Mother's Story by Amanda Prowse

Author:Amanda Prowse [Prowse, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781856574
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2015-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

4th August, 2014

I saw the psychiatrist today, along with three other women, none of whom I had spoken to before; they seemed to know each other and that made me feel a bit isolated, embarrassed. I don’t like group therapy. In fact I hate it. It makes me feel exposed and nervous. I would be quite content to sit on my narrow bed alone, just thinking, but of course that’s not allowed. We had to sit in a circle and talk about something we were good at. It could be anything. The girl opposite me told us she could juggle – she could juggle up to five things for a long time and had done it with apples, balls, socks, all kinds of things. Her boyfriend had taught her and it helped clear her head, apparently. This earned her a clap. The woman next to me broke the rules and said how she had messed up her life and was crap at most things. We had been told to stay away from anything negative and to try and focus on the positive. The psychiatrist changed tack and told us to try and think of the three words that best describe us. We had fifteen minutes to think about it. During this thinking time, I realised that I see my life in terms of before and after. The me before, I would describe as chatty, energetic and happy, and the me after, sad, regretful, lonely. So very lonely. It’s like there are two of me. I picture the me before and it’s like watching a film. I barely recognise the person who had so much to say, who was so hopeful for the future, who bounded into a room, laughing. I can’t imagine being her, not for one day.

I was still considering this when negative woman was asked to list her three. She stood up, nervously pulling her jumper over her hands and said ‘bonkers’ and her friend laughed. The psychiatrist shushed her quiet and suggested to the woman she might want to look a bit deeper and expand on that. She then paused, giving the woman a chance to consider her next two descriptions. Eventually the woman nodded, sighed and said ‘nutso and loopy’. Even the psychiatrist laughed as all five of us dissolved into giggles. It was a flicker of happiness in my unhappy world. It felt nice to be included. And it felt good to be laughing. I thought I might have forgotten how.

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