Coming Undone by Terri White (bill gates books recommendations .TXT) 📕

with the doctor. It’s Friday. I realise this is the last chance to get out before the weekend. In my notebook I’ve written, in pencil, ‘WHAT’S THE PLAN?’ The conversation goes like this:

‘So, how are you feeling?’

‘Oh my God, so much better!’

‘Really?’

‘Oh God, yes! I think I was just stressed and drinking too much and I feel so much better already! What a wake-up call! I’m so grateful for this experience!’

The doctor nods, doesn’t talk and writes. ‘There’s an AA meeting in the hospital tomorrow. It’s not arranged by the hospital, we just allow them to host meetings here. I think it could benefit you to go.’ A pause. ‘What do you think?’

‘Um, sure,’ I say. ‘If I’m still here. But what I really wanted to talk about was going home.’

The doctor shakes his head. ‘Nope, you won’t be going home before the weekend.’

I swallow hard.

‘Well, Sunday is day three. And I was originally told that I’d be here three days. So, can I go home then?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Doctors aren’t here on the weekends – no one’s discharged then.’

‘Monday?’ I counter, eyebrows raised, face strained, ready to flinch at the next rejection. I can feel my escape slipping further through my hands, an eel wriggling and slipping through the gaps between my fingers; I can’t hold on to it.

‘You need to concentrate on working on yourself, on really getting better,’ he says. I don’t know what he means. Aren’t I already better?

It’s explained to me, very slowly, in very specific terms by the doctor, that it’ll go in my favour if I participate in the entirely voluntary group sessions. The piece of paper on the wall breaks down exactly what and when they are, along with the allotted times for breakfast, TV, lunch, telephone calls, dinner. Each segment is witnessed and marshalled by a member of the ward staff. They stand off to the side taking constant notes. I wonder of what. Whether we’re joining in? Looking happy? I spend my time joining every group going, convinced that this is my way out, smile slapped across my face. The nurses, attendants, stand and they write and write and write. They look at their watches, look at all of us, write and write some more. Pages and pages. They’re constantly observing. I long to spend all my time in my room lying down but I know the isolation will go against me. That it’s a sign of depression, of not committing to treatment.

So, I decide: I will wake every morning in plenty of time for breakfast, a meal that I’ve never eaten. I will shower. I will do my make-up. It’s important that they can see me taking part in my usual rituals, not that they know what my usual rituals are. I’ll smear the foundation over my face. When it’s completely covered, I will paint on my other features: the liquid eyeliner, while being careful not to have a shaky line (I imagine the notes – This morning, Terri had wobbly eyeliner. She looked full nuts. Keep her in another month. No, two!). Instead, a thick, steady line from the corner of my inner eyelid to middle, pause, lift off the liner, place it back on exactly where I stopped and draw to the exact point my eye stops. I will then find a point, at an angle, two inches away, draw a dot and join the lines, before colouring in the thick lines. Then I’ll brush each lash of each eye, top and bottom, with black mascara. My lipstick, red, will be painted on – first the outline of my mouth, then I’ll colour in until it’s a red mass of flesh in the middle of the white. I’ll practise smiling. Does it look more natural if I show my teeth or keep my mouth closed? (New note: Terri was smiling like the Joker when she took her breakfast tray. Must be mad. Another two weeks! Hell, three to be safe.)

The final part of my daily ritual – when I’ll attach my hair, erect, fat, sticky.

I can’t work out if this will be putting myself back together each day or simply painting the façade afresh, like the houses on the island of Mykonos that are painted every year to cover the damage from the sun and the sea whipping off the white and showing the brown layers underneath.

Whether I’m continuing the sideshow, and what that sideshow is and why I’m performing it is, I decide, not ultimately what really matters. The priority is getting the hell out of here as quickly as I possibly can, and if that means painting myself up like a clown, I’m all for it.

My performance can begin.

CHAPTER 25

The next morning. Seven a.m. Ana is already awake when I open my eyes. She’s smearing make-up up, down, under and over her face. Following the curves and contours of the front and sides of her skull. I ask how she is, invite her to come to breakfast with me.

‘Aaagh, I can’t,’ she says. ‘This place … crazy people drive me insane.’

I smile. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’

‘You are not mad,’ she says, matter-of-fact. ‘Why are you here?’

I tell her about the drinking, the pills, the overdose – the slippery path that saw me stumble until I fell down this particular hole. How I don’t know how to get myself out. She’s nodding. ‘You’re a perfectly sane person who just loves to drink!’ she says, both reassuring and offending me. ‘Like me,’ she continues brightly and then tells me her story. After several weeks of insomnia – and three straight days awake – she’d brought herself to the ER, desperate to get something to help her sleep. Somehow, between admitting that she drank several glasses of wine each day and battled crippling, crushing insomnia, that she hadn’t slept for seventy-two hours, she’d been told she couldn’t now go home – to any one of her homes, including her ‘very large’