Diary of a Self-Harmer

When I was about ten there was a girl called Linda Lyons in my class. She had strawberry blonde hair and scared everyone to death, whipping the boys with skipping ropes and such like. I was passionately in love with her. On a Thursday afternoon in summer she was knocked over outside the school by a Ford Mustang and broke her arm. Noone had seen a car like that before. She became a minor local celebrity and even the older boys had to admit they had never seen so many names signed on a plaster cast for so small an arm. I wanted desperately to have what she had, and maybe that’s how it all started. A week later I ran out in front of a blue car. But this one had already slowed down and indicated to turn right. I hadn’t noticed, assuming flashing lights and a certain slowing-down of things to be features of impending trauma. So as it happened I just ran flush into the side of the car and knocked myself out. It was a Toyota.

Today I’ve done something stupid again. I’m lying at the bottom of the stairs and I can hear two teachers saying: “Come on Sheila, stop being silly. Get up now.” One of these two I really like, Brenda.
“I can’t,” I say, “I’m going to die here.”
Brenda asks me why I’m going to die there, in the footwell of the stairs outside her office. I tell her I’ve taken an overdose. They call an ambulance. I think they’re sitting on the stairs a bit further up now, talking about curriculum changes. They have those kind of sighing “well never mind” voices. Quite a bit of time has passed now so I’m feeling a bit silly lying face down at the bottom. I say I need the toilet and Brenda, the one I like, comes with me.
“Brenda. I haven’t taken the pills,” I say once the door has shut.
“Oh jesus. Have you or haven’t you, Sheila?”
I can tell she is getting a bit narked with me. I can’t blame her really, me having thrown myself down her steps.
“Well I have, but I’m saying I haven’t because I don’t want to go to hospital.”
She isn’t very pleased with this and leaves me with the paramedics who have by now arrived. I try to run away from them through the car park so they sedate me and take me to hospital. I don’t know why I took the pills, so I wasn’t sure what to say when everyone asked me later. It was one of those spur of the moment things. I feel bad about it later and write a sorry card to Brenda which reads: “Sorry about the stairs (+pills). Sheila.”

This is not the first time I have fallen down the stairs (although not the same stairs). The first time I did it I broke my nose they downgraded me from Brenda's class to a different one. I don’t think my abilities were best suited to this new class but they wouldn’t have me in the other one any more (because this is a College not a Bloody Psychiatric Ward). The other people in this class were what Brenda calls blissfully happy, by which she means they had no idea what was going on. The teacher was called Jackie and started us off with a simple language exercise: opposites.
“So for example if I say good, you say bad. I say fat, and you say thin. You see what I mean, Derek? I say one word and you say the OPPOSITE. Ok?”
“Yes. Ok.”
“Ok, let’s start then shall we? Sweet.”
“Pudding.”
Jackie paused. Derek was clearly playing some other game.
“No, Derek, you have to say the OPPOSITE to sweet, not a word associated with it. Ok? Let’s try again. Sweet.”
“Pudding.”
“Ok. Let’s try another. Thick.”
“Gravy.”
“No, Derek. You see I want the OPPOSITE. So if I say light, you say dark. And if I say dark, you say….?”
“Chocolate.”
I was laughing at this point, which started everyone else laughing too although they weren't sure why. He was quite overweight, Derek, but I think I liked his game better.

For a while in secondary school I tried to live on one toffee crisp a day. I’m not sure if that qualifies as an eating disorder. I saw it more as an experiment. I worked in the tuck shop and used to steal one and save all my lunch money in an African Relief Fund. I think there must have been famines and stuff on television at the time. I found the A.R.F. years later, twenty-four pound coins and two old 50p pieces in a tied-up plastic bag. I did think about all those toffee crisps and the famines and I thought, well, I wasn’t all bad. I have to admit though I spent the money on cigarettes and cider. That’s the thing, isn’t it, you start off hoping for the best but things just seem to go wrong.

The truth is I can’t always seem to stop myself doing stupid things. I want to, because I can see why it annoys everyone. My mum doesn’t see me any more and I can understand why that’s better. But I have these gaps, that’s the only way to describe it. I can feel them coming on sometimes, like everything’s getting darker and I’ve forgotten my glasses and I’m trying to read. I’m not blissfully happy, not like Derek, not at all. I know what’s going on, but there are gaps. And everyone gets annoyed.

Brenda was the first teacher I really liked at college. I told her about the time I fell into my grandad’s grave and she laughed and laughed, all red-faced and eyes streaming. I like making people laugh. The fall wasn’t really my fault anyway. One minute I was standing there looking down at the coffin and then the next thing I knew I was looking up through a muddy rectangle framed with faces. The faces weren’t annoyed, not at that point although they were later, more sort of open-mouthed and wondering. It was raining and too slippery to pull me out, so in the end they had to pull the coffin back out with me on it, muddy little hog. I can see the funny side now even though I know that’s why my mum doesn’t see me any more. Brenda was crying she was laughing so much and I was laughing too. She said it was a “grave matter.”

She used to tell the supervisors I needed extra tuition and we’d have cups of tea in her office. She told me about her husband, Stephen, who had decided to go and live with someone else in Spain. I don’t think Brenda really liked Stephen any more, from what she said, but I could see it was still sad. I said I thought it might be like my mum, who can’t see me any more but it’s noone’s fault. My mum sends me funny cardboard postcards sometimes, like pieces of a cereal packet, telling me about her day. Brenda said maybe but she wouldn’t be expecting any postcards. Weeks later we were talking about the pets we’d had at home when she said, “It’s funny, though, not having all those socks to wash.” I wasn’t sure what she meant as we were talking about pets, and I don’t like washing anyway. I think she missed Stephen. I suppose you can miss someone without liking them any more.

I am out of hospital now and it's Monday so I am on my way back into college. I like going to college even though Brenda says I’m far too clever for the lessons and everyone else is too stupid. I don’t think Derek will have much use for A-level Psychology, which is what he wants to enroll for (I already have two A-levels). I go up to Brenda’s office, and I’ve brought her some biscuits. I’m worried she will still be annoyed. She smiles when I walk in and I’m almost giddy, I’m so happy.

“Sheila, please, no overdoses or falling down my stairs again, ok?”
“Ok.”
“And thankyou for the card.”