I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.
That’s what I kept telling myself, for weeks, after Tony’s funeral.
As garbage overflowed in my kitchen.
I’m okay.
As vodka bottles rolled out from under my couch.
I’m okay.
As rotting food covered the plates that were piled up next to my bed.
I’m okay.
As every text, every phone call, every email filled me with dread.
I’m okay.
As my hair became matted from not showering.
I’m okay.
As I sat in the dark, in my bed, just staring. For hours and hours and hours.
I’m okay.
The day I walked into my apartment after attending Tony’s funeral, I told myself that the next day would be better. From the next day, I would be okay. I had spent the two weeks after he died, in bed, letting grief freeze my life. But starting from tomorrow, I would get up, clean the apartment, get back to work, see the people I’d been avoiding. Starting from tomorrow, I’d get back to my life.
Then tomorrow came, and it still felt too hard. I didn’t have the energy to get out of bed. I just wanted to sleep for a little while longer. Just a little while. But I’ll definitely be okay tomorrow.
Then the next tomorrow came, and I was still so tired. My body had shut down. My brain was quiet. My heart was numb. One more day, Rosie, I’d tell myself, as I closed the blinds to shut out the sun. Indulge in this for one more day; then get up. Tomorrow you’ll be okay.
I told myself that the next tomorrow and the next tomorrow and the next tomorrow and the next.
My agent would call me about work. ‘I’m okay,’ I’d say. ‘I’ll definitely get that done.’ And in my head, I really thought I would. I’m still hiding today, but tomorrow I won’t be, I thought. My publisher would call about the progress of this book. ‘I’m okay!’ I’d reply, no doubt in my mind that I would get started tomorrow. Mamamia, the website I freelanced for, would ask me about the recaps of The Bachelor I had to write. ‘I’m okay,’ I’d email back. ‘So ready!’ Certain that by then, the emptiness would be gone.
My friends called me, my sisters called me, my mum called me. ‘I’m okay,’ I’d say. ‘I’m okay.’ And I really thought I would be. I may be getting through today by hiding and sleeping and forcing myself to drink vodka even though it made me feel sick. But that’s today. I just need to feel numb today.
I really thought every tomorrow would be the one where I would pull myself out of it.
I agreed to go to London, to attend and write about the world premiere of the new Bridget Jones movie – a kind of ‘fish-out-of-water lol look at hilarious and awkward Rosie trying to fit in at a fancy premiere’ kind of thing. ‘Sure, I can do that,’ I told my agent. It was still weeks away. By then I’d be okay. Definitely. London became my cut-off date. Get it together before London, Rosie. Be okay before London.
I sat in my apartment, trying desperately not to feel anything, while the world piled up around me. The few occasions I did venture out, I felt dizzy, and disoriented, like my brain could no longer function in the outside world. The sun irritated me, and just to walk felt exhausting. I needed to be inside. In my apartment. In my bedroom. In my bed.
As days stretched into weeks, I started to lose track of how long it had been. I would wake up, try to eat, add the plate to the floor of my bedroom. Then I’d sit in bed in a trance, for hours, cutting the bottoms of my feet. My sheets became stained with blood, but I didn’t change them. I couldn’t even be bothered changing my clothes. When there was no more left to cut, I kept picking, picking, picking at the skin, digging until my fingernails were brittle. I’d watch the same TV series I’d already seen over and over and over. Seinfeld. The West Wing. 30 Rock. Frasier. Anything I already knew every word of. Anything that would fill my brain without forcing it to think.
Late at night, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d drink. But it wasn’t for enjoyment, or to satisfy a craving. I would have to force myself to get drunk. It felt like a chore, but when the cutting was done, and the TV was done, I needed something to take over. I needed to be able to fall asleep without having to endure those painful silent minutes in the dark, waiting to drift off. There is nothing worse than the painful silence while you wait to fall asleep. It’s an empty space just begging to be filled with the worst kind of thoughts. So I’d drink, and put the TV up as loud as it would go, filling the space up that way before any other thoughts could get in.
But I still kept convincing myself that I was okay. Just one more day like this, I’d say to myself. Just one more day in this bed. Tomorrow you’ll be okay.
Then London was tomorrow.
I forced myself to shower, even though every bone in my body was begging me to lie back down. I washed my hair, I packed my suitcase, I posted an excited photo on Instagram. I was going to be okay. This was going to be okay.
I was flying business class, staying in a fancy hotel, going to a red carpet film premiere, and I was being paid for it. Plus, one of my best friends, Kate, lived in London, so I was sure this trip was going to snap me out of whatever . . . funk had been going on with me. It wasn’t my mental health – it was just a funk. I was grieving. I was a bit sad. But it was not my mental health.
My mental-health problems were in the past, and I was quite comfortable leaving them there. I had worked hard with a psychiatrist, for more than ten years, to deal with my PTSD and anxiety. I understood what triggers I needed to be careful about. I understood my severe childhood trauma meant my brain had developed differently to other people’s. I understood that flashbacks, suicidal thoughts and dissociative behaviour were all symptoms I’d experienced, and talked and written about publicly. But I was happy to talk about them publicly in the past tense only. My mental-illness story was one of past recovery, not current struggle. ‘Recovered’ means it’s over, I’m good now, I can talk about this because it’s only in my past. That girl was a crazy lady. This girl is fine. I’m okay.
This definitely wasn’t my mental illness. It definitely wasn’t my PTSD or my anxiety. I’d just been in a funk, and now I was going to have fun in London and see my friend and everything would be okay.
For the first couple of days, it was. I completely flipped out over flying in business class, because I’d never done it before and couldn’t believe how the other half had been living the entire time. Did you know there’s a menu? And that you can order from it whenever you want? And somebody comes and gives you pyjamas and while you’re changing into them they turn your seat INTO A BED? I was certain I was already starting to feel better (and I was now determined that my life reach a point of success that would ensure I’d never have to fly with the plebs in economy again).
I knew the premiere was meant to be fun, and it was, sort of – I looked sufficiently overwhelmed and awkward on the red carpet, which Kate photographed perfectly. But I just felt empty. Like a faker. I was mimicking having fun, but I didn’t feel anything. Maybe it’s just the premiere, I figured. You’re not really a party person anyway. You’ll start enjoying this when you hang out with Kate the next few days. She was going to show me around London, and I was glad that she was prepared to do every Tudor-themed tourist activity I had set my daggy heart on. I was outside, I had make-up on. My hair was washed. I was functioning, and I was doing it all on the other side of the world. I was going to be okay. Definitely going to be okay.
Then came the gastro.
After a sleep-in, I left my hotel the next day, planning on having a little stroll around on my own before meeting Kate for dinner and a show in the West End. I had requested traditional English pub food and The Book of Mormon. Perfect. Rosie was back.
I made it about halfway down the street when something really didn’t feel right. I had the unmistakable sweetness in my mouth that suggested vomit was on its way. Also the unmistakable rumbling in my bowels that suggested poo was simultaneously on its way. I saw a McDonald’s across the street. I looked back at my hotel, a few hundred metres away. I knew I could make it to the McDonald’s, but with that came the risk of being stuck in the bathroom for an extended period of time (this did not feel like it was going to be a quick session). I could try for the hotel, where I’d have the safety of my room, but it was further away, so that came with the risk of not making it there at all.
I stood in the middle of that London street, something definitely about to burst out both ends of me, trying to decide on the best course of action.
I chose to make a break for the hotel. It was further away, but the idea of being stuck in that McDonald’s bathroom, chained to a toilet by diarrhoea and/or vomit, was enough to make me risk it.
I hobbled down the street as quickly as a sick person can. I was breaking out in a cold sweat now. My whole body was clammy. This vomit was coming, and it was coming soon. I made it to the lobby of the hotel. My room was on level three, towards the back of the building. I stood, perfectly still, trying to will my body into holding everything in.
‘Are you alright, Miss?’ the doorman asked, clearly concerned.
I turned my head to face him. He looked into my eyes. I looked into his. We shared an odd moment of connection, as the whole world around us slowed down, and we both knew what was coming.
I spun around, faced the nearest wall and vomited. Violently. The doorman called for a cleaner, who came running out of nowhere with a bucket. I kept apologising. They kept asking if I needed a doctor. I didn’t want to tell them that all I really needed at that moment was a toilet, because this was all about to happen again, except out the other end.
I insisted that I just needed my room, and a lovely staff member walked me there, which seemed thoughtful at the time, but in hindsight was probably just to make sure I didn’t cover any more hotel surfaces in spew.
I barged into my room, ran to the toilet, and didn’t leave its side for the next three days. Well, except to visit the doctor, who told me that I most likely had gastro, probably picked up at some point on my flight over from Melbourne. I couldn’t believe my beloved business class had forsaken me.
Kate, brilliant friend that she is, went to the chemist and got me diarrhoea pills and water with electrolytes and called every day to see if I needed anything. I couldn’t believe I was spending the bulk of my trip in London hugging the toilet and waiting for my friend to bring me anti-poop pills.
The day I was meant to fly home, I was no longer vomiting or pooping, but still felt very suspect. I had barely slept, and was sure I was dehydrated, but was hoping I’d just black out on the plane in that swanky business-class bed and feel much better by the time I got back to Melbourne.
I didn’t sleep at all on the first leg of the trip, so at the stopover at Abu Dhabi airport I went looking for paracetamol – hopefully strong paracetamol that would guarantee I’d finally get some rest on the way to Melbourne. It was in a red box, surrounded by cheesy camel statues and genie lamps that were meant for white-lady tourists like me. ‘EXTRA,’ I thought, reading the box. That sounds intense. It’s probably filled with codeine. ‘Good. Perfect. That’s what I need.’ I was so out of it that I bought two genie lamps and a camel, then left them in the airport lounge.
I was thirsty, dizzy, tired. The crowds around me were starting to make me anxious. I wanted to get back to my bedroom. Something was wrong. My brain didn’t feel right.
I took four of the fancy, intense ‘EXTRA’ paracetamol on the plane, but I didn’t fall asleep. One of the flight attendants asked me at one point if I was okay. She said I looked distressed. I wasn’t sure. I was tired, I told her. Just really tired.
By the time I landed back in Melbourne, I’d barely slept in three nights. I definitely hadn’t slept at all in the last twenty-four hours. The taxi driver who took me home looked at me the same way the flight attendant had. He asked if I was okay, if I needed him to pull over. How bad could I actually look, I thought? I’m okay, I said. Just really tired.
I finally stepped back into my apartment. It smelled really bad. The garbage and plates and kitty litter I’d let pile up in the weeks before I left were still there. The blinds were still closed. Everything was dark. Tony’s face flashed across my eyes. The plastic one. The face of the plastic doll in the chequered suit. I gasped, and leaned into the wall just inside the front door. I was dizzy. I felt faint, foggy. Like my brain needed glasses. I closed my eyes tight and kept shaking my head, trying to snap myself out of whatever was happening. The plastic face flashed in front of me again. Wait, was it in front of me? Or just in my mind’s eye? My mind’s eye, obviously. Definitely. Not actually in front of me. That would be crazy.
I went to my bedroom and crawled into bed. The sheets were still stained with blood from my cutting. The bed was still surrounded by plates. On one side of me, on the carpet, was dried vomit that I’d never bothered to clean up. I pulled the covers up over my head and tried to slow my breathing. The plastic face suddenly appeared in front of me again. Appeared, or flashed? Did I just picture it, or did I see it? What the hell was happening to me? It felt like I had never been to London. Now that I was back in my bed, it genuinely seemed like I had never left. My brain seemed to be rushing forward and back through time – was I going to London tomorrow, or had I just walked in the door? Was I dizzy because the walls were moving, or did it just seem like the walls were moving because I was dizzy? The plastic face. The chequered suit.
SLEEP, ROSIE. You have to sleep. Just sleep, and you’ll be okay.
I drifted in and out, but I couldn’t seem to sleep for more than an hour at a time. I couldn’t tell how many days, if any, had passed. The walls were moving. I could swear that the bed was shaking. I couldn’t stop seeing Tony’s face, the cold, plastic face, in front of me. I tried watching TV; it didn’t work. I tried drinking; it didn’t work. I knew I couldn’t be seeing what I was seeing. I was going to be okay. Things were going to be okay.
But what if they’re not, Rosie? THE PLASTIC FACE. Your dad was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his early twenties, maybe it’s come for you now. THE BED IS SHAKING. Maybe you’ve been crazy all along. THE CHEQUERED SUIT. Maybe this is just you – THE WALL IS MOVING – losing your mind.
Breathe, Rosie. Breathe. You’re just tired. You’ll be okay. It’s going to be okay. You are okay.
I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.
NOTHING IS OKAY, ROSIE. TONY IS DEAD. YOU ARE ALONE. HE WILL NEVER HOLD YOUR HAND AGAIN AND YOU WILL NEVER MAKE IT THROUGH LIFE WITHOUT HIM.
Everything stopped. My brain clicked into a false clarity.
Nothing is okay. Nothing will ever be okay. I know what I have to do.
I went and sat on the couch. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been out of my bedroom. I started to drink. Forcing down shots of vodka so fast it made me gag. When I couldn’t do that anymore, I mixed it with just enough soda that it was drinkable. I kept going and going and going and going. Once I’d drunk all that I could bear, I knew what I needed to make me sleep. I just wanted to sleep, always. I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t going to be okay. My brain was broken. Tony was gone. I was losing my mind. I was crazy like my dad. I couldn’t see a future in which I’d ever be able to leave this apartment.
Dying seemed logical. Dying seemed inevitable. Dying seemed . . . preferable.
This was how I would be okay. I was going to be okay.
I found the fancy, intense ‘EXTRA’ paracetamol I’d bought in Abu Dhabi. I knew death didn’t come from regular headache pills, but these were strong.
Then I lay down and waited to sleep.
I’m not sure how long it was. Maybe fifteen minutes, maybe an hour – I’d lost all track of time. But all of a sudden, I was hit with a brutal, stabbing pain in my stomach. I gasped with pain. My skin started to burn and tingle, and my head seemed like it was filled with cement. I ran to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet, my stomach feeling like it was eating itself with every heave. I looked down into the bowl. It was bright green, like toxic waste had just come out of me. I stared at it, in a stupor, then it hit me.
Fuck.
What the fuck have I done? What fucking colour is that? FUCK.
Something about that bright green toilet bowl snapped me back to reality. I walked back over to the couch, sat down, and dialled my closest friend Jacob. He didn’t answer. I dialled again. No answer. I called the next closest friend.
‘Jamila,’ I said. ‘I’m not okay.’ I finally said it to someone. ‘I’m not okay.’
Things happened pretty quickly after that, or so I’m told. I can’t remember anything until a few hours later in the hospital. I had, after all, consumed a lot of vodka, so I was wildly, ridiculously drunk.
Jamila’s husband called an ambulance, and she met them at my apartment. Apparently, I spent the entire ride to the hospital giving a rather eloquent and heartfelt lecture about the failings of Australia’s mental-healthcare system. So, you’re welcome, overworked and underpaid ambos. I remember flashes of running to the bathroom. I remember feeling more sick than I’d ever felt in my life. Bright lights. Jamila stroking my hair. Almost collapsing before a nurse ran over and caught me. Something about finally reaching Jacob. Looking up and seeing I was in a bed. Needles, so many needles.
It turns out I had slept for more than an hour before I woke up and called Jamila, which meant it was too late to pump my stomach. So, I was just attached to a drip and told to wait. It was going to be at least sixteen hours. The nausea was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Worse than being pregnant with Kate Middleton’s vomiting disease. Imagine the most sick you’ve ever made yourself from drinking, but it lasts for three days. That’s what my next three days were like. And because of the damn caffeine in the damn tablets, I couldn’t just sleep through the worst of it. I just looked at Nikes and sang that damn Subway Tush song again and again and again and again.
But mentally, I was already feeling better. When the alcohol started to wear off and my brain could process regular human thoughts again, I could finally, for the first time in two months, look at what had been happening to me since Tony died. It was like I’d hit a reset button in my mind. I just felt so . . . relieved. The first thing I was sure of is that I didn’t want to die, and I was so glad the bright green toxic waste I’d hurled into my toilet snapped me out of myself enough to call someone. I had certainly wanted something to stop, but it wasn’t my life. I think it was the pain, the grief, the fear, the exhaustion. Tony’s death had triggered my PTSD in a way that it had not been triggered in a long time. Tony had been my family, my protector, my person. Tony was my person. And while I had been sure that the worst of my mental-health problems were behind me, I hadn’t been tested by anything as traumatic as my childhood. Tony’s death had tested me, and I had clearly not done so well.
But to stumble with your mental health is not a bad thing. I think I had become cocky about my mental health, and that needed to change. Mental illness will always be with me, and I can’t pretend like things might not get that bad again. I needed to fall down to know that I could survive the fall. I almost didn’t, but also, I did. Hopefully, if there’s a next time, I’ll be more prepared for it.
While I was in and out of lucidity, singing the wrong words to the Subway Tush song repeatedly, my friends wrapped around me in a circle of support. Mia paid for my younger sister Tayla to fly from Sydney to Melbourne to be with me. Dimity went and cleaned my apartment, which, let me tell you, can’t have been easy. Jamila put her life on hold (husband and son included) to stay by my side. Jacob stopped working for a week to make sure I wouldn’t be alone. Jenn flew my cat up to Sydney and had someone take care of him. Phill organised movers to take my stuff home, because Tayla agreed to let me move back into the apartment I had shared with Tony in Sydney.
There were so many brilliant people holding my hand.
The clearest memory I have after calling Jamila from my apartment is witnessing the enema poo blast, and Jacob’s horrified face in the aftermath. He sat with me all day, leaving only when Jamila came to take over. Mia arrived from Sydney later that afternoon, and I had just been given an anti-nausea shot, so I had a bizarre conversation with her where I laughed and cracked jokes and acted like we were just hanging out in a coffee shop. Unfortunately, the cruelty of the anti-nausea shot is that it only lasts twenty minutes, so you get a brief glimpse of how good you could be feeling, before going back to needing to hurl repeatedly. I started leaning over the side of the bed towards the end of Mia’s visit. She knew that was her cue to leave.
Before she left, though, she said to me, ‘Rosie, next time this happens, you have to tell us what’s going on. You need to reach out to someone on the way down. You need to tell us you’re not okay.’
She had fear in her face. So did Jacob. Just as Jamila had the night before. And I’ll never let go of the guilt I feel for making the people I love feel that fear. But I didn’t know how to respond to Mia when she said that. How do you reach out on the way down when you don’t even realising you’re falling? Nobody wants to feel this bad. Nobody wants to get to the point I’d reached. If I thought I could stop it, or even that there was something to stop, I would have. Wouldn’t I? I’d been suicidal before, during the worst periods of my PTSD, and I never imagined for a second that I’d end up there again. I, more than anyone, knew the signs. I knew when things were getting away from me. I knew when it felt like I was floating out into space with nothing to tether me down. When I said I was okay, I really didn’t think I was lying. Because I really believed, or maybe just hoped, that I would be.
Until I wasn’t.
‘I know,’ I said to Mia. ‘I know. If it happens again, I’ll say something.’
I didn’t know how else to answer.
A psychologist was sent to see me, and I chatted to her for about ten minutes. I’d been in the public mental-health system before, and I knew it wasn’t the place for me. She also knew they barely had space for the patients they already had, so she seemed relieved when I told her I was okay. ‘I’m okay,’ I said, and actually meant it for the first time in months. ‘I’m really okay.’ She said it was fine for me to go home. And I knew that it was.
I can’t be sure how much time had passed by the time I left, but it got to the point where they were pretty desperate for me to free up the bed, and I was pretty desperate to get away from the curtain covered in shit. Jacob discharged me, I took one last look at that curtain, and we left.
‘Jacob,’ I said, in the Uber on the way to his house. ‘I really want to buy a pair of Nikes tomorrow.’
Tayla and I stayed at Jacob’s for a week, before we flew back to Sydney together. In treatment over the next month, I learned that I’d had a complete nervous breakdown, culminating in the night I tried to take my own life. After months of intense emotion bubbling under the surface, apparently the gastro, dehydration and lack of sleep had just tipped my brain over the edge. I was briefly hallucinating, but I wasn’t schizophrenic. I wasn’t turning into my dad. I wasn’t the ‘crazy lady’ I had always feared. My body and mind just momentarily gave out, while under extreme pressure. My mental health had humbled me. I’m okay, but I also know now that I can’t guarantee I always will be. But that’s the best I can do. For now, I’m okay. Really.
Living back in Sydney, in my old apartment, with traces of Tony everywhere, I was finally able to process his loss, to allow myself to indulge in the memories I have of him, without fear of the pain being too unbearable.
I thought about the last time we ever spoke. I was sitting in the back of an Uber, having just gone to an audition for a major new Aussie TV show. Tony had been video-calling from Austin all week, practising my lines with me and convincing me I could do it. The night before, I was going to cancel because of nerves (and just, you know, my general chronic low self-esteem), but Tony wouldn’t let me. Even from Austin, he was holding my hand. He was on the phone with me during the whole car ride to the audition, then, when I could no longer talk in the quiet waiting room, I started sending him sneaky photos of the other girls waiting to go in, lamenting about how beautiful they all were and how I was clearly the ‘let’s see if a chubby, funny girl could maybe work’ random person on the audition list. He immediately drew farts coming out of all of their bums and sent the photos back to me. It wasn’t a sophisticated method of support, but it definitely helped. It was the first professional acting audition I’d done since leaving drama school. I’d moved into writing and loved it and had just kind of accepted that the acting part had been left behind. I was petrified, but I got through it, only forgetting my lines out of sheer terror a couple of times.
I called Tony as soon as I was in the Uber coming home.
‘Tonz, it was fucking awful!’ I said. ‘I was so bad! And all those other girls were so beautiful! And I forgot my lines! And I had to hold a tea-towel and I didn’t know what the fuck to do with the tea-towel! Holy fucking Oprah, Tony. I was terrible.’
We laughed and laughed and laughed as I took him through every painful detail of how I screwed the whole thing up.
Then we talked about other stuff. Just random, normal stuff. His brother’s wedding was coming up, and he was flying over so we could go to it together in Griffith. He had a bunch of job interviews that week in some bars and restaurants. He’d been swimming a lot in the pool at his apartment complex, and joked that he was turning into a fitness queen. I teased him about the drunk messages he’d sent me a few nights earlier. He teased me about my latest disastrous Tinder hook-up. Then, as the car pulled up to my apartment building, we started to say our goodbyes.
‘Okay, love you boo,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you soon about the deets for Joseph’s wedding!’
‘Okay boo, love you too. Miss you so much!’
‘Miss you too!’
I was about to hang up.
‘Wait, Ro!’
‘What?’ I asked, only half concentrating, trying to get out of the Uber.
‘I really have a feeling about this show,’ he said. I laughed. ‘No seriously! I think you’re going to get it, Ro. I just . . . I know you’re going to be on this show. You got this, Rosie. You got this.’
‘Lol, I don’t think so, but thanks boo,’ I replied.
Then we hung up.
Not long after Tony died, I was offered a part on the show. I was also asked to be on the writing team, so basically my dream career from the time I was five years old.
Obviously, every day I went to work, I was petrified, because that’s just my usual state of being. But I just kept telling myself what Tony had told me:
You got this, Rosie. You got this.
I’m not sure how I’m going to get through life without him holding my hand. But I know that I will. I may not do it perfectly. I may stumble again. (In fact, I will almost definitely stumble again.) But I will get through it. Tony’s hand may not be there when I reach out for it anymore, but, in his infinite generosity and love, he left me with the exact words I need to get through each day without him.
You got this, Rosie. You got this.
When I think about Tony saying that, when I think how much he believed it, I feel okay.
And that’s the truth.
(Oh and by the way. . . The day after I left hospital, I bought a pair of Nikes. I still don’t know the words to that Will & Grace song. The outcome of the shit curtain remains unknown.)