloe. You have to get up today.’
I don’t reply.
‘Chloe, can I come in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you going to spend the rest of your life in bed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think that will bring your sisters back? I understand you are hurting. But you have to fight it. Light and dark are opposite forces. You can lie here and do nothing and the dark will come to you. But the light will not. If you want the light, you have to fight for it. You have to defend yourself against the darkness when it comes for you. You have to refuse to surrender to it. And each time you push even a fraction of the darkness away, you make space for the light. But you must keep doing this. Every day and every night. You stand up and fight.’
I nod. I let his words wash over me, listening but not really taking in what he is trying to make me understand. Years later, when I’ve learned to fight, I will say this same thing to my father and grow frustrated when he cannot grasp what I am trying to tell him.
‘Come on, you have to take your medication,’ Jack says.
I begin coming out of my room more after that. I start eating all three meals and sleeping less during the day so that when night comes it is easier to drift off.
Charlotte and I grow closer. One day we’re sitting around as usual, probably smoking. Charlotte is tipping her chair back with her feet when she begins to tell me her story.
‘When I was seven, a family friend started visiting more often. Sometimes he would stay over. One night, after my parents had gone to bed, he came into my room. He told me he loved me and that I was beautiful and how he wanted to be close to me. But he said I couldn’t tell my parents because they would feel jealous. He began coming into my room every time he stayed over. When I said I didn’t want to play the special games anymore he got angry. Said I was a bad girl and bad girls had to be punished. I didn’t want him to be angry so I kept playing our games.
‘When I was a teenager, I ran away. My friend Drew didn’t like his parents either so we ran away together. The first night we slept in a park. It was cold but we slept close so it was all right. The next night we went to a party at his friend’s. I didn’t have any money to buy beers but his friends said they had plenty and kept giving me drinks. Drew and I went upstairs. His friend said we could sleep at his house. I fell asleep but woke up when I felt a hand down the front of my pants. Drew was gone, and one of the other boys was in the bed next to me. He tried to kiss me and I pushed him away. He said he knew I wanted it and told me to shut up. He raped me. I left the next morning and went back home.
‘The family friend didn’t touch me after that. When I was twenty-one I caught a train to Sydney with a friend for the Mardi Gras festival. People kept giving us stuff and we took coke, pills, speed, weed, whatever we could get. But then I lost my friend. I couldn’t find her anywhere. I went for a walk and ended up in a park. I started talking to a group of guys and they said they had more drugs if I wanted to go with them. When I woke up I was lying in the middle of the park, with no pants on, and my bum was burning. When I tried to put my pants on there was blood everywhere.’
This is difficult to hear. I listen and feel horror and repulsion on her behalf but, equally, my world is muted. Even today, I find I am not easily shocked; the most harrowing stories don’t seem to cut through as they might.
Charlotte and I spend the mornings talking to Jack and the afternoons in therapy or the art room. Every second day the hospital runs compulsory group sessions. Sometimes we meditate, sometimes we sit in a circle and take turns talking about what makes us angry. On other days, we have art. For three hours the art cupboard is unlocked, and its boxes unloaded. Poster paints are poured into egg cartons and pastel pens laid out. There is corrugated cardboard, Japanese printed paper, polka-dot ribbons and gold stickers. Crayons are passed up and down the table, stamps unstacked and restacked from their boxes.
I love this bubble. Finally, I am calm.
I write in my diary:
I haven’t cried for a whole day and a half. I like it here. It gets boring but everything feels so far away.
During art class, Charlotte, Leo and I sit together. Charlotte and I make jokes about boys, or our future as artists, or the other patients in the ward, and burst into laughter. Leo, not wanting to be left out, leans in and makes crude jokes about sex or his good looks or stamina in cardiovascular activity, as he calls it. Charlotte and I laugh along, sometimes at him but usually with him. Sometimes we run away, in need of a little space, but mostly he is comic relief, the antidote to our heavier conversations. I will look back and wonder if these jokes troubled Charlotte, given her history of sexual violence. But she never expresses discomfort to me, and I don’t see it as an issue at the time.
Leo’s words sound too big for his mouth, too hard against the rest of his snipped suburban drawl—he never says you, only ever ya or youse. He grew up out west, like me, and you can hear it in his speech. Charlotte’s language is more refined—she doesn’t know what happened to all the money but her mother grew up rich and made her attend elocution classes when she was a kid, until the other kids started picking on her and her mother let her drop out.
We eat lunch mostly in silence, and sometimes Olivia, an anorexic girl, joins us wh
en she’s not at one of her many appointments—she seems to have three or sometimes four a day. She and Leo bicker, though, and then he gives up, says she makes him feel sad and he goes and sits with whoever else will have him. Olivia also has a history of sexual abuse.
On the days Olivia eats with us it takes us a long time to finish. We’re allowed to eat as much as we want of whatever is being served but she has a special meal cooked for her which she’s not allowed to share, and she can’t leave the dining room until it’s finished. Sometimes we stay behind with her and crack up laughing over nothing while she funnels tiny parcels of food into her mouth and takes ages to chew and swallow each one.
Sometimes we exercise but mostly Charlotte and Leo and I sit in the games room and swap stories of the stupid things we’ve done or had done to us. Charlotte and I make plans for when we get out: we’ll be good and help each other recover.
We can’t yet picture what a ‘good’ life looks like; I think we have vague notions of replacing drugs and sex with a steady routine and spending time with family.
One day when my parents come to visit we go for a walk and I tell them the plans Charlotte and I have made. I ask if she can come live with us so we can help each other get better. Mum says no, we have enough going on and need to focus on getting our own family back together. I plead with her, make promises about healthy things we’ll do to look after ourselves. But I cannot talk her into it. Before the accident, Dad was the firm one. He was never unfairly harsh, but if he said something, we kids obeyed. With Mum, we had wiggle room; we could convince her to change her mind where we couldn’t with Dad. But now, the roles are reversed. Mum puts her foot down. My father is silent.
One night, Leo sits next to me in the dining room. The meal is chicken schnitzel with mashed potato and green beans.
‘I’m getting kicked out,’ he says.
I’ve not heard him this serious before and ask what he means.
‘They got me a house, a social worker to come check on me and some Centrelink money for food. I leave on Tuesday.’
‘Can they do that—just make you leave?’
‘It’s called progress,’ he says, in a high voice meant to be mimicking someone I don’t know.
‘What are you going to do?’ I ask.
‘Prob go get high.’
Leo, I want to say. But who am I to talk?
Aunty Ree and my cousin Chantelle come to visit. I grew up with Chantelle—she lived a few houses away from us in the cul-de-sac behind our home until her parents separated a year or two before the accident.
They come bearing gifts: a small wooden box with an assortment of coloured rocks and crystals nestled in soft fabrics; a catalogue explaining what each rock does. Two books: Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and SARK’s The Bodacious Book of Succulence.
Later that evening, once Chantelle and Aunty Ree have left, after we’ve had dinner and everyone has settled in to their rooms, I flick through the books. SARK’s book is colourful and handwritten and full of drawings and big, messy writing. On the back it says:
I wish for this book to catapult you out of bed and smack into the center of one of your dreams, or lure you back to bed, where you will lie helplessly laughing at all your mistakes and frozen moments. I wish for this book to free the part of your soul that longs to write epic novels, recite Yeats by heart, play a musical instrument by magic, or perform in a play about your life that you create and design. Most of all, I want this book to give you a boost up over the fence that prevents you from moving forward and inward.
The opening chapter of The Artist’s Way invites readers to try ‘morning pages’. First thing upon waking, Cameron writes, do three pages of handwritten notes. Don’t think about it, just write whatever comes into your mind. Even if you’re writing, ‘This is shit, this is shit, this is shit’, don’t stop. Repeat every morning.
(I do not know it yet, but these books will begin to shift something inside me. Years after I have stopped devouring SARK and collecting self-help books, and have started studying creative writing, friends who read ‘high literature’ will visit and I will pull my studio door closed, embarrassed by the books that prompted me to start the degree.)
The next day, I wake early. I wander into the communal living area and ask a nurse for some paper and a pen. It is quiet: most of the patients stay in bed until they are forced up for breakfast. I take a seat on the couch, look through the glass doors at the courtyard outside.
And then I begin to write.
The next morning, upon waking, I write three pages again.
And the morning after that.
When my mother comes to take me out for the day, I buy three proper diaries and begin filling them: one is about Kris and me, another about hospital, another about Christianity because my grandparents are religious and I am willing to try anything that might help.
When Leo checks out, we all gather around to say goodbye, give him hugs and bits of life wisdom.
‘Try harder,’ one person says.
‘Stop trying so hard,’ says the next, and we all start laughing.
The thought of leaving scares me. I am enjoying the routine of sleeping early, rising early, art classes, physical activity and inappropriate expressions of emotion. Watching Leo leave makes me realise that soon, I too will have to go back out into the world. I do not want this.
That night, at dinner, I walk a little slower into the dining room. A hunk of emotion is sitting in my throat and I don’t know how to expel it. I am desperate for someone to see what is happening inside, but I don’t know how to communicate my feelings.
I line up towards the back, not making conversation with Charlotte or anyone else. I keep my head down, my feet going slow, because this is what the ward gives me: space to act out externally what is going on internally.
A stack of plates sits at one end of the cafeteria-style serving counter. They’re made of breakable material, I notice. I shuffle forward, and the serving lady scoops creamy pasta onto my plate.
‘Garlic bread?’ she asks.
I nod, without looking up. I want Jack to notice. He is sitting in the corner, chatting to a patient. Walking to my seat, holding the plate lightly with three fingers, I feel an urge to drop it, to make noise without having to speak.
When I reach my seat, I put the plate down. I stay standing, staring into the corner of the room, thinking about the sound a plate smashing on the floor would make, picturing the mess it would leave, which I could point to and say, ‘This is how I feel. Please don’t make me go home.’
I feel a hand on my shoulder and imagine it must be Jack. I am relieved someone has noticed. I spin around, lift my arm, push back against the hand.
The next few moments are a blur.
Two other nurses run over, and I feel more hands on my body, grabbing at my arms and shoulders, and I kick and start screaming. More hands push and pull, trying to calm me, or hold me still, and so I fight back, shoving them off, hungry to act out the darkness inside. They overpower me, and I am lifted off the ground, suspended, limbs outstretched, still screaming and shaking my head and calling them names and crying and ignoring their voices. It feels good.
They carry me through the dining room, out into the hallway and up to the padded room. The hands push me down onto the cushioned floor and hold me in place while someone pulls the back of my pants down and someone else inserts a needle into my backside.
Held down, my body relaxes a little and my hands come up to my face and I cry, and cry, as someone holds me.
‘Let it all out,’ Jack says.
And I think about myself: What a faker.
Later, Jack says to me, ‘I saw you get this faraway look in your eyes—you were staring off into nothing—and I knew something was wrong.’
I don’t know how to tell him: I faked it. I wasn’t staring at nothing, I was staring at the wall,
not blinking for as long as I could, willing you to notice. And when you put your hand on my shoulder, I made myself scream. When you tried to console me, I made myself kick, and then bite and then fight back when you lifted me into the air. It was the only time I felt free to express what was happening inside me.
And when you pushed that needle into my backside and locked me in the padded room it was the first time since the accident that it felt like things were under control.
I wasn’t sure if I would be able to write about being committed to a psych ward. I remember thinking I didn’t need to be there as much as the girl whose mother’s new boyfriend was raping her but whose mother wouldn’t believe her because ‘This is the first man that’s loved me in quite a while and well, you know, we can’t all be small and young and pretty so some of us just have to make do. And besides, jealousy is a curse.’
The gratitude I felt at being in the ward triggered a sense of guilt. I felt wrong for having enjoyed it, for feeling relief at escaping my home situation. Even now, guilt is an emotion that sits with me constantly. And this was not the last time I was to hospitalise myself. Later, when I was addicted to weed and wanted to stop, I went to rehab. The centre’s registration office is in Redfern and my mother took me in. I remember speaking to the check-in people and watching a man out front let his mongrel dog lick his lips while he told me over and over how they’ve spent the last ten years together. After I’d registered myself, they drove me to the residence facility: a property out west with a lot of women coming off heroin and other crazy shit and playing table tennis and going for walks up and down the driveway and sleeping in long rooms with rows of single beds. In the slow afternoons, the nurses would smoke and tell us their life stories to pass the time.
Sometimes I think that’s all it’s really about: enough time in a new environment. And then the habits disappear and when you’re back in your old digs you’ve got new routines and healthier mental crutches.
The Girls Page 10