Strange Summer

I’ve washed my hair and feel happily clean. The sun is shining outside and bells from the church across the street are ringing clearly. I wonder what the occasion is? Looking out of the window, I see nothing – not a wedding. Maybe the bell-ringers are practising, I think. I am wearing my grandmother’s clothes – a fuschia pink top and her bracelet – a line of glittering, coloured gemstones. It occurs to me that most women in their twenties wouldn’t want to wear their grandmother’s clothing. But she was a stylish lady even in her nineties. So I do.

The weather has been unusual this year. It’s August yet it feels autumnal. The sunlight is faint and the air is cooler. I am not relishing this fact. Autumn is my worst season and I’ve already had an episode of depression so severe that I missed my two favourite seasons. Seasons that I had been anticipating with excitement from last September. Think: Christmas and cosy winter snow. Maybe it won’t be as bad as I’m expecting.

I am listening to some exciting new music (the topic of a future post). At least I can enjoy good music. Will be going for a walk soon. Despite the signals the weather’s giving it’s still Summer and I must try to make the most of the longer days before they shorten and leave only a small window of time when it’s possible to walk.

Phone Antarctica

I had to make a phone call today. To an actual other human. And say words to them. This is not something that I look forward to; I generally hate talking over the phone, especially when I have to speak to people I don’t know. But I did it and it’s over! My voice goes high-pitched with nerves…except when it decides to go very low instead – I sound like a choir boy whose voice is breaking. This conversation was a Very Important Conversation as I was arranging a counselling appointment. My voice wavered through question after question shrieking and suddenly lowering in tone, then becoming shrill again. Sometimes I raced to the end of a sentence wanting to get it over with as soon as possible. Other times I paused for an uncomfortably long period, unsure of my answer.

”Would you prefer to be seen by a female counsellor?”

”I have no preference”.

”Would you like to be seen in your local GP’s surgery or is anywhere in the area OK?”

”Anywhere is fine”.

”Are there any days during the week when you can’t make an appointment?”

”No, any time will be alright’.

I probably sound desperate. Not caring who I see, where I go, or what time I get sent there. They could arrange the counselling at 5 AM in Antarctica and I’d still turn up, tripping over penguins and squashing puffins as I come speeding in my snowmobile.

 

To the Moors

‘I have two of those go-karts’, Grandad says proudly. ‘He means mobility scooters’, my aunt interjects. I’m in Durham visiting my grandparents’ house – it’s still my grandparents’ house even though it now only contains one grandparent.

‘It won’t be long now’. He’s been saying that for thirty years. It’s as though God – or whoever decides these things – heard his announcement of approaching mortality and chose to continuously extend his life as a kind of joke – he is now ninety-six. We’ve come to help sort through my grandmother’s belongings; a huge variety of clothes – jackets, cashmere cardigans, bags, earrings, perfume, a silk kimono, summer dresses, skirts. I reach into one of the handbags and find an unidentifiable piece of confectionery stuck to the side, half-eaten. ‘It’s as though she’s still here’ my aunt laments when I show her my discovery. ‘I would give her bits of food and find the crumbs in her handbag two weeks later’. Grandad looks thoughtful: ‘she had so many clothes. You could buy half a dozen cows for the price of all of this’ – he is a retired farmer and still exchanges all currency into cows.

He is reading a children’s book he bought at the country fair last weekend. He bought it because it was written in a large font. I remind him of the time he put his false teeth into a glass in the bathroom. I stumbled into them in the middle of the night and leapt back across to the other side of the room, startled by the disembodied teeth grinning at me from the top of the sink. He finds this amusing – Grandad likes jokes when they’re at somebody else’s expense.

We get into my aunt’s car and head out into the moors. We drive past endless stone bridges and barns, farmyards and estates, castles and rivers. We halt in the middle of the road to let sheep cross. So many sheep. Cattle graze in the fields, separated by hedgerows and more hedgerows, little squares of green. We pass the land that my family used to own – their farmhouses – then we pass my old girls’ school, a Catholic convent. My parents aren’t even Christian, so it’s strange that ended up there. It was about a century behind other schools – stuck in St Trinian’s days – girls had blazers and boaters, the school was set back from the rest of the town in imposing buildings, austere as a Victorian hospital. Behind those high gates the walls were adorned with red ivy. Nuns, all of them ancient, walked through the corridors with their pet labrador. Corridors were twisting and labyrinthine. Behind one door, a music room with a domed ceiling, behind another there was the school chapel with its stained glass windows. We used to dare each other to creep around the school at lunchtime, climb up ladders into the loft rooms; sneak up tiny spiral staircases into locked rooms. The school closed years ago and has now been converted into apartments, expensive and identical. Change is sad.

Suddenly the road turns left and steep green hills darken and drop away beneath us. We’re on the moorland and it’s covered with purple heather. We get out of the car to pick some -‘lucky heather’ – my aunt calls it.

Ordinary World

The coffee is working. Buzzing, I flit from one activity to another. Today I’ve felt more normal than I have for four months. Surely that’s a good sign. Excluding the usual Morning From Hell (but what happened? I used to like mornings…), there have been a few moments during the day when I almost couldn’t feel the depression. This is an exciting development, but I don’t want to expect too much. ”Things can always get worse again”, the inner pessimist informs me.

I am listening to Duran Duran, which is one of those statements that I feel should be followed with an apology, or at least a very full explanation. ”I won’t cry for yesterday, there’s an ordinary world…”. But this is actually a really good song, I think, not yet recovered from the surplus caffeine that’s flooding through my body. It’s good music for low moods – breezy with a good beat. Such a classic ’80s sound, it can’t possibly belong to any other decade.

”Have you had any more suicidal thoughts?” the doctor asks. ”Well…yes, but I’m not a danger” I blurt a bit too enthusiastically. She looks concerned. I try to soften the statement with a smile. Now I just look insane – who smiles when they’re discussing suicide? I stop smiling. ”I’d feel better if I saw you once a week until the counselling is arranged”, she says. Oh great. Now my doctor feels as though she has an obligation to see me. She probably can’t stand me turning up in her office every Friday, Eeyore-in-residence at the local doctors’ surgery. ”Okay, thank you”, and then I leave.

”Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand’‘. I have stopped listening to Duran Duran, but my head doesn’t realise this; the song is still on repeat in my mind. Maybe one day I’ll be smiling and dancing on a sun-drenched beach too.

Friday Morning, 5 AM

In the kitchen at 5 A.M, sun streams in through the frosted glass windows. The orchid is suddenly draped in gold, its pink-spotted petals illuminated, and the white marbled counters sparkle and shimmer as light eases itself across their  surface. I experiment with the new cafetiere and coffee beans; this is nice, I think, appreciating how much better real coffee tastes; so different from the instant I’d been making do with for the past few weeks.

I already feel the inescapable morning heaviness that I’ve come to expect. Each day I open my eyes and find it’s there to greet me – awake before I am. Now it is weighing me down, pressing its dull ache everywhere. I begin to cry as I make breakfast, then stop myself, tired of the daily routine of tears and dread. I remember that it’s my doctor’s appointment today and feel temporarily consoled by the fact. Counselling soon.

I think through the plans I have for September and weigh up the pros and cons. Go to Durham or stay in the village? Each one has its downsides.

Durham

The Good

-Will solve the family situation. Will be able to assist grandad around the house and provide company. He’ll appreciate that. My mother won’t have to worry about leaving me in the flat by myself.

-The college is right next to where they live. I can walk there from their house. No long journeys on public transport.

-I can still have weekends at home. It will be a much-appreciated break.

-Will feel a sense of achievement for having completed the course. The year won’t be wasted and when it’s done I can finally move on to university or something new.

The Bad

-Will be away from home and won’t have much to do there except work and chores.

-The location is depressing.

-The schedule might be too much. I am still very ill. Too ill to do a full-time course?

-Will be in debt if don’t complete the course. Won’t qualify for grant unless successful = more pressure.

The Village 

The Good

-Will be at home surrounded by familiar things.

-Vastly reduced pressure. No obligations. Can take my time to recover.

The Bad

-Will feel like year has been a failure if I haven’t done anything useful. That is a stress in itself.

A compromise

Look into alternatives.

-Staying at home but doing online course. Best of both worlds?

-Get a job two days a week. Focus on other things. Then do course next year.