The Fall Of Edith

Chapter 12

I find an email in my inbox the next morning:

To: edith.baeumler@user-birmingham.edu

From: Jane.Miller@Lit-faculty.edu

Dear Miss Baeumler,

To my regret I have to inform you, that the faculty hasn't received any of the mandatory term papers from you.

There's an upcoming deadline for you to get back to us and explain why you might need extra time for your term papers. If we don't hear from you until the 31st of May, we will have to permanently suspend you from the course.

Sincerely,

Jane Miller (Head of Faculty for Literature at Birmingham University)

I mark the email as "spam and report" and throw my phone onto my bed.

They're most likely going to contact my dad soon, then everything will fall apart. I'm not going to tell him anything, I sit back and wait for disaster to strike.

That night I lay on the floor, awake at 3am, questioning my sanity. Isn't Mauricio my boyfriend? This endless up and down makes my head spin. 

"do you still have my bracelet" A seemingly random message, but it's much more than that. It's yet another attempt at fixing this damned relationship. Like poking a grave, I'm trying to wake what's dead, not wanting to accept my fate.

As always he replies quickly.

"yup"

And then silence.

I finally get up to brush my teeth, standing in front of the mirror, I'm forced to look at my reflection. At preschool there was a game we used to play as a way of introducing ourselves to the teachers. It was called Two lies and one truth about me. Do you want to play? Let me introduce myself: My eyes look pretty when they're filled with tears, I have a boyfriend, I'm wasting my time.

On a bored afternoon I type into google "I want to die". The results give me a range of help centres, phone numbers and articles. I click on one of them and it tells me in bold letters to seek help and visit a therapist.

I went to therapy twice in my life. The first time was shortly after I got back together with Mauricio, in late January. My mom came to visit me in my apartment on an especially dark day, and after looking around the dirty heaps of clothes, piles of unwashed dishes, her gaze locked on me, taking in my greasy hair, ratty track pants, sleepless stare, maybe she saw my red striped arms. "Edith, you need help" that time I didn't even try denying it, there was no point anymore, so I replied softly "I guess I do". My mom took matters in her hands from there, calling me only two days later telling me a time and place and to be punctual. On the short train ride there, I imagined this being my salvation, that now I could lean back my sore body and someone will catch me, fix me. It turned out to be rather far from the truth. Once arrived, I discovered the therapist was a woman, I had seen before, an old school friend of my mom. Even though I could barely remember her, she seemed to be well informed about me and my mom, which made things slightly awkward. She told me this was a favour to my mom, she usually wouldn't take on friends as patients, and she would just do one single session with me to get a general idea and refer me to a colleague. We were sitting in her private home, in a room that looked like it was usually used as a child's playroom, and only functioned part-time as a therapy office. A lone lego train was kicked into one corner, a basket with dolls, colourful bricks and a spinning top. If this was some genius strategy to make patients more relaxed, or the woman just didn't have enough space in her house, I didn't know. If it was the first though, it didn't work with me. The toys didn't relax me, instead I just felt out of place, like an intruder, bursting into this peaceful, happy home with my problems. The woman was sitting on a woven chair on the opposite side of the room, facing me. Next to my chair there was a small plastic table with a box of paper tissues on it. I eyed it suspiciously, wondering if I was expected to cry. "please describe your mother in 5 words"

"please describe your father in 5 words"

"which one of them do you worry about more?"

I answered all the questions dutifully, like I was trying to pass an exam, though I wasn't sure what those questions had to do with my problems. Maybe my mom gave her a wrong idea? Did my mom tell her, I was upset about my mom and dad splitting up, her having a boyfriend?

I struggled when asked to describe myself in 5 words, looking around the room for help, I was quiet for too long, eventually mumbling "weird? Sad? Difficult?" I really could not come up with more, if this was a test, this would've been the moment the teacher would've seen that I came utterly unprepared.

Thankfully the woman was friends with my mom, so she offered "what about caring or funny? I hear you're funny",

"yes, I suppose so" I replied, grateful that we could now move on. The only question she asked me that made sense in my eyes was at the very end. "do you self-harm?"

It was weird being asked like that, almost felt insensitive. Like it's nothing, not a big deal, nothing to hide. Ashamed, I nodded, annoyed that I had to give up my secret.

Afterwards she told me I have adaptive disorder and phases of severe depression. The terms meant nothing to me, had no connection to reality at all. Like the unpronounceable names of furniture pieces in IKEA, Askeby, Eskiltsuna, Grunnarp, Grönlip, where the name doesn't give you any clues about what product that might be. A table? A wardrobe? A chair?

In any case, I guess it made things official, like an admission letter or the entrance card to an elite club. The woman gave me a flyer for a "four-week mental health retreat for young adults", from what I read, it's an institution, similar to rehab, where young adults get one therapy session a day and other than that have to engage in group activities. I'm guessing probably things like pottery, drawing, you name it. I don't know what happened to that flyer, but it must've gotten lost somewhere.

She also gave me another time and place, for my next therapy session with her colleague.

So one week later, I stood in front of an old four-story-building, ringing the bell on the first floor, that said "Woodland Psychology". This time the office looked very professional, an entry hall with receptionist, a cloakroom, toilet, all very modern in beige and white colour schemes. The receptionists took my details and my coat and beckoned me into a big room at the end of the hallway. There were book shelves lined on the walls, a huge window flooded the room with light. Other than that there wall just a lamp hanging from the ceiling, a carpet and two chairs, two or three meters between them, facing each other. The receptionist gestured me to sit in one of the chairs, this time there was no box with paper tissues. After a couple of minutes an elderly woman, the therapist, entered the room, taking her seat in the other chair. I was surprised to see her age, she must have been in her late sixties or even seventy. Grey, short hair, glasses, and wrinkles all over her face and hands. "hello, what's your name?" she asked me. She must've known my name already, but I didn't say that. "Hello, I'm Edith, nice to meet you".

Then she opened the conversation with "so tell me about you, what brings you here?"

I had no idea how to tell this lady about my problems, it seemed like I was having a random conversation with an elderly neighbour. I genuinely wanted to tell her my problems, how I think I'm being swallowed up by darkness, how my phone makes me restless and antsy, how I can't stay even ten minutes without checking my phone, how I'm searching for love and human interaction solely online. But I wasn't sure this small woman, her head reaching only barely over the back of the chair, looking at me with benevolent eyes, would know what an app is. Does she even own a phone? So I answered her vaguely "I don't really have many friends, that makes me sad sometimes"

"yes, it's a cold world, but you have to try"

The rest of the conversation went by in a blur, we talked about this and that, like you would talk to a distant friend you meet in the street. Always only barely scratching the surface of reality.

This time I had to pay for the session, 80 pounds for 45 minutes of meaningless chatting. I think it's needless to say that after that I never went back there, never even thought about therapy anymore, it was out of the question.