The Revenge of Meadhbh, my imaginary friend (aka - hallucinations and their power) • 04.07.08
March 2006, back when I was able to work, I worked as a manager for a backpacker hostel in Melbourne, which at the time I left it, was the best small hostel in the city. Granted I’m a little biased when I say that, but I put a helluva lot of work into that hostel. Fifty to sixty hour weeks were frequent, seventy plus hours rarer but still there. My salary was fracked beyond all measure, with virtually all of the staff beneath me earning more money than I was. I quit the job for various complicated reasons, the most predominant being one which I kept secret until this blog vomited out of my mind; which was my decision to end my life after visiting the Port Fairy Folk Festival in March 2006. Something which really should have been picked up on given the fact I made it clear I had no intention of returning from Port Fairy, and also was (rather obviously) tying up all manner of loose ends in my life at the time. No matter – I’m used to people not noticing the pain I’m in. I’m WAY too good at pretending I’m all okay and hunky-dory for my own good.
In those two weeks of tying up loose ends I had to kick someone out of the hostel. I can remember his face, name, personality traits as clearly as I can remember those of any of my once closest friends. I was kicking him out for all manner of reasons; upsetting other guests, not paying for accommodation, fucking up the room, the list was endless really – and as I was kicking him out he told me many times the same line. Over and over again.
“You have to help people!”
January 2007, the start of those long, dark and grueling months when I was suffering from glandular fever I was in a huge amount of pain. I haven’t written about how I felt during that time in great detail due to this blog being, predominantly, about my mental illnesses and not physical ones. However, I will say that glandular fever is one of the nastiest illnesses that you can do nothing about that I know. At least with cancer, bronchitis and bacterial infections medication exists which can help control and reduce the pain experienced. With glandular fever, there is nothing. There’s no pill you can take to stop the excruciating pain exploding in your liver and spleen, there’s nothing you can pop to clear the cloud of fog which has engulfed and infected your brain’s thoughts and synapses. You just have to endure it all, and hope that in time it will clear itself. When suffering from glandular fever everything is difficult; walking, talking, thinking, emoting, shagging, dancing, socializing, drinking, eating, horse riding…and yet whilst I was suffering from it I did all of the above and a lot more besides. On a regular basis I was passing out at the end of the day, literally, because of how hard I and other people were pushing me whilst I was suffering from this illness. It would have been so much easier, and so much wiser, to retreat and hide under the doona throughout the course of this illness, but I would not allow myself to do this and (in hindsight) nor would other people.
I am of course, in a roundabout way referring to my then girlfriend. I’ve always hesitated in pointing fingers on this blog, but in all honesty, the treatment she gave me whilst I was suffering from glandular fever was fucked up. She didn’t seem to understand how I was feeling physically, emotionally and mentally as a result of the illness I was suffering from. Which didn’t make sense to me due to the fact she had given me glandular fever to begin with – and during the months she was inflicted by the disease did pretty much exactly what I had refused to do; which was hide under the duvet for several weeks.
As time moved on, and the relationship ended, and the emotional abuse flew into full swing, one line was regularly slapped into my face by the woman who had done nothing to help me whilst I was suffering from glandular fever.
“You have to help people!”
So that’s two people now telling me exactly the same thing! Exactly the same line in fact.
June 2007, I’m in an empty room surrounded by memories, a backpack packed on the wooden floorboards beside me, on my other side a knife. A knife used frequently in the past to slice open my flesh. I was supposed to be at a pub, having a drink with people who I would miss dearly, but knew that in a few months time would probably not even remember my name. I picked up the knife and held the blade against my arm.
“There ya go,” She said. “You know what you have to do,”
Her voice sounded exactly the same as it always had, the same Scottish lilt, the same accent I had once upon a time become so aroused by. Now, and for the few months since her reappearance in my life, her voice filled me with agony and fear.
“When are you going to start believing me? They all hate you. They despise you to your very core. I want you to die, you want to die, she wants you to die, they all want you to die. Your existence on this planet is meaningless.”
“I know,”
“You came so close a few weeks ago, that overdose, genius. Truly inspired. Well, aside from the fact that you failed, but no matter, next time you’ll succeed. This time,”
“I don’t know if it’s what I want,”
“Who cares what you want? Fuck! Wake the hell up Addy! No-one has ever cared what you want! There isn’t a soul on this planet who would miss you, have you not been listening to everyone over the last few years? They fucking despise your very existence – why do you think you have cancer? You’re not worried about giving her an aneurism; you’re worried that it will give her an excuse to throw a bloody street party! You see, she’s right, you don’t tell anyone the happy things they want to hear. You sit there worrying about telling people you’re dying but you don’t seem to realize how happy it would make them if you did tell them – she told you that she wanted you to die, that this world would be a better place if you were not a part of it. Stop thinking. Just cut. Let the blood flow…I could do with a drink,”
“I can’t,”
“Here we go, it would hurt her too much? Same old fucking excuse. Listen to what she’s telling you, death is what she wants for you. She doesn’t care whether you hack your arm apart or whether you beat yourself black and purple, she – wants – you – to – die,”
“I can’t believe that.”
“You’re really boring me now Addy,”
“Yeah, well, I do that with everyone remember – boring old tedious monotonous unpassionate Addy,”
“Now you’re getting it,” Her voice grew softer. “Just cut yourself,”
“I can’t,”
“We’ll see about that,”
I put the knife down, wiped away my tears, and quickly walked out of the room for the evening of pain and frustration I knew would follow. Lots of faces I would miss greatly, yet none of them knowing the true extent of the degradation of my mind, how close I came to becoming, nor of the fact I was suffering from leukemia. Meadhbh loved that more than any of it. She adored the fact that I was dying inside – both mentally, emotionally and literally.
I know that Meadhbh doesn’t exist, I know she’s a fragment of my psyche, I know that the reason she appears faerie like is because of my fascination with faeries which only grew ten fold following her appearance in my life. I know that she comes to me mostly when things are rough – that when I was younger I craved a friend so created one out of my psychosis. I’m completely and utterly 100% aware of all this.
It still doesn’t detract from the power a hallucination can bring. Their words, so full of confidence and bravado can easily sway a mind cracking under emotional pressure. When she returned after my breakdown and haunted me every day her evil wicked words were merely an extension of my own mind, fuelled by abuse and the collapse of my self esteem. The simple fact they were what I believed were enough to give them a power unsurpassed by anything I did to combat them.
When I arrived at the pub that night she was still there, whispering in my ear as I attempted conversation with whoever appeared. She giggled, laughed, insulted me, and pointed out whenever something was said which backed up her own (my own) theories of who I was rather than who I had pretended so hard to be. I had to keep leaving the bar to have conversations with her in the street (pretending I was on the phone so as not to draw attention to myself) or vanishing to the bathroom to bicker and argue with my obscure imaginary friend.
“Can’t you just see the look of hatred in her eyes?”
I only nodded, tearing off a couple of strips of toilet paper to wipe away the tears.
“You sacrificed something important for her, why I have no idea, have to be honest that was a beautiful piece of manipulation I wish I’d been able to pull off, and she hates you – yet you still persist in believing you have worth. You gave her everything, I was watching, and then she destroyed you. Surely you must know it was deliberate. All that beautiful shit happening at the same time, the world wants you gone, it wants you dead.”
The corner of the toilet roll dispenser looked beautifully sharp, it might work.
“You should have bought the knife ya know, did you see how she tried to peek up your jumper, just to give herself nice warm glowy feelings at your pain, delicious.”
“I should have brought it,”
“Do you understand what I’ve been telling you now? They hate you,”
“They all hate me,”
The phone in my pocket vibrated and burst into song.
“They all hate you,” She whispered.
I checked the front of the screen and answered the phone, the conversation lasting a mere few seconds. I hung up, nodding. “Maybe,”
“Give her what she wants, what I want, what you want,”
I rolled up my jumper, and hacked the sharp edge of the toilet paper dispenser against the flesh, gasping as the skin broke and blood dribbled out. I didn’t even bother to clean it up before leaving the stall and heading back to the bar, Meadhbh following closely behind.
The power of hallucinations, regardless of whether what they’re saying is the truth or not, is that because your mind is already in such a state as to actually be able to create a hallucination in the first place – you believe what they’re saying. They are the true voices in your life, sometimes the only friends you have.
Meadhbh was there for me through the good times, goading me in the bad times. She’s still around now, three hour conversations here, five hour arguments around Glasgow there. Wherever I step I can’t shake her - her power too strong for my weakened mind to combat.
As we walked home that night, tears streaming down my face at all I had lost, all I would never see again, Meadhbh, with a glistening smile on her face, said:
“It’s like everyone keeps telling you, you have to help people. If you weren’t so selfish, then, none of this would be happening. You would be as happy as you were six months ago. If only you weren’t so bloody selfish. If only you made more effort to care about people, to help them,”
