With the doctors, of course, the opposite was true. I felt judged every hour of every day – including the hours I spent asleep. This was not paranoia; the quality and quantity of my rest was a subject I had to discuss at great length with Dr Hadley, and she always seemed to know when I’d had a bad night, despite my unflagging assurances that I’d slept like a baby. More and more, I found that therapy with Dr Hadley was turning into a fencing match, full of feints and complicated footwork, sudden thrusts and clumsy parries. The never-ending challenge was to give her the impression that I was being open and cooperative while actually being evasive and guarded. It was a challenge that often proved insurmountable. Dr Hadley kept implying that I was being evasive and guarded.
I finally cracked in art therapy. Most of the other service users were drawing or painting; Mrs Chang was shaping an oblong of modelling clay into what appeared to be a tiny coffin. But I was trying to write. Dr Hadley had suggested, in our previous session, that this might help me, that I might find it easier than talking. This made perfect sense to her; since writing was my job, perhaps trying to write would help me to reconnect with ‘the old Abby’.
Where the old Abby would have told Dr Hadley to stop being so fucking patronizing, the new Abby nodded meekly. After all, getting a reputation for being hostile and resistant to therapy was not going to help matters.
This was how I found myself staring for the best part of an hour at a small stack of blank sheets. I could imagine the sort of thing Dr Hadley wanted from me – a mood journal or a long, emotional essay about my childhood – but when I picked up the pen, it felt like a lead weight in my hand. It turned out that it was much harder to lie in writing than it was verbally. I knew that anything I set down on paper was bound to betray me. But I had to give her something. If I didn’t, if I refused even to try, it would be yet another black mark on my record.
It was only when I’d stopped trying to write and started stabbing the pen into my palm that I hit upon an answer. I decided to write a short abstract poem. It would be extremely short and extremely abstract, possibly a haiku, and crammed full of evocative but impenetrable imagery. Then Dr Hadley could spend as many fruitless hours as she wanted trying to decipher it. More likely, she’d just be pleased that I was trying to express myself, and all I’d have to do in our next session would be to nod in all the right places and wax lyrical about how much the writing process had helped.
Unfortunately, by the time I’d settled on this plan there wasn’t long enough to implement it. Art therapy was almost over, and my next session with Dr Hadley was right after lunch. Even if I’d been in the mood, there was no time to get creative.
Instead, I wrote from memory, jotting down the following four lines:
The hopes so juicy ripening –
You almost bathed your tongue –
When bliss disclosed a hundred toes –
And fled with every one.
Under which I scrawled an explanatory note:
Dear Dr Hadley,
This isn’t my original composition; it’s from a poem by Emily Dickinson which I memorized in school. It’s about a cat stalking a robin. When I sat down to write, this is what popped into my head. I don’t think I can write anything original right now. I’ll try again tomorrow.
Abby
After art therapy was over, I slipped the single sheet of paper under Dr Hadley’s door. Then I went outside for a smoke.
Of course, it wasn’t just about a cat and a robin, as Dr Hadley was quick to point out. Neither was it a poem that had popped into my head at random.
‘It’s quite pertinent to your situation, isn’t it?’ Dr Hadley asked. Except she wasn’t really asking.
She glanced over the lines again, her eyes like little blue scalpels. I could tell from her expression that literary analysis was yet another of her strengths. She probably painted astonishing watercolours too.
‘Do you want to tell me about being manic?’
‘No, I don’t,’ I replied. Dr Hadley looked at me and waited. I shrugged. ‘Racing thoughts, rash decisions, impaired judgement—’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ she interrupted. ‘I don’t want a list of symptoms. I want to know what it feels like. Subjectively. You enjoy it?’
‘Yes. In the early stages, anyway. I enjoy it very much.’
‘Why do you enjoy it?’
I searched for the note of accusation in her voice, but couldn’t find it. She was taking a more straightforward approach than was usual, going for the direct, open question; and she waited patiently for at least a minute while I thought about my reply. The easiest way to explain would be to tell her that it felt like being on speed, but much cleaner: all of the focus, energy and confidence, none of the teeth-grinding or stomach cramps. But it didn’t seem sensible to tell Dr Hadley this.
‘I enjoy it because it’s extraordinary,’ I told her. ‘It’s like existing in a perfect little bubble. Everything feels easy, nothing hurts. If I could live my whole life like that, I would.’
Dr Hadley nodded slowly, then said, ‘But it doesn’t last, does it? Not for very long. The bubble always bursts.’
I shrugged. ‘If it lasted, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’
Dr Hadley smiled wryly, in acknowledgement of this truism. ‘And what about afterwards? How do you feel then?’
It was the ‘then’ that allowed me to answer this. If she’d said ‘now’, I would have lied. But we weren’t talking about now. We were still talking in generalities.
‘I feel bereft,’ I told her.
She waited, and I could tell she wanted me to go on – was going to wait for as long as it took. So I gave her an analogy. She wanted a ‘subjective’ response, and this was the only way I could get close.
‘Imagine you’re walking on a sunny day,’ I began. ‘Somewhere pretty. A beach, for example. You can feel the sunlight on your face and arms, and the warm sand under your feet. Everything is extremely bright and clear. You can see thousands of individual grains of sand – that’s how clear it is.’
I’d been staring out of Dr Hadley’s window, which faced out onto a bare brick wall, but at this point I looked at her to make sure the words were all making sense. She nodded for me to continue.
‘But then, very slowly, a dark cloud starts to pass in front of the sun. The light and warmth begin to fade, the colour drains from everything, and, bit by bit, the landscape is transformed. Nothing is clear any more. The beach is flat and empty. The sea is just an endless grey sheet. And when you look up at the sky, you see that this isn’t a temporary thing. The cloud goes on for ever, stretching right back to the horizon.’
I stopped talking. This was far more than I’d intended to say, and it felt like a huge effort to get the words out. Dr Hadley must have sensed this. After a few moments of silence, she told me that she’d see me again tomorrow. In the meantime, she wanted me to keep writing. My words or someone else’s. Whatever I preferred.
It was the shortest session we’d had; the whole thing lasted barely ten minutes. But even at the time, as I rose from my chair and stepped out of the office, it felt as if something odd and significant had happened. For the first time since I’d started seeing her, I’d told Dr Hadley nothing but the truth.