Sarah Vaughan is Not My Mother: A Memoir of Madness (7 page)

Nola talks as though I'm interested. “I let myself have seven a day when I'm in here.” She pulls out a Pall Mall. For some reason I tell her I have a doctor's appointment. She reckons I should take someone with me. “Do you have any friends or an older respected person of the community who can vouch for you and say you are of sound health—anyone, even an old teacher?” Ringing any of those people is not, I think, a possibility. “Nah, can't get in touch.”

It seems that Nola had a part in creating the code of ethics you see on the wall when you walk into the ward. She worked it out after one of her stays years earlier. I don't think she's doing so well now: she lines her doorway with toilet paper and screams a lot.

 

When I feel it's polite to leave I go in through the sliding door, past the kitchen, to where there is a couch and a vending machine. It's an alternative place to hang out but I don't sit there much. I look at the clock. It's 10.17. I go into my room and pour a Coke. The voice says, “You don't need a friend with you. I will be with you. I want you to get your phone later.”

I take a sip of Coke and say, “Okay, I will think about it.” I suppose I should have organised for someone to come with me but I have cut myself off from my friends and family. I write another verse to my song and sing it. The voice says, “That's amazing. Everyone in the world heard it. You are the greatest artist of all time; you're a prophet.”

I sit and listen. I guess I'm slowly starting to believe it.

I decide I want to squeeze in a smoke. I walk past Waris in the hall. She says, “You ready?”

“Yeah, I'm ready. Can we go the outside way? I'll smoke on the way.”

We go outside and walk across the yard. I suck in the smoke deep and hard: five drags and it's finished. We go through the sliding doors, then through double doors into the day hospital. On the right there's a little room. Waris opens the door with a key and I follow her in. The room is painted lemon-yellow and has a still-life painting of flowers on the wall. There is also a big couch, the cleanest couch in the hospital, and four chairs. It's clear they preserve this room for visitors, maybe to promote a healthy clean face to the hospital.

Waris and I sit down and then Dr Aso and Dr Morrison come in. I sit facing them. Waris sits on the other chair, in front of the window.

Dr Aso looks at my boots and then at me and says, “Do you think they are appropriate shoes for summer? You need some more shoes.”

I look at my feet, then over his shoulder. “I came in here with no shoes: I left all my old shoes at my flat.” I look back in his direction; I still can't meet his eyes. “How much longer am I going to be in here? It's been a while.”

“At least a little while yet,” he says. “We are waiting for your psychotic symptoms to subside.”

I start to get agitated. “But I'm not psychotic. I know the day, the month and the year.”

He starts to laugh. Usually I try and make jokes with him, lighten everything up a bit. “I like your shirt,” I say. He is wearing a yellow shirt and bright brown leather shoes that look clean. Yellow is one of my favourite colours.

He starts to look serious. “We have been observing you for some months now and we have managed to diagnose you with schizoaffective disorder, and your sub-type is bipolar.”

I have never heard of schizoaffective disorder but it sounds slightly schizophrenic. “What is it?” I say.

He continues on. “It falls across the schizophrenia and bipolar spectrum and can take quite some time to diagnose. That's why we have been keeping you here so long. Your mother is coming in later today. Do you think you might speak to her?”

I feel confused at so much information all at once. “I'll see her but I don't want to go back and live with her.”

“Well, I'll be informing her of your diagnosis.”

“You know your mother loves you, MaryJane,” Waris says. “She comes and visits you every day.”

The other doctor leans forward. “We find people always recover better with family support.”

“Yeah, well I don't need their support. I can look after myself. I just wish you would all let me feed myself, clothe myself, and live the way I want. She is not as nice as she looks and neither is my father,” I say, looking at Dr Aso. “You think wearing those clothes makes you better people? I don't dress for you or society. Society can get fucked.”

“Yes, but if you live in society you have to cohabitate in a harmonious fashion and some of your habits run counter to that,” Dr Aso says. He looks as if he's about to lose patience with me.

“Yeah, well, you're believing every word they say and not listening to me. Can't they see I've changed from how I was when I was younger? I'm not a baby any more.”

Dr Aso leans forward in his chair. “You're a very intelligent young woman,” he says. “You have to do something to help yourself.”

Waris says, “We can't let you out alone, MaryJane. You just go out and find drugs. It is a symptom of your illness that you self-medicate. If you don't stop taking drugs, you will just fall into a pattern of getting in and getting out.”

Getting into a pattern of getting in and out of institutions is something to be taken seriously. I know I haven't listened to the doctors, just gone on believing I don't have a problem. Being unwell has become a familiar state. I struggle with my mental health but never do anything to greatly address it. I don't like the medication they make me take in hospital, so when I get out I stop taking it. I don't build a trusting relationship with my psychiatrist. I tell lies about what I've been doing, put up a front and say I take the meds.

A lot of people go back to taking drugs when they get out of here. You can end up in some pretty vulnerable states, and these ultimately lead you back in. I know how hard it is to stay out and break the pattern. I give in because it seems too hard, and a pattern only special people break.

Being institutionalised knocks my confidence and makes me lose hope for the future. I feel I haven't got what it takes to handle the world, and have forgotten what it is like to live normally. If only I could remember. When was the last time I felt positive about myself? When was the last time I thought I had done something well? It's easy to lose faith in yourself and slip back to the bottom. At least down here there's nothing hard. I can just stay here if I want.

Dr Aso starts looking at my file, which is growing larger by the minute. He says, “If you take the drugs we give you and not the ones you get out there, you might not have to keep coming in here.”

I start to feel uptight. “Yeah, but I don't like the side effects of the Olanzapine. I hate my body being altered.”

He smiles. “We have different drugs to give you, Lamotrigine and Haloperidol.”

New drugs, I think to myself. “What are the side effects?”

“Well, there is no weight gain.”

“Will my breasts lactate?” A lot of psych drugs have this side effect.

“No, your breasts won't lactate.”

“But I find all these drugs so constipating.”

“We can give you a laxative.”

“So what's Haloperidol?”

“It's an antipsychotic. It will help your disordered thinking. It does make you slightly stiff so we will give you some Cogentin for that. Lamotrigine is a mood stabiliser. It will help keep you level but you will still be within the normal range of emotions.”

As much as I hate taking psych drugs I welcome the idea of a new drug, because over the years I've had some that put you in a pretty vegetative state. Anything has to be better than those.

“Will it zonk me out?”

“No, neither of these pills are sedating, but we are going to give you a Zopiclone at night to help you sleep and give you a break from the voices.”

I look slightly alarmed. “But I don't hear voices. I am a person of faith: when I'm talking I pray to God.” This is another of my standard responses.

“Do you hear a voice?”

“I don't hear a voice. It's more like someone is speaking through me.”

“Hmm. Oh well.”

“So when do you think I might get unaccompanied leave?”

“When you are stabilised on the new medication, so please talk to your mother when she comes today. She is worried about you.”

Dr Aso starts to get up out of his chair. I stand up and say, “Thank you.”

Waris follows me out. “Well, that wasn't so bad, was it? Make sure you have some lunch, sweetie. Your hands are shaking.”

“Yeah, just have a cigarette first.”

I go and sit under the tree in the sun. Nola comes over and starts speaking. “How did that go?” she says, wiping her glasses on her T-shirt.

I'm quite exasperated and tired from the talk. “They reckon I'm schizoaffective, don't like the way I dress.”

She looks at me, surprised. “What do you mean they don't like the way you dress? You look great. You just don't dress like everyone else.”

I pick a blade of grass and ponder what she's said. “Yeah, maybe,” I say, taking the cigarette smoke right into my lungs and holding it down, wishing it would make me high. It certainly relaxes me. I can feel the sun heating me up; my goose bumps from being in a cool, air-conditioned room are starting to go away.

Nola sits down beside me. “Might have my third cigarette of the day,” she jokes.

“Yeah, well you don't want to have seven all at once. You never know when someone might fuck you right off,” I joke back.

“I would like to get out of here pronto but they're not letting me,” she says. “I haven't been here a week yet. What's for lunch today?”

“I don't know,” I say. “I never remember from one day from the next; they all seem to run together in here.”

“Tell me about it—it only gets worse. How old are you?”

“Twenty-six,” I say. “Been in and out of here since I was twenty.”

“You don't want it to become a pattern for your life and be like me, fifty and still coming in,” Nola says.

I move away a bit, feeling uncomfortable with her being so close. “Well, that's what they say happens,” she says. “You see heaps of people just become regulars, in and out, in and out.”

I'm keen to talk to my voice so I excuse myself. “Got to go to the bathroom.” I leave Nola under the tree and walk back through the smokers' room. Lester's there. I say, “Hello.”

“Hey, babe, how are you today?”

“I'm all good, bit drained, just had meeting with doctors.”

Lester yells into his earphones, “Get back! Get back!” He starts rambling about something.

I leave, go to my room, lie on the bed and notice a little sunlight shining into my room. It eases the pain I feel. I am exhausted from all the talking and feel a little bewildered and alone. I fall into a deep sleep and am awoken by someone saying, “Lunch.”

“I think I'll pass today. I don't much feel like it.”

“Okay, we'll save it.”

Waris comes in. For the first time today I notice her bright orange top. She's also wearing a red necklace. It looks as if it must weigh a tonne. She sits on my bed and says, “Are you okay?”

I sit up and put the pillow behind my back against the wall. “Yeah, I'm sweet, just a bit tired.”

Waris looks excited. ”We are starting you on new meds tonight.”

“Great,” I say sarcastically, “can't wait. I just want to get out of here, Waris.”

She puts her hand on my leg. “You will, darling, you just need to stabilise on these meds and let them work, and then you will need a period of recovery once you're out of here.”

I look away, frustrated. “How long will that take?”

“It's different for everyone. Now, you know your mother is coming today.”

“Yeah, yeah, I don't want her to—she'll just get upset.”

“It would be really good if you could talk to her. She loves you, MaryJane.”

I start to get out of bed. “I need a coffee.”

Waris stands up and says, “What about lunch?”

I screw up my face. “Nah, don't feel like it.”

“Well, maybe I take you down to the bakery later, when it's not so busy. I have a lot of paperwork to do.”

“Okay, that would be nice. I can get some more cigarettes and tomatoes.”

Waris leaves the room. I feel better for having spoken to her.

4

 

The time of being sick seems to have extended forever. I have lost all semblance of an ordinary life. When I am low I sometimes get a great sense of loss, and I obsess over it to the point where it really screws me up. I start fantasising about death because that's the only thing that brings a little hope.

As I go to make another coffee the voice starts talking to me. “She's not your real mother. You don't need to speak to her.”

“Yeah, but I look like her, and I'm deaf and so is she.”

“You weren't born deaf. They pulled out your eardrums when you were a child.” I start getting visual imagery of my eardrums being taken out, then aural delusions of my screaming with pain.

“Don't worry. I'm going to come and see you. I want you to text me.”

“But I don't want to text you or ring you.”

“Well, you can't go back to your mother's. She abuses you, and so does your father. She beats you up every day and your father used to rape you with a knife. That's why you bleed—it's not a period. You have never healed properly and you get bleeds from your AIDS. They hate you.”

“I had a nice childhood.”

“People with nice lives don't end up in here.”

I crouch in the corner of my room and cry, then I pick up my guitar and write a song, “My father, my real father”. I imagine I don't know who my father is, so I sing to my first father, God: “He listens to me.” I write what I think a man who loved me might write. I have a feeling of real loneliness and inability to escape. The only way I can leave is to go home, and if what my voice is saying is true that's not an option.