Absences

Julie’s episodes of illness are like absences. To people who work or live beside her, they literally are absences - she disappears into the hospital. To those who know her, they are like absences from herself.

Most of the time these days Julie is very much present. She has a flat of her own, a job, hobbies. She is warm, funny, kind, rather lonely, rather anxious. She has her contradictions of course - simultaneously organised and messy for example - just like the rest of us. Joe and I enjoy our grown-up daughter. Sometimes we go to her flat for Sunday lunch (which we know requires her to mount a huge cleanup operation beforehand). Julie and I are particularly close: sometimes we arrange to watch the same show on television in the evening, each in our separate armchairs in our separate living rooms, and we text each other furiously like teenagers, making observations and jokes.

During an episode of illness this all completely vanishes. Julie hardly speaks, except to express a desire to kill herself, which is a kind of magic incantation which opens the doors to the hospital. If we’re lucky, it will be the local hospital. The onset of illness is startling: people who work closely with Julie - therapists or support workers - often express shock at the lack of warning. There is no preparation, except sometimes a very subtle dreaminess, a stock quality to some of her answers, as if she were tired. She still makes plans and appointments until the very last minute, and afterwards of course they have to be unmade by other people, usually me.

The onset itself is very dramatic - very florid - emergency police calls, chases around town. One night last week I had to call out the police twice - she had absconded from A&E where they had safely deposited her. Both passers-by and police were extraordinarily kind, both times. Complete strangers and police officers spent long stretches of time sitting on the pavement with Julie in the middle of the night, patiently persuading her to return to hospital. They saw - a young woman, blank of expression, sitting limply on the pavement like a rag doll, repeating only that she wanted to die. They didn’t see the Julie most other people know.  Her work colleagues and friends would not have recognised her.

She does not acknowledge me, sitting beside her on the pavement, clutching a warmed up carton of Mac and cheese that I had hoped would give her much needed sustenance. Eventually she will eat it, in a zombie-like trance. There is no response at all when I try to initiate our ordinary chatter - no flicker of recognition. I miss her.