28

At first on the adult ward, I try to force myself out of my bedroom for a little bit of time each day.

I tell myself firmly that I’m never going to settle in if I stay in my bedroom all the time. Yes, most of the patients are far older than me (I think the lady closest in age to me is thirty-two years old), but they are probably nice people. Is it that different, talking to them, than it was talking to patients on the adolescent ward? Some of them were only thirteen or fourteen – there must have been a maturity gap there. It’s going to be fine eventually; it’s just going to take some work on my side.

I am convinced of this, so I watch films with others in the lounge and I join in games of bingo (could there be more ironic of a cliché?). On days that feel harder, I bring bits of my art stuff downstairs and work on it at the dining-room table. At least I’m staring at four different walls, I tell myself. But, honestly, I’m not sure it’s helping. My total friend count is still resolutely zero.

The only time out of my room that I genuinely enjoy is time with the therapists. Not the psychology, look-into-your-childhood therapists, but rather the activity therapists, who let me participate in cooking meals and help me get my A-level work underway and take me to the library to pick up reading material to pass the time. These few hours doing things like this are definitely the best hours I spend outside of my bedroom. Without these, I’m not sure how I’d be.

In fairness to the psychology therapists, though, I do also like the lady who’s been assigned to me. Her name is Katy. She’s pretty young, which has to make it easier to talk to her. And she’s definitely got the proper qualifications to be a psychologist; I know this because I Googled her and read some of her doctorate thesis. For some reason, she seemed to think it was slightly hilarious that I had done this. More than anything, I think she just hadn’t expected it.

I’m not sure if I trust her yet. She seems nice, and friendly, and like she is the kind to listen; but I don’t know her yet. I am adopting a drip-feeding approach; I’m telling her a few small things first, as a test. If she reacts helpfully to these small things, maybe I’ll tell her some bigger ones.

Maybe I’ll tell her why we crashed.

I don’t need to adopt this approach with the nursing staff, though – primarily because our relationship quickly becomes one of a mutual intense dislike. They are not like Claudie here. I’m ‘difficult’ in their books – and I find them patronising and kind of snarky. There is literally not one of them that I get along with enough to trust them properly.

This does not make it easier to force myself out of my room, admittedly, and I start to retreat more and more. I speak to Katy on an appointment basis, and the activity therapists will generally pop up to see me if there’s something I can join in with. The rest of the time, I find myself occupying myself in my room. I’m not sure how this sneaks up on me in the way that it does; it just one day becomes apparent that I can’t physically force myself to play any more bingo. It isn’t even working. I don’t feel more comfortable, I’m not making friends. Why the fuck am I bothering?

When I hit this thought, the art at the dining-room table stops pretty quickly too, because that’s helping even less. No one wants to talk to me. Not, I think, because of any malice; probably not even consciously. I think it’s my fault. I panic so much when someone does talk to me that it’s probably easier for everyone when they stay silent with me.

And, besides – what do we have in common? Fuck all, that’s what. The age gap is a massive part of it, but even with that aside, there isn’t anyone here that I feel could be a friend given a bit of time. I’m alone here.

And I’m isolated, too – because that unescorted leave, that I was promised all adults get, is nowhere in sight. I’m not even self-harming, as far as they know; obviously, I’m still doing it in secret, but the doctors don’t know this. They are just refusing me unescorted leave because apparently I’m not ‘engaging’ and talking with the nursing staff. This frustrates me. I don’t want to talk to the nursing staff. I don’t get on with the nursing staff. How is that anything to do with my mental state?

I do point this out to them but it doesn’t really seem to convince anyone. Even Katy, who I believe is advocating for me in her own way in staff meetings, doesn’t seem to think that I’m doing as I should.

It’s hard, though, because I’m aware that the more time I spend in my room on my own, no matter what I’m doing – well, the more depressed I get. It’s probably visible to them, and that’s why they’re worried to let me out. I should give them some credit, there, I suppose; but I don’t know what they’re expecting to change by just keeping me here.

I see my parents, twice a week. Aside from cooking and going to the library with the activity coordinators, that is the extent of my social schedule.

I don’t understand how anyone is supposed to feel well when this is their life.

I’m angry, and I’m frustrated, and I’m sad. Amelie has left for uni; she phones me once to ask me how to use a washing machine. We laugh, and I miss her. I’m not sure if she misses me. After a while, she stops calling.

I video chat with Flick, even to the point of getting quite close with her, which does alleviate the loneliness a bit. But it’s the same as with Amelie. As close as we all were at Christmas… well, six months later, and we continue to drift apart exponentially. When I first arrived here, all of us from the adolescent ward were still all embroiled in each other’s dramas. Now? For everyone else, at least, real life starts to overtake hospital life.

It must be me. Right? It must be me. That’s why no one wants anything to do with me anymore. That’s why no one wants to stay. It’s because there’s something wrong with me.

Zoe never made me feel like there was something wrong with me.

I can’t keep going over this.

Every time I meet a new staff member, I hope that my EUPD will do its thing and make them my new favourite person. That’s all it was, with Zoe, right? Imbalanced brain chemicals and shit? They can’t have been real, all those things that I felt for her. It must just be chemicals. I didn’t know her. My chest shouldn’t be hurting like I’ve been stabbed with a rusty fucking screwdriver.

For whatever reason, though, my EUPD won’t oblige and just pick someone else. Maybe it’s just being contrary, but for whatever reason, it just won’t do it. I can’t understand why. I need it to pick someone else. I need to feel the highs! I can’t keep feeling all the lows for the rest of my life, without Zoe. That’s the only thing that I can be sure of. That Zoe isn’t coming back. Ever. I’m never going to see Zoe again.

This affects me so profoundly that I end up mentioning it to Katy. I can’t not mention it – when Katy and I start to do a timeline of my life, and we reach the hospital section, it wouldn’t be right to not mention Zoe. She has been such a big part of my life since I was sixteen.

I’m not a hundred per cent sure that Katy fully understands what my feelings for Zoe are. But I think she understands how sad it makes me that she’s not with me anymore.

I guess that is something, but without anything else to grip onto, I can feel myself quickly slipping. I am getting sadder and sadder. How I felt on the bridge, how I felt at first in hospital, how I felt for all that time in school… it’s all coming back. This time, though, I don’t know how anyone is going to save me. I’m already on a locked ward. What can anyone do?

I sleep a lot. I’m napping in the day and crawling into bed before 10pm, the TV still on just in case my brain wants to think about anything that isn’t 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown as I fall asleep. I can’t think about everything that’s happened to get to this point. It’s not even self-preservation as it might have been in the past. Now, it’s just… all I can do. I physically don’t know what will happen if I think about it.

It’s probably ironic that they think I can’t be trusted to go out alone in case I hurt myself, but they leave me alone in my room all day to hurt myself instead. I should be angrier about this, I think. Right now, it doesn’t feel like I’ve got the energy to care about anything at all.

The one thing that I do have the energy to think about, though, is getting out. Not in a positive, let’s-beat-my-mental-health way – in a what’s-the-best-way-to-jump-the-fence kind of way. I can’t keep doing this. I’m so tired. And even though I complain that the staff haven’t got a fucking clue what I do in my room all day, I do know that there isn’t anything here that I can actually end my life with. There’s nothing high enough to hang myself off, nothing sharp enough to slit my wrists deep enough. This is purgatory.

I hate that I’m back to this. I thought I had done my time. I thought… I thought that missing my eighteenth birthday, being at least a year behind my friends in getting to uni – I thought that all of that was an exchange for me being better. For me being recovered. Now it feels like I went through it all just to end up back at square one.

There are no patients here who would miss me. The staff don’t like me. Amelie has made new friends at uni. My hospital friends are back in their proper lives. And my parents? My parents can do without driving to Weston-super-Mare twice a week. If now’s not the time, I don’t know when is.

Katy knocks on my door one afternoon as I’m lying sleeplessly on my bed, pretending to read. I do this a lot. It satisfies the nursing staff because they can look through the window in my door and see I’m not dead without having to interact with me in any way at all.

(I’m being unfair, I know. But right now, I don’t feel like being very fair to the people keeping me here.)

I sit up properly on my bed as Katy slowly pushes my door open, carrying a stack of print-outs that I suspect she wants me to read. As always, she looks immaculate, straightened hair swishing over her shoulder and nails perfectly manicured. She is smiling at me as she comes in; but it isn’t long before the smile falters. She tilts her head, frowning at me.

“Are you OK?” she asks, clearly concerned. “You look…”

She doesn’t finish the sentence but I’m already shaking my head. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I tell her quickly. It’s easier this way. It’s easier that I just lie.

She’s still frowning a bit, though, as she looks at me. I can tell that she knows there is something I’m not telling her. She tilts her head slightly as she sits down on the edge of the bed. I can tell that she wants to ask more questions; but maybe she’s not sure what kind of response she’s going to get. Her eyes flick around my room instead; it’s not exactly tidy. Still, she doesn’t mention the mess as her eyes land instead on the half-finished piece of art on my bedroom floor.

“How’s your homework going?” Katy asks, her tone light.

She’s allowed to ask, I guess – the artwork was a therapy assignment from her. Last session, she brought me this huge piece of paper and told me to draw how I see things. Like the model student I am, I have already made a dent in it, two days later.

“Good,” I tell her, relieved I don’t have to lie. “I like doing things like this.”

Katy smiles. “I’m glad,” she says mildly. For a minute, we stay quiet as she continues to look at the picture. Suddenly, her eye lands on something, and she glances back at me, a little hesitantly.

“Is that the crash?” she asks, her voice still gentle but much more tentative.

I look away, breaking eye contact. I don’t really know why I put that part of the drawing on. I am just spending so much of my time frustrated, and upset – and I don’t know how to deal with it. I know, though, that I can’t talk to her. Not about this.

“Yes,” I answer shortly, still looking at the carpet.

I hear a small breath huff out from Katy. Clearly, she’s trying to think of the best way to coax what I’m feeling out of me. And, clearly, she knows that she’s going to have to do it very delicately.

Her head is still tilted at me. “I know… you mentioned… that there was a reason for the crash,” she asks softly. “Is it… have you drawn it here?”

I feel her eyes on my face as I continue to stare down at the carpet. This is the last thing I want to have a discussion about. I don’t know how to have a discussion about it. Every time I think about it – my stomach lurches as I remember the few minutes before the crash. The conversation that was meant to be light-hearted, suddenly taking a turn…

I shake my head at Katy, my eyes dropping to my lap. “No,” I say quietly.

I sound oddly calm considering the fact that even the thought of what happened is making my heart pound in my chest. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to admit that I nearly annihilated my own family, just because I was selfish enough to want to…

Katy is watching me closely. “You know you can tell me anything,” she says, her own voice quiet.

I shake my head again. I can’t tell her. I don’t want to tell her.

That day, I had it all mapped out. It had taken so many hours of research to actually come up with a viable option; as bad as I felt at home, I knew running away just to end up sleeping on the streets wasn’t the right thing to do. What would that have even achieved? In any case, I had started Googling. At first, it was almost casual – just to see, just to imagine – but then I had realised that maybe I had options after all. I felt fucking miserable, and something had to give.

When my parents were out, I started to practice for the exercise test that I would need to pass to get into the army. I knew I was so unathletic that a sudden interest in running and endurance would be highly suspicious. I didn’t want anyone to suspect what I was going to do. I didn’t want to give anyone a chance to stop me.

The application form was filled in and ready to send. I’d never had a job before so I couldn’t provide a reference, but I hoped that when it came to it, I could persuade one of my teachers to write me something. Not that they would understand why I was doing this. They hadn’t heard me screaming and I could see why this move of mine would be hard to understand.

We had been to the cinema, the night of the crash. At this point, I was avoiding going anywhere with my parents, since it tended to end in an argument. Besides, there were few places that they wanted to go that I would want to go to as well. The cinema was one of the very few neutral-ish grounds that we could go to together. Our relationship wasn’t great, but to be fair, we did have similar tastes in media.

And it had gone OK, actually. Maybe it was because you’re not allowed to talk in the cinema, but we hadn’t gotten into an argument. My overriding memory of the night isn’t the film – I can’t even remember which film we’d been to see – and I barely even remember sitting in the cinema. I don’t really remember walking back to the car, or getting into it, or discussing what we were having for tea. All of that is foggy.

What I do remember… well, once we were in the car and there wasn’t a film playing, the conversation turned very sour, very quickly. It was a depressingly familiar situation. If my parents weren’t shouting at each other, they would generally be shouting at me. This was… well, just one of the reasons that I wanted to leave. I hated living on eggshells.

It was at each other, that particular night. I can’t remember what the problem was. But finally I reached boiling point. I was tired of not mattering; I was tired of being an afterthought. I was fucking tired of always being wrong. Having to keep everything that was happening silent was too exhausting; though they said it was for my sake, it was just too much effort. For once, I just wanted to let something out.

And when I burst out with the fact that I had been hiding from them so carefully – when I told them that they had lost me – when I told them I was leaving…

“No,” my dad said harshly. “You’re not doing that.”

I steeled myself, forcing myself not to look away. This was my choice. For the first time, I was determined to stand up for myself. “It’s all organised,” I told him, firmly, making sure that my voice was no softer than his. As an adult, he had to be able to handle it.

“That’s ridiculous,” my mum cut in. “Your dad’s right.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Now – now – my dad’s right? When was the last time you agreed on anything?!”

Ironically, they both huffed in unison.

This was not going how I planned. “I’ve got to get away,” I said sharply, my temper piqued even though I had promised myself that I would stay calm. “I can’t take this!”

I was being honest, more so than I had been in a very long time. It was frustrating that the anger coursing through me was making it hard to make strong, well-backed-up, salient points. All I wanted was to make them listen.

“I’m not safe, like this,” I carried on – quickly, to my own frustration, becoming hysterical. “I’m done!”

And I was panicking – but I was telling the truth. I was done. I had officially checked out.

I reached out my arm to open the car door onto the road…

My mum saw, and cried out…

My dad automatically spun around in the driver’s seat…

Then he lost control of the car.

Even now, even thinking of it now, I can’t shake the solid guilt that rests on my chest. It was my fault. It was my fault. As we rolled down that bank, the car colliding with earth and trees, and I screamed – I knew from that moment that the crash was my fault. If anyone had been hurt…

And since no one was, since somehow we all survived – well, I knew that I had to drop the idea. I had to do what they wanted. The universe wanted me to do what they wanted. I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt because of me.

It is from this that I know I deserve to suffer.

I deleted the application. I let my newfound fitness melt away by staying in and eating Oreos every weekend. My dad has never mentioned it since. I don’t even know if my mum remembers, since she got so concussed in the accident. I think the fact that the subject has been so taboo has made it even harder to admit to anyone.

They knew why I wanted to leave. Even if they wouldn’t admit it – even if we never spoke about it again – they knew why. I suppose it acted like a reset button, in some ways. Things started to slowly taper off after that. Not exactly better, but calmer. Maybe because I finally realised that it was my fault – maybe because I knew that they had won.

We don’t fight, now. I stay quiet. It must have been my fault all along.

I suppose this should have made me feel less like I was drowning; less like I needed to scream. But even though I wasn’t being hurt anymore, somehow my head just didn’t want to remember that I wasn’t supposed to be miserable.

I’m roused from my thoughts about this when I realise that Katy is still watching me, even as I stare at the carpet. Her gaze is sympathetic, but I’m not ready to talk to her. I don’t think that I ever will be. It’s too late, now. All I want to do is sleep.

I don’t say anything; I just shake my head. There’s no point in explaining, now.

“Right,” says Katy eventually, looking unsatisfied and perhaps a little worried. “Well, I just came up here to drop off these handouts. Can you have a read before our next session?”

I’m relieved that we’ve changed the subject, so much so that I even manage to look up at Katy properly. I nod. It’s hard whenever Katy brings up our next session; recently, I feel like I can’t promise her that I’m going to be still here for it. But I can’t tell Katy that without really worrying her, and I don’t want her to be upset.

“I’ll read them,” I add, able to hear the listlessness in my own voice. If I don’t want to worry Katy, then I need to avoid talking as much as I can.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a little frown on Katy’s face, now. “Right,” she says again. “Thank you. We’ll talk in a few days, then. Yeah?”

I nod again. Katy has tried her best. I’m sorry that I keep letting her down.