Am I Normal Yet? (35 page)

I looked at her. “Proud of me? For what? It's not like you can hang a sectioning certificate above the stairs?”

“Yes, proud of you. Because, despite all you've been through, you're still good and kind. You're not bitter. Well, you are, but only at yourself. You may feel broken, but you don't break others.”

“I make your life hell.”

She grinned and gave me another hug. “But you don't mean to! You hate what you do to us. And maybe we all need to have a big chat about how we can handle each other better. We've been talking to Sarah and she's been giving us some tips. You didn't tell us about your relapse symptoms. You tried to hide them instead. And that must be mine and your dad's fault too. Not just yours. Maybe this whole tough love thing isn't entirely working?”

I laughed. “You can't just
let
me go doolally. Otherwise I'll never get better.”

“Maybe. But your father and I could be more accepting…because this” – she gestured around the room and to the bandages on my body – “this isn't your fault.”

“But, if I could've just been stronger—”

“No!” she interrupted. “It's not your fault.”

“But…”

“Evelyn.” Her voice was so stern it shut me up. “Look at me, listen to me.” She cradled my face in her hands. “None of this is your fault.”

And I cried so hard I thought I'd never stop.

Rose's visit

I hugged her so hard I almost killed her.

“Why didn't you tell me?” I asked, hoping if I squeezed hard enough all her pain would ooze out.

She hugged me back. Hard. “Why didn't you tell me you were getting worse?”

“Who are the girls? Tell me. I'll kill them. I can easily plea ‘temporary insanity' at the moment and get away with it.”

“Evie, you can't ever do that to me again, promise me?”

Dad stood over our hug, smiling wryly. “Do you not think,” he interrupted, “you should both answer each other's questions?”

Rose and I unhugged and grinned at each other.

“All right, I'll go first,” I said. “I am so so sorry for what I did to you…” I looked at Dad. “For what I did to all of you. I thought I had it under control. I thought I was just like everybody else.” I looked down at my ruined hands. “I guess I was wrong.”

Rose hugged me again. “You're forgiven, on one condition,” she muffled into my shoulder.

“What?” I asked nervously, tapping her back. “I don't think I'm ready to start cleaning your room for you.”

She only half-giggled. We both knew I was a long way away from doing anything normal with cleaning. My care team still let me touch the light switch six times. Apparently I could do whatever I wanted, rituals-wise, until I'd “adjusted to my new lifestyle”, i.e. the ward, my ruined hands, the trauma of the relapse.

“I won't make you clean my room. But I want you to promise me that you'll stop comparing yourself to everyone else.”

“What?” I broke off the hug, not understanding.

“You. Evelyn. You're always like, ‘I wish I could be like this' or ‘I wish I could be more like so-and-so'. You're so obsessed with being normal, but that's well boring, and you're extraordinary, Evie. Promise me you'll stop trying to stop being you.”

Tears collected in my eyes for, like, the millionth time that day.

“I'm going to sound like a fortune cookie, but you've got to love you before worrying about anyone else loving you.”

Dad and I looked at each other over Rose's unruly mop of hair.

“I've said it before, and I'll say it time and time again,” I said. “You are TOO WISE for someone so young.”

She shrugged and wiggled her eyebrows. “I know, I'm basically Gandhi.”

“Well, that's taking it a bit far.”

We both giggled until Rose's face fell. I put my hand on hers and she didn't even flinch at the rough touch of my bandages.

“How are you?” I asked softly. “Mum says you've gone through hell…I could kill them.”

“We're looking into changing schools,” she said.

“It's that bad?”

“It's that bad.”

And there was nothing I could do but hug her, as only sisters can hug. Each of us clasping the other as tightly as possible, hoping that love, somehow, would seep through our embrace and cure each other's pain.

It was a surprise to both of us when Dad joined in.

Good thought

I am so loved and so lucky…

The nurses came in and said visiting hours were over. Dad picked up his briefcase, put some extra chocolate on my chair and smiled goodbye. Rose stayed behind a moment.

“Your friends,” she said. “Amber and Lottie. Mum and Dad rang them when you went missing. They want to know how you are.”

“You didn't tell them, did you?” I tried not to sound accusatory.

She shook her head. “No, but
you
should.”

I couldn't, could I? They would think I was so stupid. That I'd just done it because of Guy or something, like some melancholic lovesick saddo teenager. Guy… Funny how quickly love can turn to anger.

“I don't know, Rose, they wouldn't understand,” I said, picturing telling them and them not being able to handle it.

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.”

“Is this because of Jane?”

“What about Jane?” I asked, though I sort of knew.

Rose rolled her eyes. “I do share a house with you, I have seen what she did to you. She was your rock, and then she dropped you like a rotten fish at Christmas dinner.”

“Is that even a saying?”

“I dunno. But it's what happened. I saw her let go of you, when you weren't quite ready to be let go of.”

I scratched my eye and looked around my tiny room, wondering for the billionth time how I'd got here. “It's because I was so annoying. She couldn't put up with me any more. She'd had her fill of my crazy.”

“Or…” Rose said. “She's got ridiculous self-esteem issues and clings onto whoever worships her the most.”

I went quiet and digested what she'd said. Sometimes there's a nail that needs to be hit on the head but you don't have the tools to do it yourself. Right there, right then, my terrifyingly-wise little sister's words banged the
what-the-hell-happened-between-Jane-and-me
nail right into the wood. It finally made sense. The hurt, the rejection…they weren't just my issues, but Jane's too.

I gave her one last massive hug. “What are you going to be like as an old woman, if you're this wise already?” I asked. “Are you The Oracle from
The Matrix?”

“There is no spoon,” she laughed.

“I bloody love you.” I hugged her tighter. “And I bloody love that you know that line! You are truly my sister. No matter what happens, I'll be there for you…even more so when they let me out.”

“I love you too.” A nurse came up behind her and gently put a hand on her back, in a caring but
please-go-now
way. “I still think you should tell your friends…”

“Maybe.”

Sarah's visit

Sarah came the day they took my bandages off. I'd already had a two-hour therapy session to help me come to terms with the state of my hands. But when she found me in my room, I was still staring at them like they were the Ring of Mordor.

“How are they?” she asked, without a “hello”, perching on the edge of my bed and putting her file down.

I turned them over at the wrist and watched her try not to wince.

“You know those baboons with the really gross arses?” I answered, thinking maybe if I made it a joke, it would hurt less. “I have a baboon's arse where a palm should be.” And I cried harder than ever – because Sarah was there and she could take it better than the others.

“They'll heal,” she cooed, letting me cry myself out. “The doctor said they'll get better. You were lucky your family washed it off so quickly.”

I looked at her through my blurry tear vision. “I can't believe you just called me lucky. And I can't believe you sectioned me.”

She cocked her head. “Well, that's not quite accurate, is it, Evelyn? You agreed to come here of your own accord… You're only sectioned if you refuse help. You came here willingly.”

“Otherwise I'd get sectioned.”

“Well…”

“How did it come to this?” I interrupted with a hollow wail, that I could tell made even a seasoned therapist feel uncomfortable. She sat and listened, and made sympathetic faces while I, once again, relived the last month or so. The battle of the bands, the fight with my parents, Guy's bedroom…

“I became a mess so quickly.” I tried to explain my sadness. The pain in me that wouldn't dull, no matter how many paintings the art therapist made me paint. “It was, like, so quick, Sarah. I was doing okay, I was getting better, and then – BAM – I lose my life again, I lose my mind again. That means that, even if I get better now—”

“Which you will,” she interrupted confidently.

“Even IF I get better now, what's the point? I'm always a week away from potentially losing it again. On the cliff edge of normal. Then what? Then what do I do?”

“You remember how far you've come, you get the help you need, and you continue fighting.”

“I'm so tired of fighting,” I cried. “It's exhausting – trying to be like everybody else.”

“Do you not think everybody else finds it exhausting too, trying to be them?”

“No,” I said sullenly, crossing my arms and wincing as my newly exposed hands scraped the wool of my jumper.

Sarah was quiet for a moment, then she said. “What does normal look like to you, Evie?”

“Just being like everyone else,” I answered without thinking.

“And what does this great
‘
everyone else' do? Tell me specifically, what do they do?”

“Well…they…umm…they don't get sectioned.”

Sarah actually rolled her eyes. “You've not been sectioned. You came here willingly.”

“Yeah, but they don't end up here.”

“Maybe not…but when they go through bad patches – which everyone does – they end up in other bad places…down the pub…in a casino…in a stranger's bed…in a bad relationship. If they know what's good for them, they may end up in a yoga class…or running in a park.”

“What's your point?”

“Everyone's on the cliff edge of normal. Everyone finds life an utter nightmare sometimes, and there's no ‘normal' way of dealing with it.” Sarah sighed. “There is no normal, Evelyn. There's only what's normal to you. You're chasing a ghost.”

I thought about it. “If there is no normal then, if we're all just massive freaks in our own special ways – why am I here? Why am I on medication? Why do I see you every week?”

Sarah put her tongue in the side of her cheek. “Because, Evelyn, your behaviour isn't making you happy. If you were cleaning the house ten trillion times a day but thought
‘well, that's just me'
and whistled while you did it, well, it's not so much of a problem, is it? But you're miserable. You're wasting hours each day living in fear, trying to control everything around you. Trying, ultimately, to control who you are. You've got to stop hating yourself, Evie.”

I burst into tears again, huge weeping peals of tears. I cried for where I was, I cried for my hands, I cried for Guy, I cried for the life I'd never have, the worries I'd always have, I cried because it was all so horribly unfair.

I cried because, as always, Sarah was right.

I thought about my logic the day of the accident, the day in Guy's room. “I…I…” I stumbled through sobs on my words. “I really thought if someone loved me, then maybe it would be okay…”

Sarah rearranged her skirt. “There's two things to say about that,” she said. “One…about teenage boys, I bloody told you so.” Mum had obviously filled her in on what happened with Guy. I'd broken down and told her at the first hospital, after the doctors had picked the gravel out of my warped hands. “And the second thing to say is, people do love you, Evelyn. Maybe not randy seventeen-year-old lead singers – but your family do. And…well, your little sister tells me you've got two friends who won't stop bugging her with calls. That's love.”

I caught a stray tear. “They won't love me once they realize who I really am.”

She picked up her file, making to leave. “I'm sure they will. But
you've
got to love you first, that's the most important part. Anyway” – she tucked her file under her arms – “visiting hours are up, I'll leave you in the very capable care here. You know you can call me anytime?”

“I know.”

“Well, bye then.”

“Bye.” She turned to leave me in my lonely little room.

“Sarah, wait!” I got off the bed and caught up with her in the doorway. “Do you…do you think you could arrange for me to have non-family visitors come here?”

She gave me a huge, proper, no-protective-barrier-up grin.

“I'll see what I can do.”

It started with a house party.

I don't know if you can call a get-together in a private room on an adolescent psychiatric ward a “house party”. But there were definitely biscuits – and at least one attendee was on mind-altering drugs – just of the medical, safe, anti-depressant variety.

I was so nervous that morning I shook all the way through my psychiatrist's assessment. He peered over at me, from the depths of his red bulging file.

“You've been doing very well in here, Evelyn. We're happy with your progress and I think it's time to start discussing a schedule for your discharge.”

“Oh, that's great,” I said, barely taking in what he'd said.