What She Found in the Woods

I roll towards him, laughing. ‘Of course, I’ll have to learn how to drive, first. And then I’ll spend all day changing lanes and taking exit ramps.’

‘Just like Joan Didion,’ he says, touching my face.

I shake my head. ‘I’m not a writer,’ I say with finality. I roll on to my back again.

That’s another bridge I burned. Who would ever believe anything I wrote after my completely falsified blog for the Cultural Outreach Club?

Which is a relief, actually.

Because, in my hand, a pen is a sword.

There was a ceiling fan in my room.

The ceilings in the dormitories at the hospital were high, so it was maybe twelve or thirteen feet up. From that distance, it made a faint woop-woop noise that I could only hear when all else was silent, which was surprisingly often.

Before the room, I had pictured insane asylums as noisy places. You know, Bedlam. But that place was quiet because everyone was drugged. It was a good thing, being drugged. So much easier than being me.

My room wasn’t padded, but there were no hard edges anywhere. Everything was soft. Everything was designed to soothe. The furniture, which was bolted in place, was done in pastel colours.

I didn’t have a window. Forget about locks: a window is the real difference between a prisoner and a patient.

The only break in the monotony of my room was my daily therapy sessions. During the twice-a-day flashes of lucidity between one dose and the next, I was take

n out of my room and brought to individual therapy in the morning, and then group therapy in the afternoon.

The first two months, I didn’t speak. Catatonic people rarely do, although I have no memory of that time. The next two months, I didn’t speak either, although I was no longer catatonic and finally aware of my surroundings.

I remember trying to shape words in my mouth, trying to push air past my teeth to make sound, and nothing would come out. But there was stuff going on behind my eyes again, so I wrote.

I didn’t write replies or questions the way someone with laryngitis might. I still wasn’t engaging with people directly. Instead I wrote narratives about what had happened, and what was happening around me, as if all of this had occurred not too long ago to someone else, somewhere else. I wrote in the third person. I wrote about the people who had hurt me, the people I had hurt, my doctors, and the people sitting in group therapy with me as if they were characters in a book. I wrote about myself as if I were a character in a book.

It was all one big story.

The team of analysts that handled my psyche ward of deranged teenagers encouraged me to write. They felt it was a necessary part of my rehabilitation. I gave them my journal right before I went to sleep every night, and they read every page, of course. I got my journal back first thing in the morning while they had meetings about my writing. In my individual session, they made observations based on what I had written in an attempt to draw me out and start a dialogue.

Dr Holt in particular tried to get me to talk. She usually led group therapy. She really cared about us, and although she was young and pretty and should have had a life of her own, she devoted all of her time to helping everyone in our group get better. Like Mary Poppins with those anaemic English kids. She tried to coax me out of my cocoon, but I knew I needed to stay in there because I wanted to be a better person.

In my cocoon, I was learning how to be honest, and everything I put into my journal was the truth as I saw it. No more un-journal. No more lying. I was going to burst out of my cocoon a beautiful, honest butterfly, and I’d never hurt anyone again.

But my truth turned out to be as toxic as my lies.

Bo and I spend too long lying on the ground, looking up at the sky.

We don’t fall asleep exactly, but I wouldn’t say either of us is fully awake, either. California dreaming.

I hear a noise and bolt upright.

‘What is it?’ Bo asks.

I hold my breath while I try to pinpoint what I thought I heard. Footsteps. Clothes brushing against leaves. I don’t hear it again, but I know it was a presence, not the random rustling and creaking of the forest. It was human.

‘Someone’s here,’ I say, so softly I’m basically mouthing the words.

Bo nods and rises soundlessly. ‘Which way?’ he mouths. I point, and he shifts into the brush, joining its substance.

And then, nothing.

No sound, no motion, no hint that the situation is either good or bad. I’m thinking it’s been too long when I hear Bo making his way back to me. He’s moving fast, not trying to be quiet.