Inside & Out of My Mind

Duality by Jen*

 

Awake.  Before, perhaps I would have felt happy, relishing the day ahead, consulting my near-endless list of expectations and dreams… but not today.  Today there’s no room in my head for dreams.  There hasn’t been for a long time.  I turn to look at the clock; half four again.  Four hours until they let me move.  Lying on my back, I stare at the ceiling, considering the white-plaster landscape that I know all too well.

 

Music?  No.  The days are long here, and this one has barely begun.  Save the music for later.  Books?  Contemplating the bedside cabinet, a wave of fatigue sweeps through me, and I fall back.  I’m too tired to reach for a book, let alone read one…  Besides, there’s nothing there that I feel like reading now.  No fiction, no escapism, just a mass of complex philosophical ideas and elaborate history.  Fiction would come in handy I think, but I can’t indulge.  It won’t indulge (idiot, moron, worthless stupid scum, waste of…) and who am I to disagree?  I know who runs the show.  

 

Time seems cruel here, I always think.  Of course, time is something that we are all familiar with, but until you’ve watched the clock march ever onwards every pointless tick and inevitable tock crawling towards dawn, towards the rousing, towards… towards the first battle, we rarely give much thought to its torturous, taunting nature.  It’s a cheat too.  Whichever position you try to take; willing it to pass quicker, pleading with it to grant you respite… it turns its impassive face away, marching onwards at its own pace towards oblivion.

 

I sigh.  An hour has passed.  I feel the ache in my bones, in my chest.  It doesn’t matter what side I lie on, the ache remains the same.  Every hour of every day.

 

But it’s nothing compared to the ache in my mind.  An hour left now… my reprieve is nearly up, it seems.  From the end of the corridor, the sound of breakfast TV drifts from tinny speakers, inane chatter and cheery music mixing with the yawns of people waking.  I hear someone scream, and the ring of pounding feet.  It’s started early today.  Eight o’clock.  Thirty minutes now (you can’t wait can you, greedy lazy selfish bas…) and the fight has already begun.  It’s always worse when we get closer to Thursday… like a sick gravity, a morbid fascination with what the scales will proclaim.  Which part of me has triumphed this time I wonder?  Can I even distinguish anymore?  All I know is that I want it to be over, one way or another.

 

Footsteps approach my room, and a kindly voice croaks, ‘Wakey wakey there, it’s nearly time for breakfast.’  I mumble something in reply and stumble from the bed, searching my bag for fresh clothes.  Not that it really matters here anyway…  All I have comes in shades of black.  I open the curtains just enough to catch the glint of my reflection in the window.  Every morning and night, I must see the ribs, the jut of my collarbone… I know that I shouldn’t, but without the high it gives me to see emaciation, I don’t know if I could leave the room.

 

The bones are less protruding than ever before.  I can see the skin stretch, the bulges in places where a bare few months ago there was nothing.  This is the way forward, I know, the only way to life with some chance of happiness.  Knowing that doesn’t make me feel any less sickened.

 

A bowl full to the brim.  Blue bottle caps.  The awful shine of the cutlery.  A row of tired and despondent faces floats before me.  Elsewhere in the room I can hear clinking spoons and quiet chatter, but on our table there is nothing but silence.  Who will make the first move this time I wonder?  (Don’t you move, ugh you’re revolting, you actually want it don’t you?) “Go to hell,” I hiss under my breath.  Picking up the spoon, I excavate my first mouthful from the mound of cereal.  It goes into my mouth, the voice screaming at my greed and cowardice from somewhere deep inside.  I swallow.  War is declared once more.

 

After breakfast we are expected to sit in communal lounge to digest.  The decision of what to watch is made democratically, though oddly enough, it always ends up as Jeremy Kyle.  Not hugely appropriate for a psychiatric unit, adolescent or not, but most people here seem to get some kind of enjoyment from it…  I hate it, but that’s democracy for you I suppose.  No matter how many times I see the young people around me, it never becomes any less sad; their astonishing beauty and lovely character, oppressed by something inside their minds.  Indeed, they are beautiful… of all the other young people that I have met with eating disorders, not one has been anything less than stunning, compassionate and intelligent.  It breaks my heart every time. (You, on the other hand, are nothing, a worthless, stinking piece of meat…) Shut up.  

 

Holding my head in my hands, I ponder how one can fight something, when they can’t even tell what is wrong and sick, and what is their ‘true’ self?  Time will tell. 

 

The day patients begin to filter in now, from about nine until ten.  Our “school” must have the shortest working day of the whole country I would imagine… but when we spend so much energy just through existing and fighting, learning is far from our highest priority.  Admittedly when I was first admitted a couple of months ago my thoughts of education where rather the opposite leaning, but you can only give work your all, eighteen hours a day, for so long, before you collapse.  Since that point, I try my best to engage, but my mind is elsewhere.  If I still have a future, I can deal with it then.  

 

Slowly, I run my hand along the cuts marking my forearm, some healing, some livid and prominent, and part of me, buried deep, stirs.  A wave of emotion, anger at what this invader has done to me, defiance, resignation, and something, faint and pale, something indefinable…

 

My phone vibrates in my pocket making me jump; no matter how many times I receive a text, the clapped out thing always manages to catch me unaware.  Reading the text, I think of the friends that I have met in this place, so supportive and understanding, hopeful and selfless despite their struggles.  

 

The faint spark grows brighter.  Gradually, I listen to the echo in my mind as the enraged voice begins to fade back into the metal white noise, and a new voice spreads its wings.  I think I will call this one… Hope.

 

Six Months Later 

 

The lecture room reverberates with the clump of boots, as I glance nervously at the person beside me, holding my note tightly to my chest.  We’ve got a full audience today, as one of the most popular groups, the organiser told us.  No pressure then.  

 

Mentally, I go over my speech, reminding myself to make eye contact, not to fidget, to keep calm etc, etc, noting the lack of empty seats.  “Shall I go first?” I ask my friends, and she replies, “If you want to,” with a smile.  I nod, approaching the lectern.  

 

“This time six months ago,” I begin, addressing the audience; “I would have had little to tell you on the subject of hope and inspiration.  But now, barely a few months later, things are very different.  I have hope, a future and more happiness that I have had in such a long time.  I truly believe that no matter how low you become, or how awful life with an eating disorder seems, things truly CAN improve.  We all have the potential to recover and to live the happy lives that we deserve, as long as we hold on and keep fighting…” 

 

 

*Not real name