The Girl in the Mirror

By Lumi Winterson

Mental illness directly or indirectly effects everyone, and yet it makes the sufferer feel completely alone. I am speaking out, to tell my story, in hopes that others may find the courage to heal. I have been to hell and back, but I am strong enough now to speak up and to tear down the walls caused by stigma. Everyone deserves some happiness and understanding, which I hope you will find within this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Feb 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514444801

Lumi Winterson

Lumi Winterson shares a rare first-person account of schizophrenia, contributing an essential marginal voice from a condition that affects so many but is often unheard. Dubbed an “expert by experience”, Lumi is now well enough to share her story in hopes that it will reach others interested in the area. Included is also a chapter written by her mother, giving a vital carer’s perspective.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Lumi Winterson. 731293

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016900768

ISBN:   Softcover        978-1-5144-4481-8

             Hardcover       978-1-5144-4482-5

             EBook               978-1-5144-4480-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 01/20/2016

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.xlibris.com.au

Contents

PUBERTY BLUES

RED PAINT

BOOZE

RAGE AGAINST THE SYSTEM

SUMMERSAULT

SENIORS

WHATEVER AND WHATEVER

BUDDHA PSYCH

SCHOOL’S OUT FOREVER

NURSING

ANAESTHETIC

THEY ALL FALL DOWN

THE ROUND GREY BUILDING

ROUND AND ROUND WE GO

MARY JANE IS NOT MY FRIEND

MY LIGHT

DIAGNOSIS

LUNACY

THE JOYS OF MEDICATION

HOLIDAYS

LIFE ON THE OUTSIDE

INDEPENDENCE DAY

THE DEVIL IS REAL

SKIN GRAFTS

SHOCK SHOCK BABY

ALIEN NURSES

TMS

THE KEY

DADDY DEAREST

MUST WE ALWAYS DO AS WE ARE TOLD?

I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU NOT

METALLIC ANGELS

FRIENDS

CAMPUS WELLBEING

LOVE IS ALL AROUND

GOOD BYE MY LOVE

GRIEF HURTS

HEALING

NEW BEGINNINGS

ONE YEAR ON

THE END, FOR NOW

Once upon a time there was an angel who had no wings. She had no way to fly home to heaven and she was sad. Some of the other angels laughed at her, but they did not know why she had no wings or what she had been through to make her so sad. She had danced with the devil and had her skin burnt with pokers by the demons. It hurt a lot. But the flower fairies loved her, for she had always been kind to them. They let her stay in their flower world until she was feeling happy again.

What I remember is fragmented. My life was fragmented.

I remember going to the forests outside of Melbourne with mum and her friends to do bushwalking and mushroom picking in the pine forests. I used to hate those mushrooms - big orange ones that stunk to high heaven when they were being cleaned and cooked. Mum and her friends would collect boxes of these mushrooms and spend days cleaning them and cooking them into salads, dips and steaks. It made the whole house reek. I really hated those mushrooms; although the actual time spent picking them was quite relaxing and enjoyable.

I remember once I asked my dad how dinosaurs became extinct. He said that all the men got their guns and killed them all. I believed this for a long time until I learnt the truth in school.

I remember the kind old man down the road giving us neighbourhood kids lollies. My dad wouldn’t let me take any.

I remember living across the road from the train line. Back then there was no fence to stop kids from running onto the tracks, and so we did, we played with the rocks. Running under the track was a large storm water drain where we used to play. We used to pretend it was a little river and that we were fishing there. One day mum looked out at the street and saw three of us kids playing right on the tracks. She almost had a heart attack, and ran out and got us. We got in big trouble, but after mum complained to the council, a fence was put up next to the train line to keep us from playing on the tracks.

I remember my phobia of fire growing up. It was all consuming as a child. Anything to do with fire scared me, every time I heard a siren, I would cry. Once when it was my best friend Sharon’s birthday, they wanted to put sparklers on the cake. I was so scared that the house would explode; I begged them not to use them. When they insisted, I ran into the garden in tears. I crouched there in the backyard waiting for the house to explode. Needless to say it didn’t. Another time when I was 6, we went on a school excursion to the local fire station. We were shown how the hoses worked, and shown the protective clothing that the firemen had to wear. Everyone had a great time, besides me. I managed to hold it together until the very end when their alarms went off and they left in their fire trucks. I cried all the way back to school, certain that the fire engines had gone to my mum and dad who were burning alive.

Most of my childhood I spent with Sharon. We called each other god-sisters, as her parents were my godparents and vice versa. We did things together with the family, spending Christmases and birthdays together. We used to play witches in her backyard, or with the dolls house when we were indoors. We used to brush each other’s hair with our Mason Pierson hairbrushes and listened to records - she introduced me to ABBA and Michael Jackson. Sharon was my very best friend and still is today.

All my life, I was quite close to my neighbours, Mary and Gordon. They had known me since they moved next door when I was 4, and had their first child when I was 8. They named the child May, and I spent a lot of my time with her. They later had another girl called Karen and finally a boy named Joey. They were like my siblings, and as I was an only child I enjoyed playing big sister to them. We used to do a lot of things together, like going to the pool in summer, or just hanging out at my place or theirs. We had a red cubby house that we played in and a sandpit. In spring we would concoct perfumes using the flowers that we found in the yard. They didn’t often smell nice, but it was fun none-the-less.

Smells were always very important to me. I used to sit with a bottle of perfume or a moist hand towelette and just smell them for ages. Mum and her friend Maggie used to worry that I would become a drug sniffer when I got older. Instead I just became obsessed with perfumes.

Most of my childhood was good; at least I have good memories of it. Bad things happened, but they came later. There were other little things that were out of the ordinary for me as a child, but I didn’t really have problems with my mental health until I was about 14, and for the sake of this book, that is where I will begin my story.

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PUBERTY BLUES

I began getting very moody, swinging between elation and utter sadness. I fixated on teachers in the hopes that someone would notice me and ask what was going on. But I didn’t even know myself. I would cry in the toilets at school and in my bedroom at home when no one was watching. The only thing I can think that precipitated the sadness was two best friends moving away. That really affected me and I missed their company terribly.

When I was 14 I got a new pair of ice skates for my birthday, and I took up ice skating lessons on a Thursday night. I made friends with a girl my age named Shay and we met twice a week to practice skating. I loved it, and still do. I met my first crush at the skating rink. His name was Conrad and he looked just like Stephen Dorff from ‘The Power of One’. I was smitten. I watched him each week when he had his lessons, and eventually plucked up the courage to ask him out. He said yes, but because I was scared, I invited my school friends as well, and didn’t really pay him as much attention as I should have. Afterwards, my friend Lucy asked if I wasn’t going to go out with him again, would I mind if she did, to which I said no. This was to be the first of several times that she would go after someone I was interested in. It really shot my self-esteem right down. I don’t think she did it purposely, but she didn’t seem to understand that not everyone was for the taking. As an adult, she continued to behave in exactly the same way, never growing out of that way of thinking.

At 15 we had the Year 10 School formal. I didn’t have a date as Lucy had started seeing Conrad. It didn’t matter though. After getting ready at Lucy’s place, we went to another girl’s place, Molly, and then all dressed up and headed into the city to the Skydeck. I was so happy and excited that night I almost cried with joy. When we stepped out of the elevator doors, there were green and white helium balloons floating up on the ceiling with silver strings hanging from them. The view was absolutely fantastic and the lights of Melbourne looked so beautiful twinkling at night. People got up to dance to the mostly techno music. I stayed with two others at the table, dancing not being my thing. Instead we found a lighter on the table and had fun setting the pavlova on fire and melting straws. We sucked in helium from the balloons and sang with chipmunk voices.

After the Skydeck, we walked across the city to Crown Street cinemas to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was rated R but we weren’t stopped from going in, I guess because we were so dressed up. The movie was audience participation so we got up and did the Timewarp and hid under newspapers to keep from getting wet by the supersoakers they were spraying us with. After the movie we went back to Molly’s place again and stayed up all night.

Lucy began hanging around with one of the ‘cool’ girls Hannah who had been kicked out of the ‘cool’ group. I liked Hannah, she had great handwriting, nice hair, she was pretty, and smart, but she was also a stuck-up bitch. She could see how Lucy was acting, sucking up to