Trying to deal with a problem 1976
‘Not responding to treatment’ is what he actually said. How can pills be treatment? All they do is make my mind heavy and grey like wet cement churning in a mixer. I told him that, but he just gave me some different ones to take as well. They don’t work though.
Slippers, I suppose I need them.
Nothing works, there’s just this dark giant black something inside me and it eats me up.
If I was cut open there would just be black there, no matter where you cut, just black nothing. Or something, that something, what is it, why does it do this to me, take me over? I want it to be different, but the pills, they just give it more power.
Will I need a flannel?
Half past two I’ve got to be there. Tom is taking me. Just for a rest the doctor said. I don’t want to go, I don’t want to stay. I don’t want to go to sleep and I don’t want to wake up anymore.
‘Tell me how you feel today Claire’ the doctor said earlier. But I don’t know, so how can I say. That’s the whole point, I want to know but don’t know, and no-one will accept that.
The previous year
Is that what you really believe? Then you are just the same as the rest of them. You have no idea, none of you have any idea what my life is like. I go to that stupid man every week and listen to him talk about how I am like my mum, that this is an inherited condition. More convenient, I would say, easy for everyone to just give me a damn label and then file me away.
So every problem in the world can be sorted by pills can it? No, it can’t. I am telling you that it can’t, because I know it can’t.
And to think I told you because I actually thought you would understand, be willing to stand besides me and help me fight this. I really thought that you of all people would believe me. You’re supposed to be my closest friend. How much more stupid can I get. I finally start to share just a fragment of what is happening to me, and you, my best friend, ask ‘Are you sure it’s like that? The mind can play strange tricks, you know’.
Then you tell me that the doctors they have years of experience. You tell me to give them a chance, that they want me to get well and know what is best for me. Not for me, they don’t. They have no experience of me at all. They don’t even listen when I do try and talk to them. They just want me to surrender to their decision and their treatment. So, they won’t help me if I don’t take the pills, they say there is nothing else they can do if I don’t co-operate. And you don’t believe me, and I’ve only told you one tiny thing; just one tiny thing. So I guess that just leaves me where I started then.
Activity 7.4
