Doctors have this way they look at you when they’re about to give you bad news. First, they look down, as if to ponder the implications of what they’re about to say, then, in a move that catches you completely off guard, they blurt it all out. I often wonder if they ever fathomed the impact their words have.
I had been seeing therapists on and off since I was five years old, but the blow of their words never ceased to shatter the shield I had built around myself.
OCD, high-functioning anxiety, thanatophobia, situational depression, PTSD, insomnia, anhedonia. The list goes on and on, an ever-tightening noose around my neck. The reality of labels is, the more you have, the harder it becomes to identify yourself. You start to make lists of them all in your phone, making sure that each new doctor is aware of everything you’ve been told before. You start to become the diagnoses and the human behind them fades away. I don’t know how accurate any of mine are. Some I have laughed about. Some I have cried over. Some have confused the hell out of me. But each diagnosis takes up permanent residence in my mind – a reminder that, for me, normality will always be an unreachable destination.
On the way home from the first meeting as the train rattled violently along the tracks, I thought about the people I had just left. Every seemingly insignificant detail of their appearance, and the way they held themselves, told a story. I couldn't imagine any of them struggling with the first assignment. I could imagine each of them returning home, making dinner or doing their taxes, just getting on with their lives, and coming back the next day, ready to tell their story unapologetically. Oh, to be that sure of one’s self.
In the past, my therapy sessions had been guided. There was always some grey-haired man or woman telling me I felt this way because of this or that way because of that. They told me what was wrong, and I added it to my ever-growing list. But this time, I was completely on my own, and repeating a second-hand diagnosis wouldn’t cut it.
As the train approached my station, I jumped to my feet, slung my handbag over my shoulder and disembarked through a crowd of people heading into the city for the evening. I rushed through the crowd and toward the station exit before changing course and entering Ella Tienda.
As I walked through the store entrance, happy memories flooded my mind. The owners cared about their staff and were passionate about helping their community. It had been a good job, but I wanted more and there had been times where it drained all life out of me. Despite my boss saying my job would always be open, I hoped that I wouldn’t have to return.
I grabbed a bottle of Vanilla Coke out of the fridge and a family-sized Hershey's Cookies and Cream bar off the shelf and paid at the front counter. If I was going to play Dr Frankenstein, reassembling fragments of my past, sugar and caffeine were the only things that might help me through it.
“How are you feeling, Lilly?” Matias, the shop owner, yelled out to me from the back of the store.
“Keeping on keeping on, Matias. Paciencia y fe,” I yelled back before grabbing my items and exiting the store. This handy little aphorism means “patience and faith”. I’d like to pretend I learnt it from school or extensive time working in the community, but, if I am being completely honest, it came from a musical.
When I finally exited the muggy station, I paused for a moment, taking a deep breath in through my nose and out through my mouth. This was something my mum taught me to do when I was younger, to help me cope when things all felt a little too much. “If you are still alive and you can still breathe for yourself, nothing can really be that bad” she would say with a slightly condescending smile. It shouldn’t work, but for whatever reason, it often managed to stop me from spiralling out of control.
Feeling somewhat alive for the first time that day, I reached into my bag, removed my AirPods and hit shuffle on my favourite Apple Music playlist. I strolled through the streets of uptown New York, timing each step perfectly with the beat of “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” by Elton John, which was playing in my ear. The city raced past me, commuters headed to subway stations, locals headed out to dinner, cars tried to get from point A to point B, and I continued, trying desperately to shut them all out.
By the time I arrived home, the streetlights had made their presence known and an eerie blackness filled every corner of our small apartment. When I say small, I don’t mean it conventionally. In comparison to other apartments in New York it was quite spacious, but any time someone from back in Australia came to visit, they gawked at its size, shocked by the “unreasonable” price we paid for it. New York City is notoriously expensive. It’s one of the main reasons I still live at home. It’s too expensive to live in this city alone, and despite everything, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
We first moved here from Australia when I was six. Life had been crazy in the year leading up to the move. I was scared of my own shadow and this impacted everyone around me. Dad gave up pretty quickly. He was never really one to accept any form of challenge, always in pursuit of the “simple life”. After they split, Mum needed a change. That house, that suburb, the entire city reminded her of everything she had lost. So, she quit her job in Sydney, called in a favour with an old friend in New York and we were on a plane to the Big Apple within a year of 9/11.
When I say “they split”, it wasn’t exactly like they sat down, had a mature discussion and made an amicable decision. Dad screamed, Mum cried, and I hid under my bed. I heard Dad’s car start, then it screeched down our suburban street, and in an instant, we became a family of two. I have only seen my dad once since that day: I was sixteen, back home to see the family for Christmas break, and he was waiting in line at the local fish and chip shop. I watched him from afar as he ordered a family-sized chips, and then, when it was ready, he walked straight past me without so much as a nod in my direction. It hurt – he didn’t recognise his own daughter! But it hurt even more to know that, somewhere, he would be sharing those chips with another family, a whole family that my mother and I would never be a part of.
Standing in the doorway, I reached my arm inside and hit the light switch to illuminate our home. Mum wouldn’t be home for hours. As a big hotshot lawyer, she often worked late into the night. Honestly, I admired her for it – the passion that she channelled into helping people and seeing justice served – it’s something I longed for but could never quite find. I spent so much of my childhood blaming my mum for making us leave Australia, and there are moments when I still do, but in all that hurt and blame, I often forget to tell her that she makes me proud every single day.
I opened Uber Eats on my phone and ordered a ham and cheese pizza from a local Italian restaurant. A large would be enough to get me through a night’s worth of soul-searching with some left over for Mum’s late-night snack when she finally arrived home. We weren’t exactly gourmet chefs in my house. I don’t mind a bit of baking here and there, and we are actually not half-bad cooks when we try, but we are usually too exhausted to bother.
By the time the delivery driver arrived at the front door with dinner, I was already buried in piles of paperwork – information sheets, peculiar drawings scribbled on the back of scrap paper and receipts – that I hoped they would spark my memory. I jumped at the sound of the knock, and it all spilled across the floor. Grunting and groaning, I made my way through the mess and toward the front door, almost tripping on a box of old letters that now sat in the entrance to my bedroom.
It was hours and several episodes of Grey’s Anatomy later before I finally returned to my mission for answers. I stood in the doorway of my bedroom, staring down at the box of letters. In the early days, a psychologist had suggested I write letters to myself to help me understand the way I was feeling and as an outlet for the emotions that had been suffocating me. It was one of the few things that ever really stuck. I added a new letter every few weeks. The content wasn’t exactly revolutionary – all it seemed to do was take some of the weight off my chest. I bent down and picked up a dusty envelope with 03/03/2012 written on the front of it. Inside, my messy writing seemed to scream at me from the creased paper.
Dear Lilly,
He doesn’t love you. No one ever will. He proved that over and over again when he made fun of you for feeling the way you did. He’d say, why can’t you just pull yourself together? It’s pathetic that you are still crying over this. He’s not worth the tears you’ve cried for him.
You just got 96% in an English literature assignment and you have the One Direction concert this weekend. Get over yourself and keep smiling.
From Lilly
I was thankful that my writing had developed over the years and that I had my priorities a little more in order. That being said, I would have liked to go back to a time when all the dark and scary parts of life could be overshadowed by an upcoming One Direction concert. With a loud bang, my thoughts were pulled away from goofy boys with cheeky smiles and tight pants.
“Lilly! You’re still up?” said my visibly drained mother. “How was the day?” She plodded into the kitchen, dropped her things on the bench and filled a glass to the brim with Sauvignon Blanc.
“Oh … it was certainly a day,” I dismissed with a laugh. “I have all this work to do before tomorrow, but it’s just not happening for me. How was your day?” I asked, desperate to pull the attention away from me.
“Oh, you know,” she said, “same shit, different day. Some crackpot judge trying to tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. I might have considered his point if the defendant’s lawyer wasn’t one of his old frat-party mates.”
Katherine Dempsey, my mother, was a staunch feminist, much like myself, but she took it to the extreme. Anything that went wrong in her life she would blame on the patriarchy and turn it into some big campaign for equal rights and pay. I could have used this as my out, I could’ve taken advantage and got her all riled up until she forgot that today was different to any other, but it wasn’t worth the effort.
“Bloody men,” I said. “So, tomorrow, I have to explain the reason I’m in therapy … I mean, isn’t that just ridiculous? It’s like going to a doctor and explaining why I’m sick. Isn’t that someone else’s job to work out?” I laughed awkwardly before grabbing her wine bottle and pouring a glass for myself.
Mum rolled her eyes, grabbing the bottle out of my hands. Her expression screamed, “Do you really think that is going to help?” Then she took the bottle back to the fridge.
“Sweetheart, this is the reason we are doing this,” she said.
I glared at her over the rim of the glass, sipping what I was permitted to drink.
“I know it’s not easy to face the things that haunt you, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important.” She looked deep into my eyes as she spoke.
I sighed because deep down I knew she was right, even if I didn’t want it to be true.
“I know. That’s why my room looks like it was hit by a tiny hurricane. I’m going through every part of my therapy to date and analysing it … It’s all a bit overwhelming,” I replied with an exasperated exhale.
“Just keep plugging away – the answers will come to you. They have to be in there somewhere or you wouldn’t feel the way you do.” Mum sighed with a smile.
“Yeah … I’m going to get back to it,” I said, sculling what was left in my wine glass before placing it in the kitchen sink. “There’s some pizza in the fridge if you’re hungry. I’ll be in my room.”
“I’m glad to see you trying, sweetheart,” Mum called out.
I stepped over the box of letters and closed the door behind me.
My mother was the kindest, most compassionate person I have ever met, and she tried, she really did, but a part of me always felt like she never fully understood.
Most of the time it was like I was an alien being observed by humans, and no matter how hard they tried, they just couldn’t quite understand me. But then, for a brief moment, a line of a book or the lyrics of a song or a piece of dialogue in a television series make me feel seen. Those are the moments that I feel most alive.
About three-quarters of the way through the pile of paperwork, with no further idea of what was going on inside my head, I officially gave up. Sitting in the middle of my bed, surrounded by mess on all sides, I looked up at myself in the mirror on the wall and nodded.
With my hands and feet, I began pushing everything off the bed onto the carpeted floor, telling myself I would clean it up in the morning. I put on an old Ed Sheeran concert shirt and TJ Maxx bed shorts, climbed into bed and buried myself under the covers.
As my eyes closed, my mind flicked through the events of the day. I remembered old therapy sessions and noted that I felt at least somewhat different tonight than I did after those. My eyes opened suddenly with the realisation that I hadn’t said goodnight to my mother. I grabbed my phone out from under my pillow and sent a quick text, Good night, love you. I realise how completely neurotic this is, but in my head, if I didn’t say good night and if I didn’t say I love you, something horrible might have happened in the middle of the night, and it would be entirely my fault. I know, I know, I’m completely mental.
After hours spent tossing and turning – as was a common occurrence for me – I finally drifted to sleep. My dreams were filled with dark figures in the night, hiding in the shadows of unstable buildings. Ghosts taunting me as they watched the world go by without them.
At 7am, the sound of my alarm going off under my pillow was a welcome surprise, a jerk into the light once more. I lay staring at the ceiling, my heart pounding loudly in my chest at the thought of returning to the support group today. I searched for some excuse to stay in bed for the foreseeable future, but nothing came.
When the alarm rang out again, marking ten minutes since it first went off, I pulled myself out of my trance and slowly out of bed. The city was just waking up and I would have given anything to hide in my room for the rest of the day. But the universe had other plans, I may not have been ready for day two, but it was sure as hell ready for me.