Short fiction

Diary of the Ill

There is something about watching another person write to a loved one. It is such a personal thing that, due to circumstances, is shared with the rest of us. Like the beige stain of the walls our individual but joined experience seeps into our heads. It overcomes the barriers we place there to protect ourselves. It is these barriers that the man with no hair uses to save his sister from his troubles. He writes of imaginary walks in the country and soothing tales of getting better. I smile thinly on cue as a nurse walks by and then turn towards the window.

The hospital is in the most superb setting. The grounds are spacious and show off the power that used to reside in this great house, and there are large hedges and gates that hide its inmates from the nearby village and the rest of the world. Or perhaps there aren’t¾I am told I should not trust what I see, but then who can? What is real is a matter of perception. I know that the thoughts I have towards the roof and the steep drop off it are unhealthy but that doesn’t stop the inclination from being there. I do not trust what I see. It is true that the grounds are beautiful and when mother comes to visit I walk them with her admiring the hollyhocks and the occasional bird. From the roof you can see over the immaculate hedging and watch the countryside roll on, a grey sea in the mist, until it disappears on the horizon. They assumed I was going to jump, and I may have, but not until dusk had gone because I love a changing sky.

Unlike many of the patients I retain my own room, clothes and individuality. This is due to the constant flow of money that supplies the hospital for my care and so I only see others when I choose to venture down into the common room. Depressives are the dullest people. All stuck in their routines of cleanliness. When I came here I expected the place to be full of crushed poets and sensitive souls that could no longer take the strains of normality. But, sadly, life is not like a 1930s high-society novel, and I share this place with recovering drug addicts and those that babble and confuse themselves. My doctor likes me, as a neurotic of a different sort. He believes my illness could be godly, as I seem to strain for something divine. But I retort that neither my illness nor God are real. A wandering imagination and a love of romanticism do not usually join severe depression and suicidal tendencies. Or perhaps they do. Another doctor likes me because I am rational and talkative, with an interest in my illness. I question the fact that if I truly was ill I would recognise it so acutely. I am so aware of it, almost possessive of my fatalistic little voice. But I choose whether or not to listen to it. No one has ever had to talk me down from a ledge, but that you know.

The man with no hair has finished his letter and with a shaking hand he passes it to a nurse. She immediately goes to a desk and tucks the letter into a folder. It will not be posted, as the man does not have that privilege. Apparently I do, but I cannot imagine writing to anyone but you from this place. I will leave soon and pretend never to have been here, despite the passage of time. Not that I know exactly how long it has been. I remember the journey, not any detail but the taste of it that stuck to my clothes and filled my head like rotting flesh. I sat quiet with a book of poetry in my lap while mother sat across from me and avoided my eye. Part of me loves making others uncomfortable and the power it gives you. I can make mother twitch at five hundred paces. My hair was and remains long, hiding my face from the few on the train. The one time I brushed it back, revealing the newly sewn scar over my eye, a child pointed it out loudly to its mum. She turned to survey me, only to pull the engrossed child closer and to look at mother with disgust. We had ham sandwiches at the station while we waited for the taxi and I gave mine to a cat, which removed the bread and daintily ate the meat from the middle.

No one has ever had to talk me down from a ledge. I hate repetitiveness in anything, where people have had a thought and enjoy it so much they repeat it, like an artistic stammer. But I can see why it happens as phrasing pushes memories into view. Now I am in the corridor moving towards the relative privacy of my room. I say relative; I was not bothered but there is no lock and so although the impression of privacy is created, it is only an impression. I create enough of my own. I do not need this place adding to my already tired mind. Perhaps all this is simply an impression, a dream, I will wake up, fling on my dress and arrive late and flushed into my old school room.

It’s the anti-depressants that make a person more aware of the fluidity of life. Colours and places meld into one another and dance for you in your own queer musical. After you stop taking the small blue pills this extra sense does not dissipate but heightens, especially in the presence of others. It’s so sensual. The damp of sweat on a nurse’s brow and in the shadow of her chest as she leans in to mutter to my doctor. As I notice this on her, I also notice him¾he licks his lips digesting both the information she has brought and her form beneath her shirt. I recross my legs to make him aware of my presence but this does not work so I stand and walk out, both tired of the session and of being the third person in the room. The nurse followed me to my usual seat by the window but I just focused on the pane in front of me, seeing the colours and movement I want to within it. I am not ill; I simply have imagination, more then most. I allow it to run free, choosing to add or exaggerate my memories to be more interesting, more expressive. I am an artist with no aptitude for the usual methods of portraying vision.

The man with no hair is writing another letter today, quite possibly the same letter. His whole face is creased with effort as he forces his hand to be still and to create. It may as well be the same day as we are both sitting in the same places doing exactly the same things. If I move or change the routine he might become upset or nervous, causing him to lose the battle with his hand. I deliberately glide towards the TV and flick it on to the news. It is only after the nurse has removed his sobbing shape that I return to my window seat. It was a marked act of cruelty. I destroyed his peace of mind simply to entertain myself or out of hatred for his routine and my own. I suppose I feel slightly guilty.

It is not mother’s fault that I am here, I blame the poor woman for many things but not that. Part of me went out to her in the taxi, feeling guilt for the isolation I had imposed on the train. But I did not know how to be her daughter for a minute, to show her love or appreciation. I am aware I should be both loving and appreciative, but the simple fact is that I am not. It may not be her fault I am here but other resentments can be blamed on her. None of them matter in the slightest in this world of corridors and muffled troubles and yet soon they will come to the head of my thoughts, as soon I will leave, in the charge of mother.

While my two doctors choose different interpretations of my experiences both agree I may do better in ‘the real world.’ One prays I will find a God while the other stresses I should find myself. I’m not sure which is preferable but I sit in silence as both talk over me. I am particularly out of focus today and the whole room presses against me, so much so that I turn inwards to find not colour but blackness and the sense of the unknown created by an unwanted future. Though I do not know how long I have been in the hospital or this one room, I have quickly become institutionalised and dimly hope I will not have to redo my French class. As soon as I leave, the world will become fluid again and accustomed to the fluidity I re-emerge to watch our friend write his letter of the day. I sense a change in his manner; though his hand is still unsteady and his brow tense, he writes with a new-found purpose and hope that I have not seen for a long time. It seems his last session went well but nothing more as a nurse quickly deposits this letter with the last.

It would be better if I knew what to expect from the outside world and why all seem to feel I should enter it even though nothing has changed in my mind or medication to justify the escape I want. I leave tomorrow evening. Mother will come early and meet with both doctors alone and then with me as well, as though to make sure their course of action is right despite the fact the decision has already been made. I still wade through the odd colours and the darkness that they assume push me towards the roof and yet this time tomorrow I could be anywhere. I suppose I will be discharged into mother’s care and she will unburden herself, as soon as is decently possible. I only hope she does. I think I will be better left to my own devices to follow what I choose to, whether it is in my head or not. Though what is most interesting is in there, fear and doubt are both created yet oppressed by whatever the voices are, and when I am honest I know they look to free me. From what, is an unanswered question that the doctors here were unhelpful in answering. But I wasn’t really expecting, not when I arrived here or in the passing of time, ever to leave. 

There is of course the assumption that I won’t be free at all, rather that I face a change of hedging and gates. In this assumption there is comfort, as the bald man finds in his letters. I now realise there are no ‘cures’ here but I still expect them from places like this. I hope I will still be able to wallow in what I see or think I see, but I know that soon reality will pose new yet dull problems that will draw attention from what is important. My mind fills with sad little issues and it makes me hate myself yet I wonder about university and lads, laughter and falseness. But despite the wish for such things there is the doubt, the knowledge that nothing will change. Surrounded by colours and things that aren’t there. They make reality so far out of reach, a poor comparison to the things in my head. And so I pack slowly with the help of a thin nurse who does not know my name. My clothes are few, as many were deemed not fit to wear in hospital for the sake of others as well as myself. The same conclusion was reached from my book and music collections and so both are missing definite favourites, now waiting expectantly at mother’s house as she assures me all is how I left it. 

As we pull away from the building and mother casts her eye over the gardens, their high hedges a backdrop for dying hollyhocks, I turn to face my window from the other side. The entire building is as blank as the day I arrived despite the colours created within by my medication and me. I will miss my window and will regret leaving the fluid pane that brought so much to mind. Inside a bald man is writing to a loved one; now it is a slightly more private experience as only a bored nurse watches him struggle with his pen. I said I could not imagine writing to anyone but you from such a place but there seems suddenly so much to say.

Eleanor Rodda