Bloodletting (4 page)

When I arrived in hospital, I agreed with her view. By the time I left a month later, I didn’t.There had to be a reason this was happening to me and I wanted to know what it was.

I arrived home with antidepressants, what I assumed were tranquillisers, and another script that I’d put in my bag without even bothering to read.Hospital hadn’t cured me but it had given me a rest.As I walked in through the kitchen and up the stairs it dawned on me that despite the paint job, the flat was dark, dank and smelt of too many burned vegetarian curries. Rodney wasn’t home.

My room was stuffy and I could hear the noise of the traffic as it roared past on the road out the front. Looking around I noticed that I hadn’t painted the walls very well.There were sections in the corners and near the ceiling where the underlying beige showed through. I also hadn’t bothered to tidy up before I left.A half-empty vodka bottle stood beside my futon with its hopelessly cheery red and white checked doona I’d made in preparation for my new life in Sydney.

I remember being so excited about the move, and, when I’d first arrived, I had loved it all. I had been happy. My first year at university was a constant round of parties, pubs and gossip. Lectures rarely featured. For the first time in years I ate cake, ice-cream, chocolate and, well, anything else that was on offer. I slept until ten, often taking an afternoon nap as well. It was wonderful—but did have its downside.

By second year, I’d already put on weight so I decided that there was no harm in drinking. Besides, I’d probably throw up at the end of the evening anyway and if I didn’t there was always the ‘no calorie’ theory to fall back on. Discovering alcohol changed my social life entirely. I discovered what countless others before me had: that it makes you feel great. Until it doesn’t. Drinking also made me much less shy around men, and I regularly found myself struggling to remember exactly who it was that I’d had a fling with the previous evening. Flings didn’t ever develop into anything else however, and the reason didn’t always involve poor judgment on my part.

Sober, I didn’t trust men at all and they were partially to blame for this.

Bands of guys would walk, or drive, around the campus taunting girls like me, girls who weren’t their ideal. I had glasses, I wasn’t thin— but didn’t have big boobs to compensate—and I was shy. Sometimes it would be three in the afternoon and I’d be walking back from a lecture when I’d hear them.They didn’t ever touch me, or even come too close. They didn’t even yell suggestions such as ‘show us your tits’ or ‘suck my cock’.Their obscenities were more basic, less imaginative than this. They just yelled out nouns:‘cunt’,‘bushpig’or ‘fat moll’.

Unlike some of my friends, I didn’t grow to hate them as, secretly, I agreed with what they said. I believed I was fat and unattractive. And the weekly calls from my mother didn’t help as there were three questions that she never failed to ask, no matter what else was discussed. Have you lost weight? Have you had any results? Have you got a boyfriend?

The answer to each question was always no.

Despite this, I did enjoy myself. And passed.

Things were very different now.The antidepressants still didn’t seem to help, but I forced myself to keep going. I attended seminars, ate a bit, enough to keep going but no more as food just didn’t interest me. And drank a bit. I visited Dr G once a week and started seeing Alex again.Things were still difficult but at least I had stopped caring about my relationship with him, such as it was. I had other things on my mind. Self-harm, and thinking about it, became a form of escape.

It took about three weeks before I injured myself again. In one way it was something that no longer scared me; in another it was terrifying. I didn’t know what my limits were. Some days, it was enough just to know that I had a packet of blades in the house. They were a cold, very sharp, security blanket. Other days, instead of using them I’d call Peter,who I still relied on,to get rid of them.This interrupted the pattern as Dr G advised, but it didn’t take away the desire. And sometimes, the desire was just too much.

Felix had been at art school with me, a couple of years ahead.To get himself through financially, he stacked shelves in a supermarket several nights a week. To get through that—and to stay awake in class—he used speed.A lot of it.He was busy,jumpy and with only three months to go before finishing his degree, very stressed. So he asked me to write an essay for him. Or to be more accurate, Alex asked me to write an essay for him: they lived together.

Obviously I should have said no. It wasn’t only against the rules; I didn’t know the subject. I was also having trouble just doing my own work, and holding my life together. There were two reasons I said yes: one was the money and the other was Alex. He believed I’d do a good job and I was flattered. So I agreed to write 3000 words about a controversial contemporary Australian artist and Felix agreed to pick it up two weeks later.

Within hours, I was having not just doubts but stomach cramps.

The following Saturday I visited a small gallery where the artist was holding an exhibition. The work was crude and shocking. I sighed, and left to find a café where I could re-read the lecture notes Felix had given me. At least his handwriting was legible. I scribbled a few ideas in the margins and then started to read a magazine.

Over the next few days I felt more and more compelled to harm myself but knowing a cut would affect my ability to type, I held off. My own deadline of a week went by and I realised that I wasn’t just holding back from hurting myself but from writing as well.Then there was just one day to go. I had no choice. I had made an agreement and I had a responsibility to carry it out, no matter how I felt. So I started writing.Writing anything that came into my head, conscious all the time that this was someone else’s final-year essay in a course I’d never taken. What if I couldn’t do it? What if it didn’t make sense? What if it failed? Shit. Shit. Shit. I had never had an essay fail in my life before but I had also never been in this position. I had always been either prepared or at least confident enough to bluff my way through. But if it failed, what would Alex think? He obviously believed Iwas smart and this was something to hang on to, something that didn’t fluctuate like weight, and wasn’t subjective like looks. If this essay was failed, it would prove I was stupid, would ruin Felix’s grades, and would affect Alex’s relationship with him—and with me. All of these thoughts ran through my head as I tried to write, feeling sicker and sicker as I went on.The deception also worried me. I still thought of myself as a good, ethical person. I got cranky when I saw someone throw rubbish on the ground rather than put it in the bin.

I sat at the desk in the corner of my room, vodka beside the computer, typing desperately through the night and into the following morning. By 4 pm the next day it was done. I couldn’t re-read it, not even to check for typos. So I printed it out—carefully not looking at the text—and put the pages, with a disk, in a folder so at least it looked neat.

Then I decided that it was time to get out the razor. Cutting was the only thing that would make me feel better; there was no other way I could handle being with myself anymore. I was disgusted that I had agreed to write the essay in the first place and embarrassed that I didn’t even know whether it was any good. I hated—hated—the fact that it wasn’t my responsibility.

Felix was due to turn up at 5 pm but that didn’t matter: a part of me even wanted him to see what his request had forced me to do.

I got out some old newspapers and put them on the kitchen table, then went upstairs to get a new packet of blades. I opened it and got one out.As I unwrapped the waxed paper I felt simultaneously elated and ill. It was too late to stop. Maybe this could have been averted. Perhaps if the shop assistant hadn’t said, as I’d bought the packet,‘Things that bad, eh?’ And then laughed.

Different people have different ways of hurting themselves, and even those who cut themselves don’t all do it in the same way.There are many different techniques. I only used razor blades now.They were clean, sharp and disposable. Annabel, from the hospital, only used surgical scalpels—and others I know used knives. Princess Diana was reported to have used not only a pocketknife but in one tragic moment, a vegetable peeler.

I pushed the blade across my wrist, more deeply than ever before, conscious that it had to be worse than the last cut. Every cut had to be worse than the one before. I’ve heard of people who would create exactly the same mark every time, so that they’d have a line of identical scars, and others who would constantly attack the same scar, opening up the wound again and again.This wasn’t the way I did it—perhaps because I needed to see a progression. In that sense, this one was a success: it was nasty. I knew that immediately.

At first I just sat and stared at the bloody, gaping line, relieved and envigorated. I’d done it, and it was over. Next I found a tea towel, wrapped my wrist up tightly and put the newspapers in the bin. Feeling light-headed, I got a beer out of the fridge and wandered up to the balcony where I waited. All of the pent-up stress of the last two weeks had melted away: my throbbing wrist took my full attention.

A few minutes later I heard the jangling sound of the fork mobile that we used as a doorbell. I went to my room, picked up the folder, and, somewhat gingerly, walked downstairs. It was Felix.

We had a bit of a chat and I asked if he’d like a beer.‘Excellent idea,’ was his response.As we sat looking at the city skyline I told him about the essay. I was able to be coherent and specific. I warned him to proofread it thoroughly. ‘Of course,’ he said, evidently very pleased that it existed at all. It hadn’t occurred to me until then that he’d had his own doubts about whether I’d do it.

After about twenty minutes, during which I talked incessantly, I motioned towards the tea towel. I could barely move my arm now and blood was beginning to seep through.‘I have a little problem.’

To my surprise, he agreed: I’d thought that he hadn’t noticed.‘Is it bad?’ He was very calm.

I considered this question for a moment.‘I’m not sure.Yes. It’s not life-threatening but it’ll need stitches.’And then I realised the real reason I’d done it before he arrived.‘Would you mind coming to the medical centre with me? It’s not really fair to ask, but I want to make sure they don’t try and lock me up. If I have someone with me I should

be okay.’

‘Sure. Happy to.’ He paused.‘Are they that tough?’

‘Different doctors react in different ways. It just depends. I’ve been lucky so far, but there’s been some close calls.’

He then told me that Alex had mentioned ‘my problem’.It explained why he was so calm. Secretly, I was furious. It just wasn’t Alex’s business to talk about this. He had no right.

The medical centre was full of people coughing and sniffling.We sat as far away from them as possible and entertained ourselves by doing a
Cleo
relationship quiz.Things didn’t look good for me and Alex.

When, finally, it was my turn to see the doctor, I sat down and calmly unwrapped my wrist.‘It could be worse but I think it probably needs stitches.’ It could have been someone else’s arm I was talking about.

He looked at it and agreed. He also glanced at the pinky-red scars surrounding it, and asked how it had happened.

I was direct:‘I cut myself.’

He didn’t say much for a bit, instead he got on to cleaning it, injecting the local anaesthetic—which really stung—and stitching it up.

I chatted constantly and even, I remember, told him jokes.

After he’d bandaged it he sat down at his desk and looked at me. ‘Are you sure someone else didn’t do this?’

I told him no, that I’d done it myself, and that I wouldn’t do it again. He didn’t look as though he believed me and instead asked if I was seeing a specialist. I gave him Dr G’s name. ‘I’ll have to notify him, you know.’ He then asked if I had someone to look after me. I told him that Felix was in the waiting room, adding for good measure,‘I’ll be fine’. I would be for a while anyway. I just didn’t know for how long.

By the time we left the surgery it was getting dark and Felix suggested that we have dinner. I was in high spirits, due no doubt to the various natural painkillers that were flowing around my body in response to my attack on it. Felix was also relaxed and, crisis over, we sat down to a delicious meal.When he walked me home later, Felix said, obviously surprised, that he’d had a great time. So had I.

And therein lay the problem and the cause of what was quite obviously now an addiction: harming myself really did make me feel better. Not permanently, but for a short time. After I’d hurt myself it could be weeks before I did it again.That initial pain, and the following period of constantly feeling and seeing the wound before me, kept everything else at bay. It was as if I could channel everything negative into that bandage. All I had to do was look at it and I felt better.