Sarah Vaughan Is Not My Mother: A Memoir of Madness

By MaryJane Thomson

At nineteen MaryJane Thomson seemed to have it all. Intelligent, creative and beautiful, she was destined for a bright future. But a nightmare of delusions and hallucinations was unfolding. She dropped out of university, turned to drugs, and spent years in and out of psych wards, police cells, drug hangouts and on the streets. In this heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful memoir of her life six years on, she takes you inside her world of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and vividly describes what it is like to live with voices in your head, to lose your freedom, and to despair of ever being well again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Awa Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781877551819

Book preview

before.

1

Why are you looking at the ground? the doctor says. Something interesting there? the nurse says as he dispenses me 100 milligrams of Olanzapine. I look at the ground, searching the paper, seeing another cross, admiring the harmony with which the rubbish has fallen.

It’s just rubbish, he says. I stare at the artfully placed rubbish, wondering if this could all just be a sign of the times, wondering whether Dr Aso and Martin the nurse are going through the needle’s eye.

Sorry.

I’m trying to act as though I’m living in this world, not one five hundred years from now. I use my old childhood line: I’m deaf, don’t have my hearing aids in. You’ll have to speak up.

Oh.

I notice the lunch stain on his striped sweater.

Do you want me to get them? he says.

No.

Oh, why’s that?

I look away, go back to staring at the rubbish on the ground. It offers more hope. Jesus is coming, I mutter.

What did you say, MaryJane?

Ah, I’m just wondering if I can have a coffee.

I decide against talking about Jesus, Muhammad, Jah Rastafari or any other saviour-type prophet. In this place you’re always under observation. Anything significant such as your religion or beliefs is noted down. People always have a perception or judgement of how you are and how you should be. From one visit to the next you may appear different—when you have a mental illness it can be hard not to change.

The doctors and nurses sometimes wonder why I don’t dress more femininely. I always say I don’t feel it’s appropriate to, for instance, wear tight dresses in a psychiatric institution. Also, when you have been walking around the streets for weeks on end you get accustomed to wearing tracksuits and being comfortable.

It gets noted that you dress androgynously. I take this one step further and wear a hat, scarf and sunglasses at all times. When I perceive a pending war—which I may start—my eyes and head feel as if they will degenerate when exposed to light. Best to cover them at all times.

Why don’t you want to wear your hearing aid?

Can’t wear my hat and scarf with that in. Plus, the nurse might be able to read my mind, hear my thoughts speaking to God about the apocalypse I just stopped.

Oh.

Right, well I might get a coffee. I go into the dining room, make myself a coffee, and then drift through the haze of the smoking room to the tree.

I don’t feel like company: it’s been a long day. I sit and smoke and look up at the moon. Suddenly I’m compelled to sing a Nina Simone song, Little Girl Blue. In a moment of reality I understand the helplessness of my situation, sectioned under the Mental Health Act and with a bad track record. I’ve lost count of the number of times the police have picked me up. I’ve been here three months this time; it doesn’t look as if I’m going anywhere fast. I’m not talking to my family, and they are pretty much my only way out as the mental health people like you to be in safe and secure environments. And while I’m under the Act I’m under their control.

I continue looking up at the moon and roll another cigarette. I pray to the stars for a saviour to get me out of here. I get reassured by God that someone is coming to save me soon. I sit and wait, expecting them to arrive any minute, but they don’t. I don’t beat up on God about it. He’s giving me patience, which you need in an institution. Things can take a long time.

Every time I get unwell I stop putting my faith in myself, and start looking to other people or things, expecting them to do things for me. I expect a white knight to come and sweep me away to a better life. I start looking for signs and listening to anyone and anything, but most of all it’s the voice I listen to. It’s in my whole body, moving, muttering, whispering into my jaw, making it move so I don’t miss a word.

The dialogue I have with the voice (sometimes God) gets consumed with my questions. I demand to know who is coming to save me from this mess I’m in, being locked up? And when are they coming?

I finish thinking and smoking and looking at the moon and I get my meds, which I down. I go inside to watch TV but when I go to sit on the couch I am repulsed away. There’s a stain on the seat cover, still wet, not pretty, so I decide to have another cigarette (when in doubt, smoke). I sit on the couch in the smokers’ room with Louis, who sits there all day listening to music. He must find it therapeutic. There’s a stereo on the window ledge; the couch looks out on to the grass and car park, separated by another window. The room has chairs, a couch, an empty bookshelf and not much else. It is generally ornamented with used polystyrene cups that get recycled as ashtrays.

Louis is changing the station on the radio. I can’t really tell what’s playing, some sort of rock. When I have no hearing aids in it all sounds the same, just a mash of sound at a low murmur. Louis has a nice smile but he doesn’t say much. I smile and gesticulate with my hands, say something about how much I prefer more soulful music as it’s easier to listen to. I always find the melodies are more distinctive than rock, I go on. Of course I don’t claim to be an expert, but when your hearing is not so good higher frequencies are easier than the muffle of electric rock guitars.

I feel embarrassed because I said something about being deaf, and I decide it is time to retire to bed for the night. I never like explaining about my hearing difficulties: it might appear I think the world owes me sympathy.

Maybe I care too much about what people think. There are lots of discrepancies between being psychotic, which is why I generally end up in these types of institutions, and being who I really am. When I’m psychotic I want the romance of rescue, and may bleed on about how bad I have it. In the real world I hate the idea of getting compassion from people. I find overkindness and generosity hard to receive.

I decide not to get depressed by the fact it’s Christmas Eve and I’m in a psych ward. Much better to go with the belief that I’m a true saviour and my birthday simply isn’t realised and probably never will be, seeing as I’m maybe not so passionate as to fight for the truth—well, not at the minute with my meds on board.

Christmas Day dawns. The rest of the world is eating turkey and devouring meringues and sponge cake.

MaryJane, time for lunch.

Damn, I think to myself. I must have slept through my usual time for drinking Milo. I don’t even remember being woken for my morning meds.

I’m fasting, I say to Angela the nurse. She says nothing and walks out.

Knock, knock. It’s Raymond. You know, Christmas Day is a day of celebration for a lot of people. It would be good if you joined in with everyone.

Is there Lindauer? I ask.

You know the rules in here.

I’m getting in the mood for a laugh, to lighten things up a bit. What, no marijuana? I add. It’s medicinal, ritualistic and celebratory, quite fit for a religious occasion such as this. Or is it strictly Fanta and cream? I don’t much fancy going to a kindy party. Don’t you have an injection you can give me if I get out of hand? You could hurtle me over the bed like a donkey, ’50s style.

I’m getting high off my rudeness and over-familiarity with someone I hardly know. Go on, don’t be shy!

Suddenly my mood changes. What, do you think I’m drug-seeking? Don’t you know a benzodiazepine ain’t my drug of choice?

I feel like being even more self-deprecating. How ’bout morphine? Not that they’d have any double—AA—even if I could get access to the oven.

My fiendish brain starts ticking over drugs in my head.

The nurse isn’t going to play my game. Well, MaryJane, judging by your history I don’t think I can dispense that to you.

I stare back at him, pondering how many points a word like that dispense scored him in his nursing exam. You’re well trained, I mutter. After all, I’m just another number pumping through, and probably the tenth person that day who has bugged him for drugs. Everybody in here wants them. It’s Christmas, I say. We all need a bit of relief. Soon it’ll be Easter, then we will really have something to celebrate. How ’bout we hook up some red wine for Easter?

I know I’m going overboard. It reminds me of the times I would beg the dealer to give me the dregs of a taste, except right now I’m just speaking for the sake of speaking.

I start scrawling yet another dead body on a piece of paper.

They worms?

Nah, it’s your brain. You are seeing things, Martin.

I’m beginning to feel angry. What I need is one of those ink-on-paper, what-are-you-seeing tests. My sense of grandiosity kicks in. This is what Miro tried to do. I’m just realising his vision.

Well, your room looks a bit of a mess but Wiru swears to me it’s an art installation.

Wiru is another nurse, slightly eccentric, who sometimes comes and stands in my doorway. I have taken to creating pictures on my sheets with tea and coffee, trying to create some semblance of beauty in these stark and barren surroundings. Because I think I can create a land of plenty, I add a sun (an orange) and a moon (a banana). I don’t think people get it. The doctor says it shows disorganised thinking and my mum just cries when she comes in to see me, not that I’m taking visits from family.

The nurse looks at me as I arrange the blanket (white, of course) in the middle of the floor. I like to keep my floor as clean as possible, I inform him. I don’t say anything about my rituals.

Martin, does this give me a tick for OCD? I’ve always wanted to be observed as Obsessive Compulsive, meaning my symptoms are self-harm. But my self-harm is strictly burning. I’m Grade C—I don’t cut.

That’s not funny, MaryJane. Martin looks disturbed. He probably saw me in the smokers’ room in Intensive Care, on the ground burning crosses on to my wrist. The trainee nurse told me to cut it out. I couldn’t figure out why: I was just trying to wake myself up.

Well, I guess I’m sick. I start laughing. I feel drunk—my high must be kicking in. I start redoing a picture. Must ruin it, I think to myself, then make it look beautiful, like myself.

MaryJane, lunch, Waris says.

Thank you.

I pick up the guitar and play a few bars of Redemption Song. I don’t play the correct chords or care about harmony. I just want to release the rage inside me that feels locked and chained to a system.

At this point I still blame everybody else—the institution, my family and friends—for my being here. This is backed up by the voice, which tells me that people have betrayed me and I can’t trust them. They are out to get me, to make life hard, and they like to see me suffer.

My brain feels fuzzy from the drugs I’m on so I can’t remember all the lyrics, plus it can be hard to stick to someone else’s formula when you’re furious about being forced into abstinence from drugs. Half the reason I am so resentful about being in the institution is that it has taken me away from my occupation, which is taking drugs and dreaming of my ideal life all day, unable to do anything about it because I am too busy taking drugs and fantasising. Just when my world feels as though it’s ideal—bam!—police turn up and halt the proceedings and it’s back to the loony bin I go, to be filled with copious amounts of psych drugs, which slowly, with hospital food, leave me constipated and bursting at the seams.

I’m so dumbed-down and lacking in energy from all this Olanzapine that I can barely strum. I stare down and curse my pig fingers, a shadow of their former selves, a caricature, bloated to one inch in diameter. It looks as if they’ve been doing push-ups.

Oh, how long will they murder? I sing. That’s how I feel, as if I’m being murdered, but sadly I’m not dying. I keep fucking surviving. I get on my knees and pray to God for a heart attack if I ever end up in here again. I start trying to weep. Can’t take another stay here.

MaryJane, lunchtime meds.

I have my back to the door. Yip. I grab my Coke, put the pill in my hand, put it in my mouth and spit it back in the can.

The nurse doesn’t notice. Did you get that down?

Yep.

It’s lunch.

Yeah, I’m coming.

When I get to the dining room there’s a long queue and I stand in the doorway. The room isn’t large; all the patients can’t eat at one time. The tables are peach-colored pink and the mural on the back wall is predominantly yellow with zoo animals drawn on it. It looks like the hospital’s children’s ward. Perhaps our minds, tainted with illness, are only fit for cartoons that appeal to children.

I always hate the queue for food. It puts me in a state of heightened self-awareness: I may be the greedy one who just wants to grab all the food and run. I get to the front and take my tray. There’re always two loaves of bread on the left of the counter. I stand and wait for my head to be led by the voice, left or right. It says, Go to the right. I say, How many? under my breath. The voice says, Five.

I decide against sitting in the dining room. There is no one I feel comfortable sitting with—years of being unwell have killed my confidence with people. I can talk politely and make conversation but when it comes to friendship I tend to back away. When I’m unwell I don’t trust people easily, and when I’m well I don’t want to develop close connections in case they develop into an obsession later on. I don’t want to rely on one person too much in case they become so important my life depends on them.

I retire to the women’s lounge, where only women can watch TV. It’s cleaner in this lounge. Oprah Winfrey is on. Over the years I have had countless afternoons in front of Oprah; she’s good company. I sit alone on the couch with my lunch. I skip the butter as I’ve decided to go vegan and don’t want any extra additives in my food.

I look up at the TV, bolted into a cabinet high on the wall. I have to crane my neck to watch it. I can’t hear it very clearly, and I can’t see the remote to change the volume, and there’s glass in front of the screen so I can’t do it with my finger. I decide not to focus on it and mostly stare out the window at the sun. Occasionally I glance at the TV when I hear the murmur of the audience clapping, then I look out of the room, past the window to a distant hill far away. At least you get some sort of a view here; it beats the other lounge, which has no windows.

I pull in the table, put my tray on it, spread some potato on my bread, and eat without stopping until the food’s gone. Medication makes you hungry. It also has really bad side effects. When you get admitted into a psych ward you’re generally given Olanzapine, which is an antipsychotic. It’s believed to be super-effective in bringing you down, out of mania. Sound good? The problem is that it constipates you terribly and makes you retain fluid. I gain weight instantly. In days I become unrecognisable. It also makes me tired. I drag my weight around, and my brain and thoughts feel clogged and cloudy. My motor functions are working below par and I can’t do much but sit and smoke, or sit and sip coffee, waiting for the food.

I resent the system for making it compulsory to receive this kind of treatment. This makes me not want to work with doctors and nurses and family members, which is a problem because these are the people I am reliant on for help.

When it becomes known what is wrong with me I can be prescribed medication that is specific to my needs and illness, but it is hard to understand this when I am unwell. And it can take time to receive the right treatment, particularly when, as now, I was on other drugs when I came in. Naturally, I want to reject the ward’s medications and find drugs that are illicit, not part of a hardline system that forces me to regularly imbibe high doses of strong medication.

I go into the smoking room; one of few perks of being stuck in here is that you get an indoor smoking room. Lester the radio DJ, nice guy, says, Darling, how are you? He speaks slowly with a slight drawl. I love your colours today.

He may be referring to my blue hat, red scarf, blue baggy Nike basketball singlet, and shiny white oversized men’s basketball shorts. His compliment reassures me that he gets my outfit and I am not dressed like some fourteen-year-old wannabe gangster. I feel I need to justify my purchases so I say, I got my blue hat at Coin Save and the rest from a Rebel Sport sale. They didn’t have orange shorts so I had to get white. I can buy you a hat if you like, next time I’m down at the shops, no problem, I add.

Darling, any time you want some of my clothes, come see me.

Lester is wearing a baby-pink, skintight T-shirt and baby-blue rugby league shorts. Judging by how in-shape he is I think he is in his late thirties. You don’t ask people their age in here: it’s not rehab or a pick-up joint, although pick-ups do happen. You get asked into the toilet. Doesn’t matter who you are, when you’re unwell anything goes.

Living in the ward you learn not to be shocked, so when Lester takes out his headphones and starts projecting his voice loudly into them as if they were a microphone I jump up and start rapidly gesturing with my arms, as if performing martial arts on speed.

I haven’t yet been informed of my diagnosis and am in a state of denial. I feel sensations, as though something were touching my ankle or thigh or arms. Sometimes I feel something massaging my head. I also feel as though my body is being propelled forward, and I have sensations in my fingers and under my feet. I refuse to think these things come about because I’m sick. I believe I have special powers.

For all that is said about people thinking they are Jesus or the true Messiah, when you have a mental illness you can’t fathom it’s an illness in your head, not God giving you special powers. As well as voices, you get movements and sensations in your body that convince you that you are a special being, sent to Earth on a mission. Because what you believe is so unbelievable you start covering it up. For years I have denied to the doctors that I can hear voices and I am certainly not about to tell them I can feel things.

I have trails of dialogue running through my head so I’m not really following Lester, but I hear him yelling into his headphones, You’re all bastards. Why don’t you come over here? You couldn’t handle it in here. Although he is speaking to no one in particular, I have to

Reviews for Sarah Vaughan Is Not My Mother

[linda · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

gives good info on her mental illness.