The Best of Times, the Worst of Times Read online

  By now I could not accomplish the simplest tasks.Adding and subtracting were beyond me and DD had to sort through my bills, fill out the cheques and guide my hand, spelling my name for me, as I signed a wobbly signature. I recall my extreme distress when I could not recall my PIN. I never did remember it, but it was many months before I needed it or was able to apply for a new one.

  By now it was obvious to my psychiatrist, my friends and my children that I was not functioning at any level and was seriously ill. I needed to have someone with me all the time but I don’t think I would have suicided then. I wanted to die so that the pain would be over but I didn’t have the energy. Does that sound odd? Psychiatrists have since told me that depressed people don’t usually take their own lives when they are in the deepest stage of depression for exactly this reason. Their depression leaves them in a state of mental paralysis. No decisions are possible. We are far more vulnerable when we have a little more energy and clarity. That is the danger time, when we must be watched closely and supported even more strongly. Finally, someone packed a suitcase for me and I was driven to hospital. I believed I would never come home. I did come home again, but it was not until more than three months had passed.

  Disjointed, misspelt, crazy and despairing comments appear in my notebook from that time.

  14.4….. HospiTAl

  Day. A day of terrible today.

  A Day Macbeth, or more correctly, his good lady wife, the widow Twanckey, has murdered sleep.

  TODAY IS SAT 16 APIL

  Am I FAKIN IT. IS THAT

  MY

  ILLNESS

  FAKIN IT

  A Day. If I were my doctor I would put me up against a wall and shoot me.

  How many months. Depression leads to killing yourself. Why. So guilty, dragging them all down, too. What can I do? Nearly three months in here now. Fear the bad thoughts. Pills. Gas. Open window.They haunt and harry me. Unbidden thoughts. Hardly dare write this.

  FRIDAY 1 JULY. GOING HOME1011!!

  That admission has been followed over the years by many more. I can’t remember how many—probably, in the 1990s, six or seven. I have not always needed hospitalisation and have often been able to stay at home even when severely depressed. My psychiatrist, who knows me so well now, always asks me,‘Are you safe?’ and I know when to say yes and when to say no.

  Jessica: As a sixteen-year-old, I was totally unaware that Mum’s life was at risk because of her illness. Thank God her psychiatrist was asking her if she was safe, as I was too preoccupied with my own adolescence to be keeping a watchful eye on her. Because we had a couple of years of calm after the ‘nervous breakdown’, I believed Mum’s depression was cured. How misguided was I! My life had revolved around my tight group of school friends, and all I was worried about was what to wear on Saturday night. This easy-going existence was soon to be replaced by the chaos of Mum’s illness.

  I got very, very worried when Mum started spending money. We never had a lot of money—there was always enough for the basics, but to make sure there was enough to go around Mum would rarely spend any money on herself. I knew things were starting to change when Mum came home with her purchases. My sisters and I would laugh, roll our eyes and joke: ‘Here goes crazy Mum again. What is she buying this time?’ We’d smirk at each other as Mum would show off all of the hats she had bought.

  ‘Look girls, what do you think? I decided to buy these straw hats. I know they’re all the same, but I just had to have one in red, pink, orange, blue and yellow.’ To humour Mum, I’d agree.

  ‘Oh yes, the colours are so pretty, no wonder you couldn’t decide.’ Despite trying to laugh off Mum’s latest purchases, inside I was getting worried. What did this mean? I couldn’t ignore her behaviour when I discovered a brand-new sofa in the living room. The old one was fine, but Mum had decided it was time for a change.

  She also became obsessed with designing intricate hair clips for my sisters and I. Not just a couple of hair clips each, but Mum created twenty or 30 different designs, each with fancy bows and flowers. Now I found myself getting very panicked. However, I didn’t confide my fears to anyone. I decided the only way to deal with Mum and this bizarre situation was to be the strong, capable, responsible eldest daughter and sister. I thought my sisters could learn by my example. I’d hug them, reassure them, tell them not to worry, that everything would be okay. I don’t know if they believed me, but I was trying to convince myself it would all work out.

  Soon after the hair clips episode, Mum was driving me home from a friend’s house. It was just the two of us in the car. She told me the doctors were finally and definitively able to diagnose her condition. An incredible feeling of relief came over me as Mum told me she had bipolar disorder. She explained that it was a mental illness with symptoms of over-the-top behaviour followed by depression. Finally, I thought, there’s an explanation for Mum’s weeping behind her closed bedroom door, finally I know why she gets quiet, withdrawn and irritable with me. Naively I believed it would all be sorted out. Terrific, all Mum needed to do was take some tablets and she’d be back to normal. Oh, if only it was that simple.

  Mum seemed to settle down for a while. There were no more impulsive purchases, instead there was a quiet, withdrawn mother. Her face had become sunken, her cheekbones hollowed. Her eyes would have enormous black rings underneath them. It was as if she had crumpled into herself. I just had to look at Mum’s face and I knew she wasn’t well. Mum has this incredible resilience and courage, and she would keep saying everything was fine. But I knew she wasn’t fine. I knew because her bedroom light would be on all night. She wasn’t sleeping. She would stay up cleaning the flat, wearing next to nothing. Frantically scrubbing and cleaning everything. My sister discovered her vacuuming the bookshelves one evening.

  Mum would find it harder to get out of bed each day. Her lack of energy and exhaustion was such a contrast to her buzzy enthusiasm. I would feel hurt when she snapped irritably at me when I tried to cheer her up. I felt so confused but initially dismissed it as one of Mum’s moods. Please, please let Mum be all right, please let me wake up and find her better and happier. But this pattern would continue, day after day. I thought if I tried really hard, it would be enough to bring Mum out of her mood. I had no idea of the toughness of the task I had given myself. Our home felt so lonely. Her depression was engulfing all of us.

  I would worry as I headed off to school. What did Mum do all day? I was lucky to have a very supportive group of girlfriends around me. I never actually sat down and told them in a straightforward way that Mum had a mental illness. At recess and lunchtime our group would sit under a tree, in our regular spot on the lawn, and talk about boys, clothes, school and our families. I would say things like: ‘Oh Mum, isn’t very well at the moment. She’s on tablets, but if they don’t work she might have to go to hospital.’

  They understood that things weren’t quite right, but they didn’t press me for further details. I never felt ashamed because of what was going on at home, but I found myself keeping my fears and worries deep inside. That was the only way I could cope.

  My friends realised when they came to our place that we couldn’t be too noisy and disturb Mum in her room. They got used to the times when she wouldn’t come out and say hello because she’d be resting behind her closed bedroom door. One time a friend and her mother dropped off groceries from Woolies just to help us out. It is very important to be able to reach out to friends. My special group of girlfriends helped to keep me balanced and focused at school, but also gave me an avenue of escape. Our Saturday nights out gave me welcome relief from my anxiety about Mum. The support of these wonderful girls has sustained me through much of my life.

  Once Mum began to get depressed, she would keep falling into a deeper, darker hole. Her doctors would try all different sorts of medication in an attempt to get her back on track. I remember when I was studying for my HSC trial and Mum was going downhill very fast. I’d forgotten to bring my keys with me because I was pr
eoccupied with my physics exam. So I called out to Mum to let me in. To my horror, she couldn’t walk to the door. She was crawling to get to the keys. Mum was hysterical. Finally she grabbed the keys and hurled them at me, down the stairs. I couldn’t believe the state she was in. My simple request to be let into the house seemed to make her worse. I was sobbing as I watched Mum drag herself on the floor back into the living room. My mother was becoming someone I didn’t know anymore. Yes, this made me angry. I was screaming at her: ‘Why can’t you be a normal mother? It’s not fair. I need you.’ I was so angry and scared—couldn’t she understand that I wanted her to look after me? I needed her. I did not need this frail, frightened and frightening woman to look after.

  It turned out that Mum had an allergic reaction to the drug lithium. It poisoned her whole system. That was why she couldn’t walk to the front door. I didn’t know that. I hated watching my mother disintegrate into someone I no longer recognised. As if her illness wasn’t enough, now the medication she was taking was also making her sick. It was so frustrating. I thought the tablets would help Mum and she would quickly return to ‘normal’. But it became a long, drawn-out and painful process as doctors tried all sorts of different drug combinations to try to stabilise her and lift her out of the deep depression.

  It is still not ideal. Even now, I still feel that same sense of helplessness when Mum gets sick and the tablets don’t work. Recently, her doctor tried a number of different medications but it made Mum even worse. Her face turned this horrible grey colour. There was a constant ringing in her ears. Whenever she tried to stand up, she felt giddy, as the room swirled to black around her. The light disappeared from her eyes. Her strong, rich voice turned into a terrified whisper. She was frightened to go to sleep because the drugs were giving her nightmares. Mum’s worst nightmare was when she thought she was the victim of a home invasion. It was one of those terrible waking dreams when you feel stuck to the bed and powerless to do anything. Because she didn’t want the demons to come back, Mum would make herself stay awake, desperate to avoid sleep. It didn’t matter that she’d hardly slept in weeks.

  Although rationally I knew Mum’s psychiatrist always had her best interests at heart, emotionally I felt helpless. This sense of frustration and powerlessness in the face of mental illness often leads to a sense of anger towards the powerful. You want the doctor, the medication and the hospital system to provide instant relief. In Mum’s case, the doctors have worked tirelessly to stabilise her health and in recent years their care and innovation has paid off enormously. But when you’re in the midst of witnessing such pain it is harder to see the bigger picture.

  If only there had been a magic elixir, some simple treatment that would take the pain away. I’d often wished I had a magic wand which I could wave in one grand gesture to create an instant cure.

  Chapter 7

  No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.Comforter, where, where is your comforting?

  —Gerard Manley Hopkins

  Penelope: A psychiatric ward is a sad but fascinating place. Here are to be found human beings in great distress who have shed the conventions of the outside world. This makes them in many ways more real and more honest, even more human, with all their frailties exposed. They are the suffering human beings who have to face and bear reality. I have had the privilege of living with and getting to know and admire these truly human people, and they have taught me much about compassion, patience, acceptance, generosity and laughter. What I now write is an amalgamation of many hospitalisations. Because of my confusion then, they have become too difficult to differentiate between now.

  I cannot take in what is going on around me when I am seriously ill, but I do keep a notebook with me and its initial purpose is purely practical. In the depths of depression, I will often write my name over and over again, my grip on reality becoming so fragile, my spluttering to keep treading water instead of drowning so frightening. I’ve looked back at my notebooks. Sometimes I’ve misspelled my own name or only written half of it. The letters straggle all over the page as if I have no control over the pen. I also try to write down the names of the people who’ve come to see me because, within minutes of them leaving, I forget who they are and I do want to be able to thank them properly later. Sometimes I do not recognise my visitors.

  My father (with whom I made my peace when he faced the long and harrowing process of dying of cancer) used to say: ‘When your visitors leave they should feel they have been entertained.’ With the best will in the world, a deeply depressed person has nothing to give.

  Friday, 11th. I search for ‘feelings’. The only ones are wretchedness and guilt and despair. I cannot try. My will has been sapped. I cringe from contact for I have nothing to give.

  A birth family member confronted me and demanded that I be normal,‘just like everyone else’. It seemed so ironic that when I was growing up, I had been told not to want to be like everyone else! Yet the loyalty of my friends has been amazing. They’ve visited me over and over again for no, or very little, return. Imagine going to visit someone in hospital who doesn’t even speak to you, maybe just stares into space or weeps without stopping. Imagine having the patience to try to persuade this dreary person to eat some grapes, pulling them off one by one and pleading and persuading this dumb creature to open her mouth.Yet they continued to come, and somewhere deep down I could acknowledge that they loved me.And how I have loved them—then, now and for always— for all their patience over all these years.

  It was also a marvellous revelation that, as the girls got older and their friends got their driving licences, they were often driven out to the hospital after school and were quite unembarrassed about bringing their girlfriends and boyfriends to see me. I know that it helped my daughters to have this special support network of their own. One of Jessica’s dearest friends later became a psychiatrist, and she used to come to visit when she was still a schoolgirl. I remember, years later, seeing her lovely face bending down to kiss me after I awoke from a session of ECT. She was on her way to visit a new young mother in the maternity hospital and had called by to see me and leave a huge bouquet of flowers. Another of Jessica’s friends—like myself a mother with three children—has herself suffered severe depression and I have tried to be supportive and understanding of her battles. I like to think that she knows that there is always hope if we all stick together and support each other.

  During one long admission, I spent almost every spring day sitting under a tree out in the grounds. I’d take my rug and a few pillows and prop myself up, then just carry on staring. It was tremendously tranquil out there, with the sound of the sea just beyond the stand of trees and small willy-wagtails skittering in pairs around me. No one else seemed to want to share my space, and I was glad. I couldn’t read. I didn’t think. It was still the most basic level of:‘That’s a tree.’‘That’s a bird.’ ‘That’s the meal bell.’

  Beside my tree was a fishpond. One week there was a residential period for sufferers from Alzheimer’s and their Penelope & Jessica Rowe carers. A good-looking man, surely no more than 50, accompanied by his wife, interrupted my peace. ‘See the big one. See the big one,’ he said over and over again. Not once or twice but perhaps 40 or 50 times, as he watched a big red carp lazily circling. That’s all he said:‘See the big one,’ and his wife just stood helplessly by. The group had their own table in the dining room and I was moved beyond belief by the patience of the carers with their tragic lost loved ones who no longer recognised them. There were many alarms that week as people went wandering and search parties darted all over the grounds to collect their charges. I have often wondered since if I would prefer to become physically incapacitated as I age or whether I would prefer to drift into dementia. Because I’m such an impatient person, I tend to think I couldn’t bear physical decline and at least I wouldn’t know if I was demented. But when I think of the pain the carers have to confront day after day, like the pr
ecious people who have cared for me when I am mentally ill, I really don’t know.

  My impatience is one of my greatest faults. Although I do not believe in a personal God, I sometimes muse that, just as the Greek gods looked for the failings of arrogant humans to find appropriate punishments for them, so I too am punished for my human failing of impatience. Being depressed is such a waste of time. You can’t read, you can’t sew, you can’t swim, you can’t work, you can’t study, you can’t go to the movies—all things I love to do.You just have to wait. And I can’t wait! Depression is Jove’s thunderbolt to teach me patience. (That same malevolent force struck me down for my vanity in persisting in wearing the highest heels I could find to make my thick legs look longer and slimmer, until my feet were ruined forever and I’ve been in flat shoes ever since. I keep telling Jessica to beware but so far she hasn’t paid any attention to me!)

  When you are in hospital for a long time, it is inevitable that you get to know the other people around you. As in any community, there are some you like more than others and you gravitate towards them. There are also some who, I’m sad to say, repel you. Even with the knowledge that they are very ill, it is hard to be saintly—especially as you are all in such close proximity. I remember one poor man who could not stop belching every ten seconds or so—not just quiet little belches, either. I seemed to hear him wherever I was, and it made me tense and angry towards him. It’s shameful but it’s true. Once, a new occupational therapist was on duty and we laid down rubber mats for a meditation session. I don’t think she had encountered the burper before, otherwise she would have realised that a quiet meditation session was not the place for him. We were only a few seconds into the countdown to ‘letting go of all thoughts’ when he produced a beauty. She ignored this, presuming it was an unfortunate accident. A few seconds later, he produced another. She paused momentarily then carried on. He did it again.