It was a Tuesday. My mum’s fingernails were bitten right
down, some were bleeding but she carried on biting. Occasionally she would make
herself jump as she broke a new piece of skin and yet she continued, I don’t
think she realised I was watching her.
“Katie Harper?”
I looked up to the smile of a fat, Irish doctor. Warm and
happy, but I couldn’t bring myself to smile back. Why had she been so happy? She was fat and ugly, surely she didn’t
have a partner, what made her so happy that she felt the need to smile at me, a
stranger?
The interrogation began, I let mum do the talking. When she
cried, the doctor gave her a tissue, but I couldn’t help but stare at her the
same way I did when she was biting her fingernails. Why was she crying?
I can’t even remember what was said. I watched the seconds
go by on the clock until I was given a prescription for some tablets with a
name that I’m not even sure the doctor understood.
One in the morning and one at night. Repeat. Meet with
doctor. Repeat. For how long? The rest of my life? I couldn’t feel this sick
for the rest of my life. The tablets had some grim side effects, they made you
sick and dizzy which didn’t help my already unwelcome mood.
I felt like a fucking nut job.
Mum always lingered, handing me my pills one by one, making
sure I didn’t hide them under my tongue. She wouldn’t let me out the house
without her, it was like being on day release. We’d walk round the shops arm in
arm as she desperately tried to make conversation with me.
She’d point at disgusting, frilly dresses, “oh Katie that
would look lovely on you.”
She’d approach old friends, “Katie, how are you? How is that
nice lad you were with? What’s his name, Joe?”
She’d sigh as I picked at my cake in the café overlooking
the Pump Gardens, “Katie, I wish you would eat something. You’re just skin and
bones.”
That’s exactly how I‘d felt. Skin and bones. No interior. A
waste. Nothing gave me happiness. Not even my mum, regardless of how hard she
tried. The only thing that had given me the slightest feeling that I might be
alive was the crystal, and being imprisoned in my own house, I couldn’t even
have that relief.
I was dying.
Every single day that went past I died a little bit more.
I want to say it was a blur. Truthfully, the idea had been
skipping around in my head for a very long time, coming in and out of view and
at times, consuming me.
I bided my time, money was getting slim and it took almost a
year, but mum eventually returned to work. She’d had tears in her eyes as she’d
said goodbye, hugging me. I’d squeezed her back, taking a breath in and
smelling the sweetness of her perfume. I came away slowly, looking at the wrinkles
on her face, every scar with all their stories. I thought about everything she’d
done for me all my life, how much of an amazing woman, and mother she was.
Strong and caring, the type of mother I’d hoped maybe one day I could’ve been.
When she left, I’d sat on the floor for what seemed like hours.
Under my bed I’d kept the note. I’d been writing it for a
long time, although I had actually considered not leaving one. I didn’t want to
be melodramatic or have people to feel sorry for me, but it turned out that
this was the very reason I left one. I owed my mum an explanation, I’d wanted
her to know that it was a decision I had to make myself, that it wasn’t her
fault. I wrote about my poor baby, about how nightmares and reality began
bleeding into one another. I wrote about how I’d failed my mum as her only
child, how I’d never be able to take care of her, the way she did me. I wrote
about Joe and how I felt that I was less of a person because of what he’d done
to me. I wrote about my dad and how what he did kept me up at night and made me
hate Joe before I ever really hated him. I wrote about when I was fourteen and
she’d found out I’d been cutting my upper thigh. I wrote about my fear of never
being happy again.
Mum had given her keys to our next door neighbour Mary, and
had told her to check on me. A few minutes more and I would have died.
“You’re lucky to be alive, petal.” Said Mary. I didn’t feel
it. I drifted in and out of consciousness, every time my vision focussed, I
looked over to Mum. She was reading my note.
I told them that I didn’t want to be alive. I was angry at
Mary for calling the fucking ambulance. Why
didn’t she let me die? I didn’t do it for a fucking joke. I didn’t want to
be alive.
“You old cow. You horrible bitch. Why didn’t you let me die?” I burst into floods of tears, I wasn’t
allowed to leave the hospital for six days. On the last day I was given the
truth.
I’ve been here for a while now, it’s getting better. My mum
visits every other day, and I meet with Jenny three times a week. She likes the
Libertines, and puts up her hair with chopsticks. At first I thought she was
just a snotty doctor so I wouldn’t tell her anything, but she’s sort of like a
friend. I haven’t had one of those in a while.
One day in the social space they were playing a comedy that
I remembered going to the cinema with Joe to see, and for the first time in a
long time I laughed, I really laughed.
Within these walls I have explored my lows, and reminded
myself of my highs. It’s not going to be an easy ride; in the time I have been
here, I have been back to that dark place, but fortunately it’s no longer my
life.
This morning the cleaner swept around my feet as I stood leaning
against the wall, scribbling in my notepad and barely noticing her. She made me
jump as she asked me the question that no one has dared to in a while.
“Are you ok, my love?”
“No,” I said. I began to smile, “but I will be.”
