Black Magic
£12.00
By Suzannah Knight
ISBN: 978-1-84747-007-2
Published: 2007
Pages: 152
Key Themes: self-harm, drug abuse, eating disorders, sectioning, mental health services, schizo-affective disorder, bipolar disorder, manic depression, alcoholism, the occult
Description
After a year travelling around the World Suzannah comes back to England to start university. Things start to go wrong as she is tempted into experimenting with drugs. She drops out of university and during her first spell of mania and depression starts to believe in black magic. This is the start of a long and winding journey for Suzannah as she loses all her friends and former lifestyle and leads a dubious existence - self harming and trichotillomania plague and her psyche as she battles with an eating disorder.
Suzannah is eventually sectioned and finds herself in a secure unit battling psychosis. She will not admit to herself she has a problem and refuses to take medication. Lonely and cast adrift she tries to forge a career for herself, but she can’t escape the taboo of being labelled 'mental'. Some time later she finds herself in the slums of Darlington, in poverty, and a chronic alcoholic. Overcoming her demons and fighting her schizo-affective disorder Suzannah takes life by the balls and gets herself back to university to finally finish her degree only to once again fall into mental illness, bad relationships and brushes with the law.
With four different diagnoses along the journey and various different forms of medication Suzannah denies her mental illness for a long time and therefore the psychiatrists were unable to help. She loses all her friends through mental illness and any form of normal life until she confronts the problem.
Remarkably and with great character Suzannah's book ends on a high note as she falls in love and marries the man of her dreams to live happily ever after with her son Domini. It is through her own determination and the support of loved ones that Suzannah has changed her life. She will never be totally rid of her illness but with sensible management she has succeeded in finding euilibrium. This is a fascinating and empowering story which should be a great positive influence to those who find themselves in a similar situation to Suzannah.
Book Extract
When we returned home the drinks cabinet was locked and I was locked in the house, but I was so high I didn’t need anything to aid it .My parents were worried and were watching me carefully. It’s never been discussed whether or not there is mental illness in my family tree but I know a great aunt committed suicide years before using paracetamol. My mania continued, my parents tried to talk to me about my future, I didn’t want to know I thought great thing wee going to happen to me without me doing anything to help it. My mother dragged me down to the University of Leeds, to continue my studies there. I said no, I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t stand the stress of going back to university, it didn’t interest me. She then dragged me to the chamber of commerce where I had an awful meeting with an old man. He knew I wasn’t interested in the course on offer and he told me so. It was an awkward and embarrassing moment. So I signed on the dole, and when I had to go for job interviews I messed them up.
I’d ruined my family’s annual ski trip. They thought I was just being a brat they didn’t know there was something wrong with me and they didn’t want to admit to themselves there was anything wrong with me. I was still manic and my parents knew it, my father had turned my room upside down looking for drugs, he thought I was taking heroin. The front door was always locked and the back so that I couldn’t escape like I had done in Morzine, it was for my own good I always seemed to get into trouble when I escaped. And all the time my parents were trying to protect me from myself, and keep me away from the authorities. When I was sat in my room I thought I was with members of the English SAS who then developed into members of the elite group made up in my mind of the Belize soldiers. I stole some cans of lager from the fridge and drank them with my new soldier friends. It was the same feeling of military that I had had whilst skiing. It wasn’t as though I came from a military orientated background but the connection with the army reigned right through my illness.
When I wasn’t in my room imagining whatever I imagined I was down stairs in a massive row. I was taken into the kitchen with my parents and my brother, who had stuck his nose in and was questioned about things I didn’t want to be questioned about. A huge row would peruse to which I didn’t understand why. It seemed that my parents were constantly rowing and I was in the middle, although I was the cause. I wish I could remember what the rows were but I can’t, although now I know they were over my strange behavior. I remember being very objectionable and talking about weird things at dinner times, I would cause a row to erupt after I’d caused trouble, usually by being very nasty and rude. I was still under the illusion that this family was not mine and all I wanted was to be with my made up fantasy family. I wished this family was dead. Life wasn’t exactly perfect I had no close friends especially as Alice wasn’t talking to me after the ski trip. I never bothered to ring her, as far as I was concerned she was a piece of shit still. I had new friends; they were all that mattered now. I was going nowhere fast.
It was a dull January day; the view out of my bedroom window was as lonely as ever. We lived in a village yet I knew no one in it, I often thought that wasn’t very normal yet there were a lot of things about my family life that I didn’t find very normal, and they were thoughts I had since being a little girl. I hated my family for what they had made me, for the things they had made me do. I’d never excelled at anything and I blamed them for that too. I blamed them for never buying me the best pony, for sending me to boarding school, for not having enough money, and for everything that had gone wrong in my life.
Alice came around one day with her mother. I expect my mother was very embarrassed as to what had gone on holiday although we have never discussed what she said to Alice’s mother that day. Alice came up to my room to talk. I was sat on the bed waiting for the great things to happen to me. We spoke, me with authority and delusions and she normally. Then she went, if I’d only realized I would see her four more times in my life I might have been different towards her. I just sat on the bed and regarded her as trash; I had not the faintest bit of interest in her and was really quite rude. At this time there was no rationalizing with me, nothing mattered to me and nor did I care. I was completely selfish in my objectives, nothing was important except me. I think I really upset Alice and hurt her although she’s hurt me more since. I suppose looking back though I didn’t deserve to have her as a friend I got rid of her as if she was indispensable I pushed her away and our friendship in favor of my mind’s tricks.
The time I spent in my room was consumed by spending time with my make believe friends, people I had met around the world. I was having conversations with them in my head. I could feel them all around me. Then god came one afternoon and told me in my head, I wasn’t hearing voices yet, to get my address book. He then told me to pray that every body in the book should die and that I would never speak to any of them again. Well he was right although it was that none of them would speak to me again. I tore up the address book at his command. It was at this time that Leonardo’s spirit also entered the room; he sat besides my pine wardrobe and watched me, telling me he was coming to see me. I could see the faint outline of his body, he was such a large man, his spirit was black, and sometimes it brushed my body.
I was still pining for him and that’s when something miraculous happened.I lay in the bath each afternoon soaking up the bubbles and smoking cigarettes I had nothing else to do and it was very relaxing, when all of a sudden I found myself connecting with a spirit or rather a person. In my head I began talking to a man who at first reminded me of the bad guy in Bangkok Hilton. He had very dark hair and was very much a James Bond figure. He was incredibly beautiful; I knew exactly what he looked like as a picture in my head was visible. You see when I closed my eyes I could hallucinate and his image came to me on this wonderful afternoon. He was full of life, and also very rich. The first thing he said to me was that he would never fall in love with a girl like me. I was talking to the imaginary character for ages. He said he was in the Kings Head hotel in Richmond watching me.
He was with the navy and was going to be an ambassador of Morocco one day. He swore to send me a package of cigarettes and booze. Every day I waited by the door for the arrival, it never came. But he came back to my mind every day. He made my life worth living and I got to know him better and better. At first he had seemed quite evil but now he was nice. I could sometimes feel his spirit in the house moving around, the house had become haunted. Dark shadows would appear on the hallway and on the stairs. I could hear things in the loft and in the next door rooms. Black shadows fell and rose throughout the house. Every night Piers told me that there was a helicopter coming for me to take me away as I was so special. Every night I waited by the window ready to climb out when it came but it never did. Piers told me to do naughty things, he spoke to me when I was doing things and made me laugh. It was like having an imaginary friend. There was that film once with Rik Mayall as the illusionary friend it’s title was Drop Dead Fred, Piers was like that to me, he was every where I went and he affected everything I did.
Showing posts with label mental illness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental illness. Show all posts
Friday, 21 September 2007
BIG DICK, little dick By Stephen Broughton
BIG DICK, little dick
£12.00
By Stephen Broughton
ISBN: 978-1-84747-079-9
Published: 2007
Pages: 236
Key Themes: humour, suicidal thoughts, abuse
"Can someone be broken and yet 'whole' at the same time? Is it possible to live in the light and at the same time suffer torment in the darkest pitch? Stephen Broughton proves that we can; that human endurance, intelligence and a natural God-given talent for empathising with others can set us free. The damaged child can own his pain, integrate it, live, learn and love." - Anni Meehan, Biodynamic Therapist
"Unsparing yet never self-pitying, he recalls what went wrong and how he has set about rescuing himself. His account is absorbing, sometimes wryly funny, and wonderfully evocative. Inspiring, too - the child he wanted to be was destroyed but Broughton was not". - Shaun Usher, broadcaster, writer & critic.
Description
Very funny, very sad, very moving and very strange - this is the book of one man's journey of discovery seeing mental ill health as a gift, rather than a curse. In this book Stephen attempts to understand his own dreams and suicidal thoughts on the way to meeting the man he should have been - little dick. While it was his alter-ego BIG DICK who survived an upbringing with a narcisstic mother and a disinterested Father. An honest and endearing book on schizophrenia, this is a worthy addition to the new genre of 'mad' literature.
About the Author
Author Stephen has been a trustee of his local MIND group for nearly 20 years and has had suicide as his Plan B for as long as he can remember. He presents 'Thought for the Day' on BBC local radio, sings in a choir and runs marathons very slowly. Stephen is a Solicitor, often described by clients as 'not like a real solicitor' which he takes as a great compliment. Most of his friends seem to be mad as well.
Book Extract
We all dream and we probably dream every night. But have you wondered why we only remember some of the dreams and the others are consigned to some cerebral recycle bin? And why we sometimes have the same dream over and over again. I have had, for so long as I have known, a dream where I suddenly discover that I have a house. A tiny derelict house with an over grown garden.
Hidden away with no proper path to it. And when I look at the house I see that there's so much work to be done to make it into a place to live that I know it’s beyond me and that makes me very sad. And there's another dream where I've killed someone a long time ago and nobody but me knows and I'm afraid that someone will some day find out the terrible thing that I have done. And I wake up believing the dream is true not knowing how I can live with myself having done the terrible thing that I have done. So this book is about how I found out about the person I might have killed and how I first found and then set about rebuilding the house that was nothing but an empty shell with a gaping hole in the roof.
And have you ever wondered why we have the memories of our childhood that we have? Sometimes trivial every day memories. Like a video running in our mind which never got erased by the other trivial every day memories that we record each day. I have always remembered as if it was yesterday, the day when a white van drew up outside our house and a man in a white coat got out. Our dog was a corgi we called Lightie. The man came into our living room. Lightie was behind the sofa and he picked her up in his arms and took her away. And I never knew why I remembered that so well. Many years later when I had gone past the age they call middle age I told my mother about that memory. She was amazed at what I said because she said I could only have been about 12 months at the time. I had just started to walk and the dog was getting old and no longer as reliable as it needed to be with a toddler around.
£12.00
By Stephen Broughton
ISBN: 978-1-84747-079-9
Published: 2007
Pages: 236
Key Themes: humour, suicidal thoughts, abuse
"Can someone be broken and yet 'whole' at the same time? Is it possible to live in the light and at the same time suffer torment in the darkest pitch? Stephen Broughton proves that we can; that human endurance, intelligence and a natural God-given talent for empathising with others can set us free. The damaged child can own his pain, integrate it, live, learn and love." - Anni Meehan, Biodynamic Therapist
"Unsparing yet never self-pitying, he recalls what went wrong and how he has set about rescuing himself. His account is absorbing, sometimes wryly funny, and wonderfully evocative. Inspiring, too - the child he wanted to be was destroyed but Broughton was not". - Shaun Usher, broadcaster, writer & critic.
Description
Very funny, very sad, very moving and very strange - this is the book of one man's journey of discovery seeing mental ill health as a gift, rather than a curse. In this book Stephen attempts to understand his own dreams and suicidal thoughts on the way to meeting the man he should have been - little dick. While it was his alter-ego BIG DICK who survived an upbringing with a narcisstic mother and a disinterested Father. An honest and endearing book on schizophrenia, this is a worthy addition to the new genre of 'mad' literature.
About the Author
Author Stephen has been a trustee of his local MIND group for nearly 20 years and has had suicide as his Plan B for as long as he can remember. He presents 'Thought for the Day' on BBC local radio, sings in a choir and runs marathons very slowly. Stephen is a Solicitor, often described by clients as 'not like a real solicitor' which he takes as a great compliment. Most of his friends seem to be mad as well.
Book Extract
We all dream and we probably dream every night. But have you wondered why we only remember some of the dreams and the others are consigned to some cerebral recycle bin? And why we sometimes have the same dream over and over again. I have had, for so long as I have known, a dream where I suddenly discover that I have a house. A tiny derelict house with an over grown garden.
Hidden away with no proper path to it. And when I look at the house I see that there's so much work to be done to make it into a place to live that I know it’s beyond me and that makes me very sad. And there's another dream where I've killed someone a long time ago and nobody but me knows and I'm afraid that someone will some day find out the terrible thing that I have done. And I wake up believing the dream is true not knowing how I can live with myself having done the terrible thing that I have done. So this book is about how I found out about the person I might have killed and how I first found and then set about rebuilding the house that was nothing but an empty shell with a gaping hole in the roof.
And have you ever wondered why we have the memories of our childhood that we have? Sometimes trivial every day memories. Like a video running in our mind which never got erased by the other trivial every day memories that we record each day. I have always remembered as if it was yesterday, the day when a white van drew up outside our house and a man in a white coat got out. Our dog was a corgi we called Lightie. The man came into our living room. Lightie was behind the sofa and he picked her up in his arms and took her away. And I never knew why I remembered that so well. Many years later when I had gone past the age they call middle age I told my mother about that memory. She was amazed at what I said because she said I could only have been about 12 months at the time. I had just started to walk and the dog was getting old and no longer as reliable as it needed to be with a toddler around.
Bi-Polar Dreams By Frederic Benson
Bi-Polar Dreams
£14.99
By Frederic Benson
ISBN: 978-1-84747-164-2
Published: 2007
Pages: 230
Key Themes: bi-polar disorder, manic depression, poetry
Description
This book comprises of creative poems and coherent prose, which give you an honest insight into manic depression. This book is a very honest, real and therefore a, sometimes disturbing account of bi-polar disorder. It gives you an emotive insight into Frederick Benson's life.
About the Author
Frederic Benson has written this book as a form of empowerment. His manic depression is expressed in a frank way to give you a clearer understanding of mental illness. It is a combination of fiction and non-fiction.
Book Extract
I am the castle on the mountain,
The spire on the church,
I fly like the lightning,
Standing atop the Earth,
And with my fists I can smash through planets,
Plunging through the core,
Tearing at heat itself,
I am the fiery lightning, the electric beast,
I can paint with the stars,
And wield the sun,
Blazing through time with fire and hate,
I can build, I can destroy,
I can create, I can crush,
I can trample the Earth,
And everything in it,
I am the dragon, the demon,
The flaming eyes of God,
I see all & I know the Earth,
The world is mine in my werewolf state,
And I pine for the thorns,
As I crush the rose that dies,
I am the devil warlord,
The screaming banshee of blood,
I am the manic monster,
And the Earth is mine!
As I fly with the flame,
Up to the darkened sun filled sky,
And I fall back to Earth,
Crashing through Darkness,
Plunging through shadow,
Till I smash on the rocks below…
Then there is darkness,
The bitter light is gone,
And I am left melting,
In the stabbing acid glare of a citrus bulb,
My mind is dripping through a sieve,
What was once a tight knot is unravelling,
I can feel a damp coffin around me,
I am decaying alive.
Melting into the foul earth,
My eyes, once flame are now liquid,
Warmly dripping down my cheeks,
I am blind and cold,
The light is gone and my blood is stale,
I am the squashed insect between your fingers,
I am the miserably failed road kill,
Crushed,
Void of smiles,
Void of life,.
I slither in the mud.
My skin is leaving me,
Unshielded as the birds peck at my bloody flesh,
Trodden by the snail crusher,
Weak at the neck,
Hanging from the cliff,
Nailed to my grave,
Trapped inside my hole,
Prisoner to my mind,
Melted into darkness,
Where God is left behind,
Truly alone and abandoned to hell,
There is nothing but gloom,
And death from the well,
So crushed and beguiled,
I cry with my blood,
And then I tear myself up from the ground!
As I fly up again,
The diamond kite,
The electric firework charge, soaring through the starry bleak,
Blazing through the sky again,
Tearing the air asunder as I wail,
I am the reaper’s fiery blade,
Beautiful & crazy,
With a hunger,
For Death,
And Blood.
£14.99
By Frederic Benson
ISBN: 978-1-84747-164-2
Published: 2007
Pages: 230
Key Themes: bi-polar disorder, manic depression, poetry
Description
This book comprises of creative poems and coherent prose, which give you an honest insight into manic depression. This book is a very honest, real and therefore a, sometimes disturbing account of bi-polar disorder. It gives you an emotive insight into Frederick Benson's life.
About the Author
Frederic Benson has written this book as a form of empowerment. His manic depression is expressed in a frank way to give you a clearer understanding of mental illness. It is a combination of fiction and non-fiction.
Book Extract
I am the castle on the mountain,
The spire on the church,
I fly like the lightning,
Standing atop the Earth,
And with my fists I can smash through planets,
Plunging through the core,
Tearing at heat itself,
I am the fiery lightning, the electric beast,
I can paint with the stars,
And wield the sun,
Blazing through time with fire and hate,
I can build, I can destroy,
I can create, I can crush,
I can trample the Earth,
And everything in it,
I am the dragon, the demon,
The flaming eyes of God,
I see all & I know the Earth,
The world is mine in my werewolf state,
And I pine for the thorns,
As I crush the rose that dies,
I am the devil warlord,
The screaming banshee of blood,
I am the manic monster,
And the Earth is mine!
As I fly with the flame,
Up to the darkened sun filled sky,
And I fall back to Earth,
Crashing through Darkness,
Plunging through shadow,
Till I smash on the rocks below…
Then there is darkness,
The bitter light is gone,
And I am left melting,
In the stabbing acid glare of a citrus bulb,
My mind is dripping through a sieve,
What was once a tight knot is unravelling,
I can feel a damp coffin around me,
I am decaying alive.
Melting into the foul earth,
My eyes, once flame are now liquid,
Warmly dripping down my cheeks,
I am blind and cold,
The light is gone and my blood is stale,
I am the squashed insect between your fingers,
I am the miserably failed road kill,
Crushed,
Void of smiles,
Void of life,.
I slither in the mud.
My skin is leaving me,
Unshielded as the birds peck at my bloody flesh,
Trodden by the snail crusher,
Weak at the neck,
Hanging from the cliff,
Nailed to my grave,
Trapped inside my hole,
Prisoner to my mind,
Melted into darkness,
Where God is left behind,
Truly alone and abandoned to hell,
There is nothing but gloom,
And death from the well,
So crushed and beguiled,
I cry with my blood,
And then I tear myself up from the ground!
As I fly up again,
The diamond kite,
The electric firework charge, soaring through the starry bleak,
Blazing through the sky again,
Tearing the air asunder as I wail,
I am the reaper’s fiery blade,
Beautiful & crazy,
With a hunger,
For Death,
And Blood.
Behind A Glass Wall By Dorothy Schwarz
Behind A Glass Wall
£12.00
The Anatomy of a Suicide
By Dorothy Schwarz
ISBN: 978-1-905610-20-4
Published: 2006
Pages: 348
Key Themes: suicide, depression, grief
Description
This book is the gripping and emotional portrayal of one young woman's ultimately unsuccessful battle against chronic depression. Zoe, was Dorothy's fourth daughter, born in New Delhi in 1972. When she threw herself under a train at the age of 27 in August 2000, Zoe was suffering from deep depression following a bout of mania. After her death Dorothy found her diaries, poems and other writings which she used to build her portrait. Dorothy wants to tell her daughter's story both as a tribute to this beautiful and talented young woman, who succumbed to a terrible illness and also to chart the passage of grief for a family after suicide. Dorothy wants to help remove or lessen the stigma attached to mental illness. Zoe fought hard and long but lost the ultimate battle. Dorothy hopes that the honest account of her life may help other sufferers and their families. Zoe herself would have wanted that.
About the Author
Dorothy Schwarz was born in London in 1937. She married Walter Schwarz, a journalist, in 1956 and had six children. The family lived in many countries where Walter was stationed. Dorothy brought up the kids, taught a bit and wrote children's books and short stories. She now lives and teaches creative writing part-time in Colchester. Her main hobby, now that the nest is empty, is a growing collection of parrots and parakeets. She and Walter have written two books on ecology together, Dorothy's collection of short stories entitled 'Simple Stories about Women' were published by Iron Press in 1998.
Book Extract
PROLOGUE
After you died, we found on the top shelf in your bedroom six cardboard boxes crammed with papers in no particular order or dates, diaries in hard and soft covers, notes on loose sheets of paper, dated and undated, birthday cards and postcards, souvenirs. Business letters, bank statements, certificates won at school, medical records, letters received and letters you’d written. Maybe sent, maybe not. A box of several hundred photographs, mostly of people and animals, a few places, some of which I recognised; many I didn’t. I had no idea that you’d kept this stuff; you were such a private person. Your elder sister Habie knew. So did your friend, Kelly; I didn’t. Reading those papers brings you alive again.
You wrote two months before your sixteenth birthday:
Sunday 18th October [1987]
Woke up at 8.30. Read Lawrence’s criticism in the morning. It was a lovely day. Had lunch. …. The family was all together. The lunch was delicious. Mum & Freddie chatted in the greenhouse. Dad, Bups and me had coffee and some of my cake. We went for a walk around the reservoir. It was stunning. Two swans crossed the sunray upon the water.
I brought the horses in. Diana came. We had more of my cake and some of Dad’s bread. We talked, had tea and went to bed. It was a lovely, magical family weekend.
One month after your birthday, you wrote about your school friends:
Friday 6th January [1988]
Saw everyone again and we talked a lot. We had a really funny conversation at lunch about who was going to lose her virginity first. Everyone is either in love or going out with someone so we can talk about it a lot which is really nice and fun.
A few years later, recovered from your first breakdown and back at university, the diary entries are matter-of-fact, whom you met, what you ate, what pleased you, proud to win games of pool, happy with your friends.
At twenty-two, you wrote about them and us:
Saturday 4th May [1994]
Mylène [oldest friend] and I had a chat in the end sitting room. Zac [brother] came home. We went to Vagabonds and I asked to work there. Mylène and I had dinner at Monty’s…. We came home and watched the end of ‘Revenge’, which is unbelievably sexist. Completely happy to find Tigger purring on my bed. Nothing melodramatic – just content with your life and loving the people around you. Sunday 5th of May Mylène and I woke up late. We spent the afternoon chatting in the Peldon Rose. After dropping her at the station did some typing. … Tigger sleeping in my bed. Being close to Mum and Dad. Mylène being happy. Adnan kissing me on the cheek. Zac showing me his design projects.
Out of many entries that read, ‘chatted with Mum,’ I can’t recall whether the chats were fruitful and loving or whether we argued. And during your last illness, when we brought you back to Greenacres in the spring and you died in the summer, the first summer of the new century, during those five months you spoke little and wrote almost nothing.
You left those boxes on the top shelf in your bedroom where you knew they would be found. Your Dad believes you were too modest to think anyone would bother to examine them and we’d just throw them away. None of us would have done that. One of my oldest friends, Heather, and one of your closest friends, Kelly, came to help me. We sorted the papers into foolscap folders – in rough categories - letters, love letters, diaries, notebooks, mementos. We didn’t keep every single birthday card and postcard (there were hundreds). Although it hurts to see your handwriting, I have no qualms about reading your diaries and letters or even publishing parts of them. You did not die in a fit of florid madness or rage; you planned your suicide with care and left a hand-written list of forty friends whom we were to contact.
Perhaps those papers represent an unconscious sort of last present to us as well as a rebuke; we did not understand you well enough and not everything you wrote was complimentary. From a young age, you had a wickedly sharp way of slicing through pretension. At least one person, amongst those few to whom I’ve shown some of your writing, has said, “don’t print what she wrote, it’s too hurtful.” And in so much of what you wrote in your twenties, when outwardly you seemed happy and successful, inwardly you were grappling with demons. You gave them human faces; they resemble people you knew including your parents.
Two days after your death, we found an Internet site that claimed that one in five manic depressives eventually kill themselves. That statistic isn’t a classified secret, although we never discovered it during your lifetime. Were we, as well as you, afraid? You wanted to believe that your illness at eighteen was ‘cured’. You didn’t want the label of ‘someone suffering from mental problems’. We accepted that and went along with the idea; easier to refer to Zoë’s breakdown NOT Zoë’s first episode. Easier to let our pleasant life slide on. .
£12.00
The Anatomy of a Suicide
By Dorothy Schwarz
ISBN: 978-1-905610-20-4
Published: 2006
Pages: 348
Key Themes: suicide, depression, grief
Description
This book is the gripping and emotional portrayal of one young woman's ultimately unsuccessful battle against chronic depression. Zoe, was Dorothy's fourth daughter, born in New Delhi in 1972. When she threw herself under a train at the age of 27 in August 2000, Zoe was suffering from deep depression following a bout of mania. After her death Dorothy found her diaries, poems and other writings which she used to build her portrait. Dorothy wants to tell her daughter's story both as a tribute to this beautiful and talented young woman, who succumbed to a terrible illness and also to chart the passage of grief for a family after suicide. Dorothy wants to help remove or lessen the stigma attached to mental illness. Zoe fought hard and long but lost the ultimate battle. Dorothy hopes that the honest account of her life may help other sufferers and their families. Zoe herself would have wanted that.
About the Author
Dorothy Schwarz was born in London in 1937. She married Walter Schwarz, a journalist, in 1956 and had six children. The family lived in many countries where Walter was stationed. Dorothy brought up the kids, taught a bit and wrote children's books and short stories. She now lives and teaches creative writing part-time in Colchester. Her main hobby, now that the nest is empty, is a growing collection of parrots and parakeets. She and Walter have written two books on ecology together, Dorothy's collection of short stories entitled 'Simple Stories about Women' were published by Iron Press in 1998.
Book Extract
PROLOGUE
After you died, we found on the top shelf in your bedroom six cardboard boxes crammed with papers in no particular order or dates, diaries in hard and soft covers, notes on loose sheets of paper, dated and undated, birthday cards and postcards, souvenirs. Business letters, bank statements, certificates won at school, medical records, letters received and letters you’d written. Maybe sent, maybe not. A box of several hundred photographs, mostly of people and animals, a few places, some of which I recognised; many I didn’t. I had no idea that you’d kept this stuff; you were such a private person. Your elder sister Habie knew. So did your friend, Kelly; I didn’t. Reading those papers brings you alive again.
You wrote two months before your sixteenth birthday:
Sunday 18th October [1987]
Woke up at 8.30. Read Lawrence’s criticism in the morning. It was a lovely day. Had lunch. …. The family was all together. The lunch was delicious. Mum & Freddie chatted in the greenhouse. Dad, Bups and me had coffee and some of my cake. We went for a walk around the reservoir. It was stunning. Two swans crossed the sunray upon the water.
I brought the horses in. Diana came. We had more of my cake and some of Dad’s bread. We talked, had tea and went to bed. It was a lovely, magical family weekend.
One month after your birthday, you wrote about your school friends:
Friday 6th January [1988]
Saw everyone again and we talked a lot. We had a really funny conversation at lunch about who was going to lose her virginity first. Everyone is either in love or going out with someone so we can talk about it a lot which is really nice and fun.
A few years later, recovered from your first breakdown and back at university, the diary entries are matter-of-fact, whom you met, what you ate, what pleased you, proud to win games of pool, happy with your friends.
At twenty-two, you wrote about them and us:
Saturday 4th May [1994]
Mylène [oldest friend] and I had a chat in the end sitting room. Zac [brother] came home. We went to Vagabonds and I asked to work there. Mylène and I had dinner at Monty’s…. We came home and watched the end of ‘Revenge’, which is unbelievably sexist. Completely happy to find Tigger purring on my bed. Nothing melodramatic – just content with your life and loving the people around you. Sunday 5th of May Mylène and I woke up late. We spent the afternoon chatting in the Peldon Rose. After dropping her at the station did some typing. … Tigger sleeping in my bed. Being close to Mum and Dad. Mylène being happy. Adnan kissing me on the cheek. Zac showing me his design projects.
Out of many entries that read, ‘chatted with Mum,’ I can’t recall whether the chats were fruitful and loving or whether we argued. And during your last illness, when we brought you back to Greenacres in the spring and you died in the summer, the first summer of the new century, during those five months you spoke little and wrote almost nothing.
You left those boxes on the top shelf in your bedroom where you knew they would be found. Your Dad believes you were too modest to think anyone would bother to examine them and we’d just throw them away. None of us would have done that. One of my oldest friends, Heather, and one of your closest friends, Kelly, came to help me. We sorted the papers into foolscap folders – in rough categories - letters, love letters, diaries, notebooks, mementos. We didn’t keep every single birthday card and postcard (there were hundreds). Although it hurts to see your handwriting, I have no qualms about reading your diaries and letters or even publishing parts of them. You did not die in a fit of florid madness or rage; you planned your suicide with care and left a hand-written list of forty friends whom we were to contact.
Perhaps those papers represent an unconscious sort of last present to us as well as a rebuke; we did not understand you well enough and not everything you wrote was complimentary. From a young age, you had a wickedly sharp way of slicing through pretension. At least one person, amongst those few to whom I’ve shown some of your writing, has said, “don’t print what she wrote, it’s too hurtful.” And in so much of what you wrote in your twenties, when outwardly you seemed happy and successful, inwardly you were grappling with demons. You gave them human faces; they resemble people you knew including your parents.
Two days after your death, we found an Internet site that claimed that one in five manic depressives eventually kill themselves. That statistic isn’t a classified secret, although we never discovered it during your lifetime. Were we, as well as you, afraid? You wanted to believe that your illness at eighteen was ‘cured’. You didn’t want the label of ‘someone suffering from mental problems’. We accepted that and went along with the idea; easier to refer to Zoë’s breakdown NOT Zoë’s first episode. Easier to let our pleasant life slide on. .
Ayshe, An Anatolian Tale by Fatma Durmush
Ayshe, An Anatolian Tale
£12.00
By Fatma Durmush
ISBN: 978-1-84747-171-0
Published: 2007
Pages: 81
Key Themes: schizophrenia, ethnic minorities, Islam
Description
This book started life as a short story in a children's writing group. 'Anatolian Tale' is about the backwaters of Turkey, it is a story of Ayshe growing up in Anatolia and the hardships she endures. Girls in villages in Turkey are not encouraged to read, this is a luxury which their sisters in the cities have so Ayshe rebels. Ayshe rebels to such an extent that she conquers the societal paradigm of cheap and sometimes enforced labour. Ayshe is brave and resourceful, a great charmer. This book teaches the lesson that life is bigger than we are and that life is a gift for us to treasure.
About the Author
Fatma Durmush was born in 1959; after years spent suffering from schizophrenia she has finally achieved her ambition to be gain an art degree and become a renowned artist. She will be going on to study an MA in art this year. As well as an artist and successful author, Fatma is also a play-right. She found a modest niche in America where two of her plays have been performed, one of which will soon be published in an anthology. In the UK she has been published by the Big Issue as well as in books and pamphlets. Her artwork has featured in over sixty exhibitions at, amongst others, the Tate Modern and The National Gallery.
Book Extract
In Anatolia,
there lives Ayshe.
She doesn’t go to school.
More than anything, she wants to.
Weaving carpets has made her eyesight dim.
Weave and stretch,
make and go into patterns,
Ayshe’s clothes are hand-me-downs,
patchy from too much sewing.
Her donkey is her constant companion.
She gives him sugar,
from pockets with too many commitments.
Mrs Sadiye is Ayshe’s mother.
There are ten girls, and one boy.
Ayshe mothers her sisters,
carrying them on her back.
The big pan is where they boil the nappies,
Mrs Sadiye is constantly boiling, cooking.
Her five feet nothing is a source of pride.
A woman shouldn’t be taller than her man.
Every inch on the look out for a child in trouble.
In Muslim Festival of Sacrifice they eat meat.
Which they have to be grateful for.
Eggs they get on a Friday,
From the chickens which go to the neighbours.
Mrs Sadiye has a vegetable patch which ekes out
the subsistence of the evening meal.
When the chickens go next door,
there’s an almighty row.
£12.00
By Fatma Durmush
ISBN: 978-1-84747-171-0
Published: 2007
Pages: 81
Key Themes: schizophrenia, ethnic minorities, Islam
Description
This book started life as a short story in a children's writing group. 'Anatolian Tale' is about the backwaters of Turkey, it is a story of Ayshe growing up in Anatolia and the hardships she endures. Girls in villages in Turkey are not encouraged to read, this is a luxury which their sisters in the cities have so Ayshe rebels. Ayshe rebels to such an extent that she conquers the societal paradigm of cheap and sometimes enforced labour. Ayshe is brave and resourceful, a great charmer. This book teaches the lesson that life is bigger than we are and that life is a gift for us to treasure.
About the Author
Fatma Durmush was born in 1959; after years spent suffering from schizophrenia she has finally achieved her ambition to be gain an art degree and become a renowned artist. She will be going on to study an MA in art this year. As well as an artist and successful author, Fatma is also a play-right. She found a modest niche in America where two of her plays have been performed, one of which will soon be published in an anthology. In the UK she has been published by the Big Issue as well as in books and pamphlets. Her artwork has featured in over sixty exhibitions at, amongst others, the Tate Modern and The National Gallery.
Book Extract
In Anatolia,
there lives Ayshe.
She doesn’t go to school.
More than anything, she wants to.
Weaving carpets has made her eyesight dim.
Weave and stretch,
make and go into patterns,
Ayshe’s clothes are hand-me-downs,
patchy from too much sewing.
Her donkey is her constant companion.
She gives him sugar,
from pockets with too many commitments.
Mrs Sadiye is Ayshe’s mother.
There are ten girls, and one boy.
Ayshe mothers her sisters,
carrying them on her back.
The big pan is where they boil the nappies,
Mrs Sadiye is constantly boiling, cooking.
Her five feet nothing is a source of pride.
A woman shouldn’t be taller than her man.
Every inch on the look out for a child in trouble.
In Muslim Festival of Sacrifice they eat meat.
Which they have to be grateful for.
Eggs they get on a Friday,
From the chickens which go to the neighbours.
Mrs Sadiye has a vegetable patch which ekes out
the subsistence of the evening meal.
When the chickens go next door,
there’s an almighty row.
Am I Still Laughing? By Dolly Sen
Am I Still Laughing?
£12.00
By Dolly Sen
ISBN: 978-1-905610-94-5
Published: 2006
Pages: 184
Key Themes: schizophrenia, manic depression, bi-polar disorder, abuse, self-harm, activism
"An epistle to equality, tolerance and the true beauty of madness. Dolly Sen's powerful personal pilgrimage to love, life and humanity again is a very intimate tale about the power of dreaming, taking control and fighting for the right to be oneself and to be equal and to be accepted" - David Morris, Senior Policy Adviser to the Mayor (Disability), Greater London Authority
Description
Dolly Sen’s second book, 'Am I Still Laughing?, is the follow up to her acclaimed memoir, 'The World is Full of Laughter'. Her first book started out as a possible suicide note and ended up as a celebration of life. The brutally honest account of living with madness has been an inspiration to readers around the world, and has positively changed many peoples’ lives. In 'Am I Still Laughing' Dolly describes her childhood with a father who was a small-time singer and actor, through him she worked as an extra on various films including the Star Wars epic, The Empire Strikes Back, until Steven Spielberg sacked her because he thought her child-breasts were too big for the part of an underfed child slave. Confused by sci-fi reality and day-to-day fiction Dolly traces her madness ‘all the way back to when I worked on The Empire Strikes Back. It wasn't a film, it was reality, and it was up to me to maintain the good and evil in the universe'.
About the Author
Author, poet and activist Dolly Sen lives in Streatham, South London. Born in 1970, she had her first psychotic experience aged 14 which lead her to leave school. After years of mental illness, probably bought on by an abusive childhood, Dolly decided she should write about her experiences. She was inspired to write her own story after reading Jason Pegler's autobiography 'A Can of Madness'. She has since written five books, become a successful performance poet who has toured throughout Europe and has set up two charities. Dolly is a key figure in the mental health movement and regularly appears on television and radio talking about mental health issues.
Book Extract
Writing has always helped me. I found it when I was 22 and it has kept me alive since then. During my worst depressions, writing gave me a reason to wake up in the morning. Would I still have carried on writing if I never was published? Of course I would. One of my favourite writers, Charles Bukowski, said of writing: ‘It is the last expectation, the last explanation, that’s what writing is’. A plain piece of paper won’t judge you, criticize you. And above all it won’t lie to you. If you can’t say what needs to be said face to face, write it down.
People with mental health problems who are able should think about either writing their story or at least telling it. Their lives shouldn’t be what they think are dirty secrets they have to hide. One woman at one of my book signings shook her head sadly and said, “I can’t, it’s too painful. And besides, nobody wants to hear it.” That’s what I thought once. I now know that to be untrue. People, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, have taken me aside after reading my book and say, sometimes with tears in their eyes, “This happened to me too… but please don’t tell anyone that it did.” This is painfully heart-rending. Because I think if you don’t share it positively, it’ll manifest somewhere else, in your body, in your relationship to others and the world. For example, it can be seen in some people’s eyes; they try to smile, but their eyes don’t believe it. Their eyes are telling their story – something about their life always will. So you might as well have some control over it.
For me creativity gave me control in a world where because of a diagnosis I had no control. A South American poet said, “Take away someone’s creativity and you take away their humanity. Give someone back their creativity, and you give back their life.” I found this to be true while writing my story, and every day after too.
Writing your life story does so much for you. It gives you opportunity to reflect, it empowers you because you have nothing to hide any more.
I made a conscious decision to let it out, to give away secrets. But it was really difficult to get it onto paper sometimes without crying; or deleting, starting again, deleting, and starting again. Some of the things I wrote I didn’t tell my family about. Most of them didn’t know about the abortion or the extent of my mental illness.
Will they reject me for what needs to be said? That did definitely cross my mind. I even made plans to leave London if things got ugly. The first to read it was Paula. When she finished it, she rang me up in tears. “Why didn’t you tell me? About the abortion and other things? Oh Dolly…” So we cried together. I was so relieved that she didn’t reject me; in fact, it made our relationship stronger. This goes with the other members of my family too. Our love got stronger. It dumbfounded me. Of course, my father won’t read it – or can’t. His memory is such that he doesn’t remember what he reads. For example, he will read the same newspaper 5 or 6 times without retaining information. And nothing can change the story he tells himself anyway. Jason was intuitively supportive, just knowing exactly the right time to encourage me. His belief in me was nothing I had from anyone in my life previously. I remember thinking this is the thing that all humans need, the thing that affects change in someone, no matter what has happened in their life before. I am forever grateful for him for that. And because of his belief in me, my self-belief developed slowly.
So I didn’t get to see much of the summer of 2002. I had spent most of it, sweating inside, writing the book. When it was finished, I felt like a new person, my skin was easier to wear. The thing I thought would be the hardest thing to do was in fact very uplifting and life-refreshing. I felt I could do anything… until I realised how much my life would now change. Being a published writer, I had to engage with people, talk to them! And talk in front of them! I was shitting myself. I wanted to go back and hide, not unwrite the book but be anonymous again. As the publication date loomed closer and closer, Jason gave me things to do to occupy myself. He needed photos for the book cover, so I got my brother Kenny to emerge from behind his computers and take some pics of me with his digital camera. “What are they for?” he asked. “Oh, they are for the cover of my new book.” “Oh right, I see.” Like it was something we did everyday. But Kenny is used to my craziness. If I said, Kenny we have to burn socks so the devil doesn’t have fossil fuel. He would have said, “Oh right, I see.”
£12.00
By Dolly Sen
ISBN: 978-1-905610-94-5
Published: 2006
Pages: 184
Key Themes: schizophrenia, manic depression, bi-polar disorder, abuse, self-harm, activism
"An epistle to equality, tolerance and the true beauty of madness. Dolly Sen's powerful personal pilgrimage to love, life and humanity again is a very intimate tale about the power of dreaming, taking control and fighting for the right to be oneself and to be equal and to be accepted" - David Morris, Senior Policy Adviser to the Mayor (Disability), Greater London Authority
Description
Dolly Sen’s second book, 'Am I Still Laughing?, is the follow up to her acclaimed memoir, 'The World is Full of Laughter'. Her first book started out as a possible suicide note and ended up as a celebration of life. The brutally honest account of living with madness has been an inspiration to readers around the world, and has positively changed many peoples’ lives. In 'Am I Still Laughing' Dolly describes her childhood with a father who was a small-time singer and actor, through him she worked as an extra on various films including the Star Wars epic, The Empire Strikes Back, until Steven Spielberg sacked her because he thought her child-breasts were too big for the part of an underfed child slave. Confused by sci-fi reality and day-to-day fiction Dolly traces her madness ‘all the way back to when I worked on The Empire Strikes Back. It wasn't a film, it was reality, and it was up to me to maintain the good and evil in the universe'.
About the Author
Author, poet and activist Dolly Sen lives in Streatham, South London. Born in 1970, she had her first psychotic experience aged 14 which lead her to leave school. After years of mental illness, probably bought on by an abusive childhood, Dolly decided she should write about her experiences. She was inspired to write her own story after reading Jason Pegler's autobiography 'A Can of Madness'. She has since written five books, become a successful performance poet who has toured throughout Europe and has set up two charities. Dolly is a key figure in the mental health movement and regularly appears on television and radio talking about mental health issues.
Book Extract
Writing has always helped me. I found it when I was 22 and it has kept me alive since then. During my worst depressions, writing gave me a reason to wake up in the morning. Would I still have carried on writing if I never was published? Of course I would. One of my favourite writers, Charles Bukowski, said of writing: ‘It is the last expectation, the last explanation, that’s what writing is’. A plain piece of paper won’t judge you, criticize you. And above all it won’t lie to you. If you can’t say what needs to be said face to face, write it down.
People with mental health problems who are able should think about either writing their story or at least telling it. Their lives shouldn’t be what they think are dirty secrets they have to hide. One woman at one of my book signings shook her head sadly and said, “I can’t, it’s too painful. And besides, nobody wants to hear it.” That’s what I thought once. I now know that to be untrue. People, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, have taken me aside after reading my book and say, sometimes with tears in their eyes, “This happened to me too… but please don’t tell anyone that it did.” This is painfully heart-rending. Because I think if you don’t share it positively, it’ll manifest somewhere else, in your body, in your relationship to others and the world. For example, it can be seen in some people’s eyes; they try to smile, but their eyes don’t believe it. Their eyes are telling their story – something about their life always will. So you might as well have some control over it.
For me creativity gave me control in a world where because of a diagnosis I had no control. A South American poet said, “Take away someone’s creativity and you take away their humanity. Give someone back their creativity, and you give back their life.” I found this to be true while writing my story, and every day after too.
Writing your life story does so much for you. It gives you opportunity to reflect, it empowers you because you have nothing to hide any more.
I made a conscious decision to let it out, to give away secrets. But it was really difficult to get it onto paper sometimes without crying; or deleting, starting again, deleting, and starting again. Some of the things I wrote I didn’t tell my family about. Most of them didn’t know about the abortion or the extent of my mental illness.
Will they reject me for what needs to be said? That did definitely cross my mind. I even made plans to leave London if things got ugly. The first to read it was Paula. When she finished it, she rang me up in tears. “Why didn’t you tell me? About the abortion and other things? Oh Dolly…” So we cried together. I was so relieved that she didn’t reject me; in fact, it made our relationship stronger. This goes with the other members of my family too. Our love got stronger. It dumbfounded me. Of course, my father won’t read it – or can’t. His memory is such that he doesn’t remember what he reads. For example, he will read the same newspaper 5 or 6 times without retaining information. And nothing can change the story he tells himself anyway. Jason was intuitively supportive, just knowing exactly the right time to encourage me. His belief in me was nothing I had from anyone in my life previously. I remember thinking this is the thing that all humans need, the thing that affects change in someone, no matter what has happened in their life before. I am forever grateful for him for that. And because of his belief in me, my self-belief developed slowly.
So I didn’t get to see much of the summer of 2002. I had spent most of it, sweating inside, writing the book. When it was finished, I felt like a new person, my skin was easier to wear. The thing I thought would be the hardest thing to do was in fact very uplifting and life-refreshing. I felt I could do anything… until I realised how much my life would now change. Being a published writer, I had to engage with people, talk to them! And talk in front of them! I was shitting myself. I wanted to go back and hide, not unwrite the book but be anonymous again. As the publication date loomed closer and closer, Jason gave me things to do to occupy myself. He needed photos for the book cover, so I got my brother Kenny to emerge from behind his computers and take some pics of me with his digital camera. “What are they for?” he asked. “Oh, they are for the cover of my new book.” “Oh right, I see.” Like it was something we did everyday. But Kenny is used to my craziness. If I said, Kenny we have to burn socks so the devil doesn’t have fossil fuel. He would have said, “Oh right, I see.”
Accidental Recklessness by Ruby Holmes
Accidental Recklessness
£12.00
By Ruby Holmes
ISBN: 978-1-84747-025-6
Published: 2006
Pages: 228
Key Themes: manic depression, bi-polar disorder
Description
With post-modern wit and pre-Raphaelite passion Ruby Holmes tells how mental illness can be survived without sacrificing the adventures of youth. This book is about mental illness, the ways in which it has manifested itself throughout Ruby's life and the extraordinary times she has had along the way.
About the Author
I am ginger and in need of therapy - the two are intrinsically linked. I love the ocean and big, big waves. Lighthouses! I love lighthouses. Toffee cheesecake with zopiclone sprinkles. Wild horses. Writing my second book and taking laziness to new levels. I miss Vancouver. I also miss California. While we're on missing places I guess I miss Kosova. Marmalade cafe in Malibu does the best breakfast in the world. Strangely I know the prices of bananas in every shop in a ten mile vicinity of home. I want to move back across the pond so I can yell 'road trip' and not drop off the top of Scotland 10 hours later. Perfection is an afternoon nap. Restlessness breeds adventure. My cat will one day take over the world. I find people in scrubs rather attractive. When hell freezes over I'm going to be busy.
Book Extract
I was in my Granddad’s chilly house in Surrey on Boxing Day, 1987. I was six-years-old and wrapped up like a pile of knitting to contain the teeth in my chattering jaws. Central heating took the form of two open fires in the draughty 1920’s detached property in the wealthiest county in England. Granddad, after years of practice, had managed to get everything into the living room that could possibly be needed so that nobody had to move more than two feet from the hearth. The toilet was upstairs and thus out of reach of the warmth but, if he knew we were coming, Granddad would fill the bath with hot water from several kettles to raise the air temperature and thaw out the loo seat. The long run up the stairs from the front room to the bathroom was something of a frosty gauntlet that, although shiver-inducing, rewarded the conqueror with a renewed appreciation for the heat from the fire that roasted the toes and pinked the cheeks upon their return. It was suggested every year that Granddad travelled to Devon and stayed with us for the festive season but this, he reiterated annually, would run the risk of the pipes bursting on account of his absence from stoking the coal fires.
This Boxing Day was typical in every way: the huge roast at lunchtime, the scones and mince pies at tea time and the gorging on chocolate tree decorations that made me hyper well past bedtime. The living room at home was a scene of a wrapping paper massacre and Granddad’s was about to become something similar. My sister Sarah, three years older and slightly calmer than I, would wind me up by hiding each of my stocking filler presents behind her back until I could guess what they were which, given that I couldn’t even see the shape of the gift, was a tad unfair. The regulatory soaps, socks and snow-shakers were strewn across the hearth as I was waited for the final present. I have always thought that, no matter how pressing the curiosity, the last present should be the biggest but Boxing Day meant the presents that were small enough to fit in the boughs of the Christmas tree. When you’re six years old it’s hard to find anything that doesn’t pale in comparison to being given your first My Little Pony Fairy Castle. But there it was…the final present…I peeled the sellotape off the corners, savouring the moment in the hope of shortening the time left of the next three hundred and sixty four days of the year. All eyes on me. And then it was over, I had in my hand a Rubics Cube. The amount of sarcasm gushing into my young mind made me breathe sharply, which in turn was interpreted as delight by those around me. ‘Thank you!!’ I gasped overcompensating for the utter disappointment at a four inch box not containing a real pony. Now I’m not sure if this is universal but I learnt the unspoken rule that one must show interest in your presents for an undesignated length of time so as to ensure you have expressed lavish amounts of gratitude, no matter how sparsely genuine it may be. So there I was. Me and a Rubics cube. Wow. Where to start? More to the point how could I discard this as soon as possible to return to the Pony Palace? Luckily my bladder thought faster than I did and graced me with the need to leave the warm spot and dash up the stairs at record breaking speeds. As I waited for nature to finish I twiddled and twisted the quadrants of the puzzle. Apparently it took most people about a year to figure it out. It took me three and a half minutes. This included one minute of staring at it, one minute of trying to wiggle the cubes into lines and the final minute and a half re-sticking on the coloured stickers that had unpeeled themselves in the steam from the kettle filled bath. I returned to the living room a genius.
Now I’d like to point out the foreboding and auspicious meaning of that story about working on a problem and then say something profoundly thought-provoking about overcoming adversity but I won’t. I was six and couldn’t have cared less how it was done just so long as I could get it out of the way and carry on with more pressing matters, such as which plastic pony to put in which plastic stable (before either or both were melted by the fire). I still believe that the Rubics cube was intended for my sister who had a longer attention span than me. In fact the only time I’d spent more than ten minutes on one activity was when Mum took the spring out of my Buckaroo and I spent a tense two hours piling things on the saddle and ears. But Sarah never had a chance. I had completed the puzzle in a flash and that was that. Now, where had I put that pony brush?
£12.00
By Ruby Holmes
ISBN: 978-1-84747-025-6
Published: 2006
Pages: 228
Key Themes: manic depression, bi-polar disorder
Description
With post-modern wit and pre-Raphaelite passion Ruby Holmes tells how mental illness can be survived without sacrificing the adventures of youth. This book is about mental illness, the ways in which it has manifested itself throughout Ruby's life and the extraordinary times she has had along the way.
About the Author
I am ginger and in need of therapy - the two are intrinsically linked. I love the ocean and big, big waves. Lighthouses! I love lighthouses. Toffee cheesecake with zopiclone sprinkles. Wild horses. Writing my second book and taking laziness to new levels. I miss Vancouver. I also miss California. While we're on missing places I guess I miss Kosova. Marmalade cafe in Malibu does the best breakfast in the world. Strangely I know the prices of bananas in every shop in a ten mile vicinity of home. I want to move back across the pond so I can yell 'road trip' and not drop off the top of Scotland 10 hours later. Perfection is an afternoon nap. Restlessness breeds adventure. My cat will one day take over the world. I find people in scrubs rather attractive. When hell freezes over I'm going to be busy.
Book Extract
I was in my Granddad’s chilly house in Surrey on Boxing Day, 1987. I was six-years-old and wrapped up like a pile of knitting to contain the teeth in my chattering jaws. Central heating took the form of two open fires in the draughty 1920’s detached property in the wealthiest county in England. Granddad, after years of practice, had managed to get everything into the living room that could possibly be needed so that nobody had to move more than two feet from the hearth. The toilet was upstairs and thus out of reach of the warmth but, if he knew we were coming, Granddad would fill the bath with hot water from several kettles to raise the air temperature and thaw out the loo seat. The long run up the stairs from the front room to the bathroom was something of a frosty gauntlet that, although shiver-inducing, rewarded the conqueror with a renewed appreciation for the heat from the fire that roasted the toes and pinked the cheeks upon their return. It was suggested every year that Granddad travelled to Devon and stayed with us for the festive season but this, he reiterated annually, would run the risk of the pipes bursting on account of his absence from stoking the coal fires.
This Boxing Day was typical in every way: the huge roast at lunchtime, the scones and mince pies at tea time and the gorging on chocolate tree decorations that made me hyper well past bedtime. The living room at home was a scene of a wrapping paper massacre and Granddad’s was about to become something similar. My sister Sarah, three years older and slightly calmer than I, would wind me up by hiding each of my stocking filler presents behind her back until I could guess what they were which, given that I couldn’t even see the shape of the gift, was a tad unfair. The regulatory soaps, socks and snow-shakers were strewn across the hearth as I was waited for the final present. I have always thought that, no matter how pressing the curiosity, the last present should be the biggest but Boxing Day meant the presents that were small enough to fit in the boughs of the Christmas tree. When you’re six years old it’s hard to find anything that doesn’t pale in comparison to being given your first My Little Pony Fairy Castle. But there it was…the final present…I peeled the sellotape off the corners, savouring the moment in the hope of shortening the time left of the next three hundred and sixty four days of the year. All eyes on me. And then it was over, I had in my hand a Rubics Cube. The amount of sarcasm gushing into my young mind made me breathe sharply, which in turn was interpreted as delight by those around me. ‘Thank you!!’ I gasped overcompensating for the utter disappointment at a four inch box not containing a real pony. Now I’m not sure if this is universal but I learnt the unspoken rule that one must show interest in your presents for an undesignated length of time so as to ensure you have expressed lavish amounts of gratitude, no matter how sparsely genuine it may be. So there I was. Me and a Rubics cube. Wow. Where to start? More to the point how could I discard this as soon as possible to return to the Pony Palace? Luckily my bladder thought faster than I did and graced me with the need to leave the warm spot and dash up the stairs at record breaking speeds. As I waited for nature to finish I twiddled and twisted the quadrants of the puzzle. Apparently it took most people about a year to figure it out. It took me three and a half minutes. This included one minute of staring at it, one minute of trying to wiggle the cubes into lines and the final minute and a half re-sticking on the coloured stickers that had unpeeled themselves in the steam from the kettle filled bath. I returned to the living room a genius.
Now I’d like to point out the foreboding and auspicious meaning of that story about working on a problem and then say something profoundly thought-provoking about overcoming adversity but I won’t. I was six and couldn’t have cared less how it was done just so long as I could get it out of the way and carry on with more pressing matters, such as which plastic pony to put in which plastic stable (before either or both were melted by the fire). I still believe that the Rubics cube was intended for my sister who had a longer attention span than me. In fact the only time I’d spent more than ten minutes on one activity was when Mum took the spring out of my Buckaroo and I spent a tense two hours piling things on the saddle and ears. But Sarah never had a chance. I had completed the puzzle in a flash and that was that. Now, where had I put that pony brush?
Abi's Story By Teferra Haile-Giorgis
Abi's Story
£12.00
By Teferra Haile-Giorgis
ISBN: 978-1-84747-009-6
Published: 2006
Pages: 124
Key Themes: suicide, ethnic minorities, post-traumatic stress disorder
Description
Written by his mother, this is the tragic story of Abi, a young man from Ethiopia who took his own life after a battle against mental illness. Abi escaped the horror of Ethiopia’s Marxist military revolution, this book provides a unique insight into the psychological trauma suffered by the victims of war. This original and extraordinarily moving book charts Abi’s life in words and pictures and attempts to make sense of his tragic death.
About the Author
Dr Teferra Haile-Giorgis is Abi's mother. This book was written by her and her family in Abi's memory. Dr Haile-Giorgis set up a trust to fund research into the psychological problems of the victims of war. Her aim is to help people in a similar position to her son. She also wants to provide more insight into this area and inform psychiatrists of this type of ‘mental illness’.
Book Extract
We never know what it feels like to be with the Good Lord where we have no more earthly care to worry about. I hope, somehow, those who have left us to be with Him can see or know that their past concerns are addressed and their wishes have been fulfilled.
What was worrying our beloved Abi at the last session in the hospital consulting room, at the royal Preston Hospital, Avondale unit where we were sitting for group discussion? I clearly remember what the Psychiatrist said, “ I am afraid your son’s case does not fit into a British Black or a British white mental illness category”. I can just remember my son abruptly getting up very angry and rushing to the door, opening it and turning towards me before walking out. I can still hear him saying “ You are wasting your time, Emamma, this people are dummies. I have repeatedly told you that they do not understand my case. I think that, if I ever get healed, I will help other victims like myself. It will only be someone like me who has been through such illness that can help those in similar circumstances”. He was not only concerned for himself but for all others in similar circumstances. He obviously had a burning desire to be in a position to help those victims of political conflict, political imprisonment, displacement and other human suffering such as escapees, like himself, from enforced conscription.
In today’s world we are told that some 20 or more wars officially or unofficially go on in different parts of the world. Therefore, there must surely be more and more Abi’s whose pain, agony and depression and other related mental health problems are not understood or dismissed by the ordinary mental health services and psychiatrists.
Abi, very unfortunately, has suddenly chosen to leave us by taking his own life. We will always feel hurt and upset and cherish his memory whenever we think how much pain, agony and suffering have caused this action. But we can still save many of them who are in his ‛category’. We, as a family, have felt committed to his cause. Within our limitation we can, at least, address his concern by setting up a Trust to help carry out research which will result in attention being given and focusing on victims of wars, political conflicts, political imprisonment, enforced conscriptions and displacement as well as any direct or indirect problems related to these situations.
Abi, who has enabled this concern to be addressed, is challenging us today. May God help us to voice his grievances, be advocates for his cause and promote ideas to challenge the mental health institutions and psychiatrists, at all levels, to listen to voices of such victims and not be dismissive as Abi’s Psychiatrists were. In his death he challenges us all today, as we set up this Trust for all the neglected and misunderstood thousands whose human rights agendas had never been addressed in any meaningful way. Abi challenges us even in his death. May God almighty let him know that even though he is gone those who have suffered like him will get a relief in the future- however few or however many. May God make Abi’s dream a reality then for him the bells will toll to congratulate him for including us in his endeavour.
£12.00
By Teferra Haile-Giorgis
ISBN: 978-1-84747-009-6
Published: 2006
Pages: 124
Key Themes: suicide, ethnic minorities, post-traumatic stress disorder
Description
Written by his mother, this is the tragic story of Abi, a young man from Ethiopia who took his own life after a battle against mental illness. Abi escaped the horror of Ethiopia’s Marxist military revolution, this book provides a unique insight into the psychological trauma suffered by the victims of war. This original and extraordinarily moving book charts Abi’s life in words and pictures and attempts to make sense of his tragic death.
About the Author
Dr Teferra Haile-Giorgis is Abi's mother. This book was written by her and her family in Abi's memory. Dr Haile-Giorgis set up a trust to fund research into the psychological problems of the victims of war. Her aim is to help people in a similar position to her son. She also wants to provide more insight into this area and inform psychiatrists of this type of ‘mental illness’.
Book Extract
We never know what it feels like to be with the Good Lord where we have no more earthly care to worry about. I hope, somehow, those who have left us to be with Him can see or know that their past concerns are addressed and their wishes have been fulfilled.
What was worrying our beloved Abi at the last session in the hospital consulting room, at the royal Preston Hospital, Avondale unit where we were sitting for group discussion? I clearly remember what the Psychiatrist said, “ I am afraid your son’s case does not fit into a British Black or a British white mental illness category”. I can just remember my son abruptly getting up very angry and rushing to the door, opening it and turning towards me before walking out. I can still hear him saying “ You are wasting your time, Emamma, this people are dummies. I have repeatedly told you that they do not understand my case. I think that, if I ever get healed, I will help other victims like myself. It will only be someone like me who has been through such illness that can help those in similar circumstances”. He was not only concerned for himself but for all others in similar circumstances. He obviously had a burning desire to be in a position to help those victims of political conflict, political imprisonment, displacement and other human suffering such as escapees, like himself, from enforced conscription.
In today’s world we are told that some 20 or more wars officially or unofficially go on in different parts of the world. Therefore, there must surely be more and more Abi’s whose pain, agony and depression and other related mental health problems are not understood or dismissed by the ordinary mental health services and psychiatrists.
Abi, very unfortunately, has suddenly chosen to leave us by taking his own life. We will always feel hurt and upset and cherish his memory whenever we think how much pain, agony and suffering have caused this action. But we can still save many of them who are in his ‛category’. We, as a family, have felt committed to his cause. Within our limitation we can, at least, address his concern by setting up a Trust to help carry out research which will result in attention being given and focusing on victims of wars, political conflicts, political imprisonment, enforced conscriptions and displacement as well as any direct or indirect problems related to these situations.
Abi, who has enabled this concern to be addressed, is challenging us today. May God help us to voice his grievances, be advocates for his cause and promote ideas to challenge the mental health institutions and psychiatrists, at all levels, to listen to voices of such victims and not be dismissive as Abi’s Psychiatrists were. In his death he challenges us all today, as we set up this Trust for all the neglected and misunderstood thousands whose human rights agendas had never been addressed in any meaningful way. Abi challenges us even in his death. May God almighty let him know that even though he is gone those who have suffered like him will get a relief in the future- however few or however many. May God make Abi’s dream a reality then for him the bells will toll to congratulate him for including us in his endeavour.
A Mind To Be Free Marie Berger
A Mind To Be Free
£12.00
A Personal Search for Therapy
By Marie Berger
ISBN: 978-1-84747-190-1
Published: 2007
Pages: 128
Key Themes: mental health services, psychiatry, depression
Description
This is a wonderfully moving and brilliant account of Marie Berger's dark secret - her mental illness and her constant attempts to regain control of her life through whatever means possible. In order to do this Marie resolves that she must look deep inside herself to discover the real reason for her illness; a troubled childhood and feelings of rejection from her family seem the most likely cause, but who really understands the workings of the mind?! An engaging and fulfilling read, this book poses many questions about mental illness and how it is dealt with in this society of ours.
About the Author
Marie Berger was born in May 1945 in Reading, Berkshire. She trained to become a teacher and is also a qualified masseuse. She is now an author by profession and lives with her husband and her children in Lincoln. She is fond of travelling, foreign languages, pastel drawing and of course her writing.
Book Extract
I have decided to start a new life in another country. When Mummy showed me the advertisement for teachers in Ontario, Canada, I knew I could leave with her blessing. Sharing a flat close to home was an insult it seemed, but going to another country to live met with her approval. And anything I did only felt right to me if it was acceptable to Mummy. Even at twenty-three I longed for her to be proud of me, to love me as I felt she loved Rita, her natural daughter.
Determined to make her and Daddy proud of me I boarded the liner, The Empress of Canada, at Liverpool. I waved to Daddy until he became a tiny dot on the quayside grateful that he, at least, had come to see me off. I left full of hope that finally I could break free from the unhappiness within me.But feeling lost and childlike, I fell out with my flatmates and work colleagues within weeks. I tried desperately to get on with them but they didn’t appear to like me. Whatever I did always annoyed those around me. But nobody bothered to explain why. Feeling totally rejected, I moved out to rent a place on my own. I loved my job, got on well with the eight to ten year old children in my class. If they liked me how come people of my own age did not?
I confided in the Principal about my unhappy childhood in a family where I felt sure my adopted parents loved their own daughter better than me, despite everything I did to try to please them. I told her of my distress when they adopted Teresa when I was twelve years old, how I felt they were trying to replace me because I wasn’t good enough.
Sister Carla Marie seemed to understand my unhappiness. “I think I hate my mother,” I told her. She nodded sympathetically. I even told her how guilty I felt when I let my boyfriend touch my breasts. “Can’t you ever forgive yourself?” She asked. But Mummy, Daddy and the Catholic Church required me to be perfect in every thought, word and deed. Each failing was yet another sin to be declared in Confession in church, in order to be forgiven by God. There was no excuse for giving in to my sexual desires in any way.
Sister feels sorry for me. She was the one I rang when I overdosed just before Christmas. Had she not taken me from my attic apartment to the Emergency Room I would have died. She agreed not to tell the rest of the staff what I’d done but to side with me when I concocted a story about arriving at the hospital feeling unwell and the doctor deciding to keep me in for investigation.
Now I’m back at school, attending weekly sessions of therapy. My teaching is fine but my private life is fraught with loneliness and self-loathing.
*
Doctor Lessier, my psychiatrist, leans back in his chair calmly puffing on his pipe, watching me light a cigarette.
“Please tell me what to do. My life is all messed up.”
“You’re looking for the Big Breast again,” he sighs. He’s often said that in the three months I’ve been seeing him.
I’m confused. I don’t know what he’s trying to imply.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say angrily.
He doesn’t answer me. My anger turns to hopelessness.
“Please put me in the hospital.”
“No – I won’t do that.” He looks at his watch. “Time’s up. See you next week.”
“You won’t see me – I’m not coming again.”
He shrugs and opens the door.
I leave feeling as desperate as when I arrived. During the past few weeks at school the despair has become overwhelming. Every time I see the Principal’s kind, calm face I long for her to hold me close, talk to me gently, promise me that she will look after me always. My mind knows I must not regard her as a mother figure. At twenty-three years old I’m a teacher, not a small, helpless child. But the little girl inside me doesn’t understand. She won’t accept the adult concept. She’s still looking for a warm, loving mummy to care for her every need, a mummy she cannot have because this woman is a nun, her life devoted to God, the Catholic Church and the school.
Now she’s really worried about me. I’m getting no better. Sometimes I have to leave the classroom early to go home because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to contain my emotions. I ring her on leaving the doctor’s office.
“I’m going to admit myself to the mental hospital on the hill.” I can’t hold back the tears as I talk.
“If you do that I shall have no option but to tell the School Board.” Her voice is quiet, sympathetic as she continues, “I shall send a priest to your house to take you. Are you quite sure you want to go?”
“Yes – I’ve got to,” I reply.
The priest arrives soon after I return home. He doesn’t try to engage me in conversation except to ask, “Are you certain you want to do this? You can change your mind, it’s not too late.” “If I don’t go into hospital I won’t be able to cope.”
He drives me the short distance up what is known locally as The Mountain. The Reception staff do not want to admit me.
“If you don’t I’ll take my life.”
I leave them with no alternative. The priest leaves. I’m taken to a small ward with several beds, all empty. The nurse gives me some tablets. She doesn’t explain what they’re for. She waits until I’ve taken them.
“This is your bed,” she says matter-of-factly, pointing out the one nearest the door. She turns, walks away without so much as a backward glance.
I feel terribly unhappy. I don’t want to stay here. I lie down feeling so alone, so mixed up…
OTHER WORKS BY THIS AUTHOR
£12.00
A Personal Search for Therapy
By Marie Berger
ISBN: 978-1-84747-190-1
Published: 2007
Pages: 128
Key Themes: mental health services, psychiatry, depression
Description
This is a wonderfully moving and brilliant account of Marie Berger's dark secret - her mental illness and her constant attempts to regain control of her life through whatever means possible. In order to do this Marie resolves that she must look deep inside herself to discover the real reason for her illness; a troubled childhood and feelings of rejection from her family seem the most likely cause, but who really understands the workings of the mind?! An engaging and fulfilling read, this book poses many questions about mental illness and how it is dealt with in this society of ours.
About the Author
Marie Berger was born in May 1945 in Reading, Berkshire. She trained to become a teacher and is also a qualified masseuse. She is now an author by profession and lives with her husband and her children in Lincoln. She is fond of travelling, foreign languages, pastel drawing and of course her writing.
Book Extract
I have decided to start a new life in another country. When Mummy showed me the advertisement for teachers in Ontario, Canada, I knew I could leave with her blessing. Sharing a flat close to home was an insult it seemed, but going to another country to live met with her approval. And anything I did only felt right to me if it was acceptable to Mummy. Even at twenty-three I longed for her to be proud of me, to love me as I felt she loved Rita, her natural daughter.
Determined to make her and Daddy proud of me I boarded the liner, The Empress of Canada, at Liverpool. I waved to Daddy until he became a tiny dot on the quayside grateful that he, at least, had come to see me off. I left full of hope that finally I could break free from the unhappiness within me.But feeling lost and childlike, I fell out with my flatmates and work colleagues within weeks. I tried desperately to get on with them but they didn’t appear to like me. Whatever I did always annoyed those around me. But nobody bothered to explain why. Feeling totally rejected, I moved out to rent a place on my own. I loved my job, got on well with the eight to ten year old children in my class. If they liked me how come people of my own age did not?
I confided in the Principal about my unhappy childhood in a family where I felt sure my adopted parents loved their own daughter better than me, despite everything I did to try to please them. I told her of my distress when they adopted Teresa when I was twelve years old, how I felt they were trying to replace me because I wasn’t good enough.
Sister Carla Marie seemed to understand my unhappiness. “I think I hate my mother,” I told her. She nodded sympathetically. I even told her how guilty I felt when I let my boyfriend touch my breasts. “Can’t you ever forgive yourself?” She asked. But Mummy, Daddy and the Catholic Church required me to be perfect in every thought, word and deed. Each failing was yet another sin to be declared in Confession in church, in order to be forgiven by God. There was no excuse for giving in to my sexual desires in any way.
Sister feels sorry for me. She was the one I rang when I overdosed just before Christmas. Had she not taken me from my attic apartment to the Emergency Room I would have died. She agreed not to tell the rest of the staff what I’d done but to side with me when I concocted a story about arriving at the hospital feeling unwell and the doctor deciding to keep me in for investigation.
Now I’m back at school, attending weekly sessions of therapy. My teaching is fine but my private life is fraught with loneliness and self-loathing.
*
Doctor Lessier, my psychiatrist, leans back in his chair calmly puffing on his pipe, watching me light a cigarette.
“Please tell me what to do. My life is all messed up.”
“You’re looking for the Big Breast again,” he sighs. He’s often said that in the three months I’ve been seeing him.
I’m confused. I don’t know what he’s trying to imply.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say angrily.
He doesn’t answer me. My anger turns to hopelessness.
“Please put me in the hospital.”
“No – I won’t do that.” He looks at his watch. “Time’s up. See you next week.”
“You won’t see me – I’m not coming again.”
He shrugs and opens the door.
I leave feeling as desperate as when I arrived. During the past few weeks at school the despair has become overwhelming. Every time I see the Principal’s kind, calm face I long for her to hold me close, talk to me gently, promise me that she will look after me always. My mind knows I must not regard her as a mother figure. At twenty-three years old I’m a teacher, not a small, helpless child. But the little girl inside me doesn’t understand. She won’t accept the adult concept. She’s still looking for a warm, loving mummy to care for her every need, a mummy she cannot have because this woman is a nun, her life devoted to God, the Catholic Church and the school.
Now she’s really worried about me. I’m getting no better. Sometimes I have to leave the classroom early to go home because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to contain my emotions. I ring her on leaving the doctor’s office.
“I’m going to admit myself to the mental hospital on the hill.” I can’t hold back the tears as I talk.
“If you do that I shall have no option but to tell the School Board.” Her voice is quiet, sympathetic as she continues, “I shall send a priest to your house to take you. Are you quite sure you want to go?”
“Yes – I’ve got to,” I reply.
The priest arrives soon after I return home. He doesn’t try to engage me in conversation except to ask, “Are you certain you want to do this? You can change your mind, it’s not too late.” “If I don’t go into hospital I won’t be able to cope.”
He drives me the short distance up what is known locally as The Mountain. The Reception staff do not want to admit me.
“If you don’t I’ll take my life.”
I leave them with no alternative. The priest leaves. I’m taken to a small ward with several beds, all empty. The nurse gives me some tablets. She doesn’t explain what they’re for. She waits until I’ve taken them.
“This is your bed,” she says matter-of-factly, pointing out the one nearest the door. She turns, walks away without so much as a backward glance.
I feel terribly unhappy. I don’t want to stay here. I lie down feeling so alone, so mixed up…
OTHER WORKS BY THIS AUTHOR
A Life Worth Living by Marie Berger
A Life Worth Living
£12.00
By Marie Berger
ISBN: 978-1-84747-188-8
Published: 2007
Pages: 123
Key Themes: borderline personality disorder,
Description
This immensely reflective and emotional book deals with the difficulties faced by a person suffering from borderline personality disorder. BPD is often thought of as the most severe of the most common mental illnesses and is considered by some to be untreatable. This book replaces much of the myths surrounding this illness with cold, hard facts and as such is a very important and profound read.
About the Author
Marie Berger was born in May 1945 in Reading, Berkshire. She trained to become a teacher and is also a qualified masseuse. She is now an author by profession and lives with her husband and her children in Lincoln. She is fond of travelling, foreign languages, pastel drawing and of course her writing.
Book Extract
Declaring my sins in another language feels easier. A short break in an attractive town on the French coast provides a brief respite from the overwhelming negativity inside my head.
On impulse I’ve wandered into a church, found a priest willing to hear my Confession. A modern-minded priest who wears no collar and has dispensed with the traditional confessional box. We sit facing each other across a table.
I reel off a list of offences against a God I’m not even sure I believe in. The priest gives me absolution, asks me about myself, my life. I refer briefly to my unhappy childhood, my rigid, often-harsh religious upbringing, my present emotional problems. He listens sympathetically. Daringly, I say I’ve only occasionally attended Mass in recent years.
“Which means I’m doomed to Hell when I die, aren’t I?” I challenge him. “God loves you, He is not there to punish you.” His tone is kindly.
“So that wasn’t a mortal sin?” The priest smiles, shakes his head. I stare at him, amazed. I’d expected a sermon on the evil of my ways.
“You’re the first priest not to condemn my actions. But I think I’ve lost my faith, I don’t know if there is a God or where to find Him.” “He’s inside you,” the priest answers with conviction. I remind him that he’s not given me the usual penance for my sins.
“When you are sitting beside the sea today just say thank you to God,” he says gently. What, no Our Fathers, no Hail Marys, no act of retribution for my offences? I thank him profusely. Already I’m feeling better. I walk out into the bright sunshine feeling an inner warmth, an unaccustomed sense of well-being.
*
The vast expanse of beautifully kept lawns looks welcoming. Today represents my last possibility of therapy. At almost sixty years old I’m running out of options. I feel irritable, sick, intensely nervous. I haven’t slept properly for a week.
I’m being ushered along an expensively carpeted corridor to an office. A friendly-looking man introduces himself as the psychiatrist. His handshake is firm, warm. He invites me to sit, begins by asking about my problems. Suddenly my carefully rehearsed words disappear. I can hardly concentrate on what he’s asking or on how I’m responding. I’m talking about the past, trying to show how I came to be in the mess I’m in today. I explain that my natural mother breastfed me for three months before fostering me out eight times. She finally realized she couldn’t keep her nine-month-old baby. I tell him bitterly that Mummy and Daddy adopted me as a “pet” for their own daughter, Rita. I refer to my happy early years with Mummy, describe how things went terribly wrong when I started school, when I was not completely under her control. Suddenly nothing I did was right; I could never match up to Rita. I want him to understand the extent of my efforts to please her, my desperation to become exactly like my sister so that Mummy and Daddy would find me as lovable. I feel shame wash over me as I tell him about Mummy’s scornful reaction.
I talk about the awful beatings from Daddy which resulted in a neighbour threatening to call the NSPCC, my pleading with her not to and vowing inwardly she would never again hear my cries.
I’m lost in the past.
“Did he hit ever you again?” The psychiatrist asks. “I don’t remember. But I knew, despite everything, that Daddy truly loved me. I was never sure if Mummy did since she continued to tell me how stupid and worthless I was. She always ignored my tears, my pain, my unhappiness.”
I feel like crying.
I tell him about my compulsion to be perfect, to become like the saints the nuns at school always talked about. I confide my horrible fear of hurting Christ by, as we were told, banging the nails further into his hands and feet on the cross whenever we were naughty. I recall Evelyn’s funeral, when our class had to watch our ten-year-old classmate being buried and then were told, “Now, Evelyn was a good girl - but what if it had been one of you…?”
The psychiatrist is listening intently. “How do you see your problems now?”
“I feel empty, self-destructive. I dislike everything about myself.”
I mention my life-threatening overdose, little over a year ago, an action I deeply regret, the memory of it so raw it makes talking difficult.
“There are still times that I want to destroy myself. Only the thought of this dreadful legacy for my family holds me back.”
He looks thoughtful. “I think our type of therapy will suit you.”
Relief spreads through me.
“Four months should do it.”
I’m astounded. They can turn my life around in four months? Perhaps miracles do happen!
Our interview over, he takes me to the dining room where I’m introduced to some of the residents. The food is good, the residents and staff friendly. One of the residents shows me round. Each room has its own en suite. If I could forget the reason I’m here I could easily imagine that this tastefully decorated, airy, spacious building is a five star hotel. During the drive home I silently carry out endless tortuous post-mortems.
“Most people stay for eight months so I don’t know why they’re thinking of throwing me out after four.” “You’re being negative again,” my husband sighs. But, if the psychiatrist is right, in a few months he’ll see a changed wife - one he’ll scarcely recognize!
£12.00
By Marie Berger
ISBN: 978-1-84747-188-8
Published: 2007
Pages: 123
Key Themes: borderline personality disorder,
Description
This immensely reflective and emotional book deals with the difficulties faced by a person suffering from borderline personality disorder. BPD is often thought of as the most severe of the most common mental illnesses and is considered by some to be untreatable. This book replaces much of the myths surrounding this illness with cold, hard facts and as such is a very important and profound read.
About the Author
Marie Berger was born in May 1945 in Reading, Berkshire. She trained to become a teacher and is also a qualified masseuse. She is now an author by profession and lives with her husband and her children in Lincoln. She is fond of travelling, foreign languages, pastel drawing and of course her writing.
Book Extract
Declaring my sins in another language feels easier. A short break in an attractive town on the French coast provides a brief respite from the overwhelming negativity inside my head.
On impulse I’ve wandered into a church, found a priest willing to hear my Confession. A modern-minded priest who wears no collar and has dispensed with the traditional confessional box. We sit facing each other across a table.
I reel off a list of offences against a God I’m not even sure I believe in. The priest gives me absolution, asks me about myself, my life. I refer briefly to my unhappy childhood, my rigid, often-harsh religious upbringing, my present emotional problems. He listens sympathetically. Daringly, I say I’ve only occasionally attended Mass in recent years.
“Which means I’m doomed to Hell when I die, aren’t I?” I challenge him. “God loves you, He is not there to punish you.” His tone is kindly.
“So that wasn’t a mortal sin?” The priest smiles, shakes his head. I stare at him, amazed. I’d expected a sermon on the evil of my ways.
“You’re the first priest not to condemn my actions. But I think I’ve lost my faith, I don’t know if there is a God or where to find Him.” “He’s inside you,” the priest answers with conviction. I remind him that he’s not given me the usual penance for my sins.
“When you are sitting beside the sea today just say thank you to God,” he says gently. What, no Our Fathers, no Hail Marys, no act of retribution for my offences? I thank him profusely. Already I’m feeling better. I walk out into the bright sunshine feeling an inner warmth, an unaccustomed sense of well-being.
*
The vast expanse of beautifully kept lawns looks welcoming. Today represents my last possibility of therapy. At almost sixty years old I’m running out of options. I feel irritable, sick, intensely nervous. I haven’t slept properly for a week.
I’m being ushered along an expensively carpeted corridor to an office. A friendly-looking man introduces himself as the psychiatrist. His handshake is firm, warm. He invites me to sit, begins by asking about my problems. Suddenly my carefully rehearsed words disappear. I can hardly concentrate on what he’s asking or on how I’m responding. I’m talking about the past, trying to show how I came to be in the mess I’m in today. I explain that my natural mother breastfed me for three months before fostering me out eight times. She finally realized she couldn’t keep her nine-month-old baby. I tell him bitterly that Mummy and Daddy adopted me as a “pet” for their own daughter, Rita. I refer to my happy early years with Mummy, describe how things went terribly wrong when I started school, when I was not completely under her control. Suddenly nothing I did was right; I could never match up to Rita. I want him to understand the extent of my efforts to please her, my desperation to become exactly like my sister so that Mummy and Daddy would find me as lovable. I feel shame wash over me as I tell him about Mummy’s scornful reaction.
I talk about the awful beatings from Daddy which resulted in a neighbour threatening to call the NSPCC, my pleading with her not to and vowing inwardly she would never again hear my cries.
I’m lost in the past.
“Did he hit ever you again?” The psychiatrist asks. “I don’t remember. But I knew, despite everything, that Daddy truly loved me. I was never sure if Mummy did since she continued to tell me how stupid and worthless I was. She always ignored my tears, my pain, my unhappiness.”
I feel like crying.
I tell him about my compulsion to be perfect, to become like the saints the nuns at school always talked about. I confide my horrible fear of hurting Christ by, as we were told, banging the nails further into his hands and feet on the cross whenever we were naughty. I recall Evelyn’s funeral, when our class had to watch our ten-year-old classmate being buried and then were told, “Now, Evelyn was a good girl - but what if it had been one of you…?”
The psychiatrist is listening intently. “How do you see your problems now?”
“I feel empty, self-destructive. I dislike everything about myself.”
I mention my life-threatening overdose, little over a year ago, an action I deeply regret, the memory of it so raw it makes talking difficult.
“There are still times that I want to destroy myself. Only the thought of this dreadful legacy for my family holds me back.”
He looks thoughtful. “I think our type of therapy will suit you.”
Relief spreads through me.
“Four months should do it.”
I’m astounded. They can turn my life around in four months? Perhaps miracles do happen!
Our interview over, he takes me to the dining room where I’m introduced to some of the residents. The food is good, the residents and staff friendly. One of the residents shows me round. Each room has its own en suite. If I could forget the reason I’m here I could easily imagine that this tastefully decorated, airy, spacious building is a five star hotel. During the drive home I silently carry out endless tortuous post-mortems.
“Most people stay for eight months so I don’t know why they’re thinking of throwing me out after four.” “You’re being negative again,” my husband sighs. But, if the psychiatrist is right, in a few months he’ll see a changed wife - one he’ll scarcely recognize!
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