Chapter 24
A throbbing headache soon wakes me, and I climb from the floor onto the bare mattress on my bed, pulling with me a sheet to use as a cocoon.
Every part of me is drawn tight. It is a feat to exist in each second as it appears.
Everything else will come later. And later comes.
With a light knock, Mum lets herself into my room and sits on the side of my bed in silence.
I am visited by the countless other times we have been situated like this over a lifetime, a million aftermaths.
For someone usually so forthcoming with opinions and advice, she has never been one for salt in the wounds of these moments.
She takes some deep, demonstrative breaths and strokes my arm, which flinches of its own accord.
‘Sorry,’ she says.
‘It’s fine,’ I reply.
‘Are you . . .’
‘Not really.’
‘No, I don’t suppose so,’ she says.
The air softens and I roll over to face her, not sure what to expect. She smiles a sad kind of smile, and folds her hands in her lap, watching me closely.
‘You know, I didn’t make it to my school formal,’ she says, a random segue if I ever heard one.
‘Oh, right. Why not?’
‘I had a fight with your gran.’
‘Did she stop you from going?’
‘No. I destroyed my dress, actually.’
‘Oh . . .’
‘She had made it for me, spent so many hours altering it so it fitted just right. It was baby blue, to bring out my eyes. The silk had cost a fortune.’
‘And you wrecked it?’ I lie there, swaddled in my sheet like a baby, listening to a story I have never heard before.
‘Yep, I shredded it with fabric scissors, and then ripped it apart right in front of her face.’
‘Wow.’
It is hard to imagine the version of Mum that could have caused such destruction.
‘I don’t even remember what we were fighting about,’ she says. ‘Something to do with my hair or my body or my face.’
‘Gran can be a bit . . .’
‘Yeah,’ she agrees. ‘Gran can definitely be a bit . . .’
‘And I suppose I can be a bit . . .’
‘And me,’ she says. ‘You get it from me, I’m afraid.’
This shocks me into an upright position, the acknowledgement that yes there is a thing, that no, it is not so far-fetched, or desolate, or imagined. We have breached the wall, and I want to take her hands and hold her here forever, never to go back to the other side again.
‘It’s not what you think, though. It’s not inherent badness, or failing. It’s emotional dysregulation, emotional flooding, it’s having the type of brain that feels too much, that can explode, that needs more time to process it all.’
‘Mmm,’ she replies.
‘I’m not excusing it, Mum. I shouldn’t have wrecked Christmas, or your home, or my life. I need to get better. I’ll fix everything, I promise. But understanding it, having other people understand, will help. I think it will help all of us.’
I want so badly to reach into her chest and squeeze her heart until she feels me, hears the truth of what I am trying to tell her and not just the words.
I want to share with her all the information I have been absorbing these last few months, to help her see things through a different lens.
And in this moment, I want this not even for my own restoration, but for hers.
We watch each other for a moment, and then it passes.
I feel it leave like a soul after the death of its body.
‘Well, I’m going to make a pot of tea, would you like some?’ Mum stands and dusts invisible crumbs from her lap.
‘I’m okay.’
‘I’ll bring you a cup of tea,’ she insists.
And as she goes to leave the room, she turns.
‘And Nora?’
‘Yeah?’ I say, still waiting, hopeful.
‘Could you please tidy your room, it looks like a bomb has gone off in here.’
‘Of course.’
The door clicks shut, and something inside me cracks.
We are back, but that one glimpse was worth all the pain, at least for me.
I think about Mum, in full view, as a whole person rather than just my mother.
I try to give her added context, to imagine her as a little girl.
Who was she in her teens, in her twenties?
The family mythology starts with her meeting Dad at her friend’s wedding, as though neither existed before that night.
She was married and pregnant within the year, at the same age I am now.
I try to insert myself into her version of a life and I cannot comprehend how it could be done, or who I would need to become to live it.
Marriage and motherhood must have been the salvation and the downfall of so many undiagnosed neurodivergent women before me.
While I am sure it offered a kind of social mobility and protection, it also heaped squawking children, mountains of domestic labour, and the mental load of running a family onto women expected to handle it all, never explaining why they might not be able to keep up.
Not to mention they were often entrapped like this before their frontal lobe had even developed.
It is little wonder I had reservations about the whole system right from the start, with such a clear example of how it works.
And now, I have crashed out without so much as ‘phase one’ of adulthood completed.
I barely scraped through teenhood; adulthood has so far been a disaster.
If anything, my timing on this planet has been a blessing in allowing me to know myself, to learn about why I am the way I am, in hopes of finding a way to better that.
Born one generation earlier and I could be Elsie right now, living that kind of life.
Mum has been working at it so hard, for so long, and perhaps the payoff has been worth it for her.
Perhaps the glory of fitting into that box has granted her the luxury of judging those who do not, because she believes it can be done with enough hard work.
Or perhaps she just had no other option.
I try to imagine who she might be by the time she gets to Gran’s age.
I wonder if she, like Gran, has gone too far along one path, if the idea of another way would sound like a fairy tale to her, or a joke.
People react to explanations as though they are excuses, but understanding people is a gift, even if the end result is not what I would want.
It feels like a relief to let it go, to allow myself to see Elsie in all three dimensions.
I try to bring that same lens to Dad, and to Luke, and to Olivia.
Not to ignore the things that have hurt me, or to paint over their cracks and flaws – no excuses, only explanations, context.
To accept that everyone has their own, and everyone is operating from within their given set of circumstances.
There is peace in laying down my weapons and giving up the fight against them, or for who I want them to be.
Of course I will continue trying to find that meeting point.
If we could turn towards one another, rather than away, and continue making that choice on a daily, hourly basis – connection over expectation – things might be better.
And they also might not. Either way, holding on to it all is not doing me any good, not when I also need them to let go of the version of me they have carried for so long.
I want to imagine an older Nora as someone who has integrated this new information and found a way forward, who is no longer stuck in this bed, in this room, in this headspace.
Who no longer tears it all down, but can find a way through it.
I want to be at peace. My phone pings: an email from Dr Montague saying she will make time for an emergency check-in Zoom session tomorrow.
Cinematic timing. She is going to be well and truly earning her eye-watering public-holiday rate.
In the meantime, there is one more person with whom I need to try and connect.
I would love for him to understand. And more than that, even if he does not understand, I would at least like to let him know that I know, and that I am sorry, if I am ever going to have that peace.
I text Fran to ask if he can come over – leaving the decision with him, but hoping he will recognise the urgency, despite all the ways I have failed him up until now.
After five days in hospital, a shocking number of benzodiazepines, some new medication, some sleep, and a referral to a clinical psychologist, I was on my way.
Cleo was staying with friends; I stayed in bed at the apartment.
I went to appointments. That was as much as I could handle.
I did not even have the energy for imagining at that point, only endless scrolling.
It was a comfortable loop to get stuck in, and it brought me the smallest modicum of peace.
TikToks and Instagram posts and Reddit threads and celebrity gossip sites and alternative health blogs and online shopping sprees I abandoned once I filled my cart – none of these required my thoughts or my feelings or my views.
I could suspend embodying myself, and take a long, internet-fuelled holiday.
There are memes and internet moments from that time that feel now more like old friends.
This was when the dissociation took hold, a protective measure for a mind that was so far beyond tired.
That was how I ended up at olives, a reprieve in the short term, a sign of the extra care that needed prioritising.
I cannot quite be grateful for the experience, but at least I can understand how I got there. The step before step one.
It takes nearly an hour, but Fran knocks on the window glass as I finish making my bed. Clothes are still strewn on the floor, and the walls are still bare, but it does not feel like an impact zone in here anymore. I have finally started to clean up my mess.
‘Come in,’ I call, gesturing him inside.
‘Merry Christmas,’ he says, paper crown still atop his head.
‘Sorry for the emergency text – I hope I didn’t interrupt your family do.’