I was eating more now: still Dad’s soup, mostly. ‘Good for you,’ he said. Still, progress was slow. Even just getting dressed and leaving the house felt impossible. Mum encouraged me to try anyway. The local weekday morning mass was a gentler place to begin, she said. ‘Why don’t you join me?’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But don’t drive so fast.’
When we arrived, there were only three or four people in the pews, mostly elderly parishioners from the nearby nursing home. That suited me just fine—I wasn’t there for the entertainment. The less I had to talk to people, the better. Going to mass gave me something to do, something to think about besides the sleep I wasn’t getting. I went for the peace of mind, and for the routine, and because the blessings made me feel safe.
There is no doubt that one of the very first things I should have done when I got home from Oxford was to visit a doctor but, for reasons I find difficult to put into words now, I refused. I did not want to think of what I was experiencing as a ‘medical issue’, as a mental illness. I preferred, instead, to think about my experience as a problem with my very soul itself. The thought of taking any medication terrified me. What if they gave me the wrong medicine? What if I took it and never woke up? Or, worse, what if I took it and then took too much of it and lost all control of my mind, and accidentally hurt some innocent person on the street?
I told no one about these worries; I just refused to go to the doctor. I was not willing to take what I thought of as ‘the risk’. People weren’t as open about mental health in the 1990s. We really didn’t talk that much about it, and I just couldn’t seem to get over the feeling of shame. I wish I had known that the only way to get well is to speak the truth, and that a good place to start would be with professional help. But I didn’t even know help was available. In my mind, all a doctor was going to do was force me to take meds, or have me committed—knowledge I had gleaned purely from watching daytime television in my youth.
Also, do you remember that story about Rowena and the psychiatrist? That story stuck with me, and I guess—fair or unfair—some childhood part of me was not yet ready to trust a psychiatrist.
And perhaps psychiatry as it was practised in those days wouldn’t have offered me what I needed; back then it was extremely rare to find a psychiatrist who practised an integrated approach to self-care, one that incorporated lifestyle recommendations, such as diet and exercise, or was open to the idea that spirituality (or even this crazy thing called yoga) would play a role in people’s healing. It was almost unheard of.
Other than going to church, I did try once or twice to leave the house on my own, but barely got further than the corner without finding myself shaking. The world just felt too big and dangerous. In my mind, something terrible could happen at any moment, and the effort of being on guard was just too exhausting. Once, in the car with Mum, passing a suburban pool, I saw children laughing, laughing, then, in my mind, drowning, dying, crying for help. A simple, sweet sight—like a mother in the park pushing her baby high on the swing—suddenly became, in my mind, a potential decapitation, just waiting to happen. I reeled in horror with the images my own mind created. I didn’t know then that this is exactly what a tired brain does: it tries to keep us safe by warning us of all the things that might go wrong.
Mum tried her best to encourage me to look on the bright side. She kept saying, ‘There must be something for you to learn here. This can’t be for nothing. This must mean something.’
But despite hours ruminating on what was happening and why, I didn’t have any answers, only questions and more questions. What could this all mean? What is wrong with me? What am I supposed to be learning here? Why is this happening? What is the meaning of life? Why was I born? The biggest questions, of course, were about Rowena. Why did she have to die, God? What the fuck was with that? Why did she die and I live?
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when I couldn’t sleep, I got mad at God. Told him off, good and proper. What kind of joke are you playing? I’d say. What, we’re born and then we die? What’s with that? I noticed that when I expressed my anger like that, I felt … better. Felt, at the very least, like I was saying something true. But as soon as it was out, the guilt would creep upon me, and I would begin to worry that perhaps, if I was rude to God, I might go to hell so, to be safe, I tried instead to keep my prayers polite and indirect. I was not yet ready for a full confrontation of any kind.
Mostly, I felt like no one in the world had ever been this scared before, this crazy.
It was a relief to discover I was wrong.
One day, Mum and Dad gave me a set of cassette tapes of the ABC radio program The Search for Meaning, presented by Caroline Jones. The program was interview-based, and all the conversations centred on (you guessed it) the search for meaning, spiritual purpose, and stories centred on the concept of hope. It was one
