On 1 August 2016, Sophie, then aged 21, took her life. Her brother, Samuel, has edited a book, Tigerish Waters: Selected Writings of Sophie Reilly, of her prose, poetry and drama, from which this article has been adapted. All profits from the book will be donated to the Scottish Association of Mental Health.
When I was admitted to hospital with psychosis, it was the most terrifying thing in the world. I thought I was the antichrist and possessed by the spirit of Anne Frank; the nurses were SS officers and they were trying to send me to the gas chambers. It took eight of them to restrain me. I heard voices chanting in German and the screeches of people being burnt. I could smell burning, and felt slimy hands touching me like seaweed.
And Skippy was back. He’s a 10ft kangaroo with the face of Frank from the film Donnie Darko who pops up when I least expect it. He’s always in my nightmares, but once psychosis blurs the line between dreams and reality, he stalks me constantly.
I think that a new movement needs to happen: Mental Health Pride. We’re here, we’re crazy, get over it. Some people have mental illness; it’s a fact of life, not a terrifying visualisation of straitjackets and gibbering lunatics. We’re all just normal people with families, life stories, loves, cares, desires and eccentricities, who happen to have a problem with their brain, whether that’s psychological trauma or physical trauma, such as the chemical imbalance of depleted serotonin in major depressive disorder, or the overactivity of the prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia.
We don’t post photos of our suffering, terror, paranoia, misery, suicidal feelings, mania, psychosis. We don’t get hundreds of comments saying “get well soon”, or the flowers from everyone, or the “you’re so brave fighting your illness!”
We are locked in loony bins and ignored until we get out, when we are expected to get on with it and get back to work.
We go through hell. We see terrifying visions of things that aren’t there – hallucinations of an attacker beating you, when in reality it’s you punching yourself in the face. We feel so low and lonely and despise our own flesh so much that we starve it, or cut it, or burn it, or make it vomit, or damage it with booze and drugs – or even kill it on purpose.
We go manic and lose all sense of reality and run around the country off our trolleys and nearly get killed, then crash and become consumed with guilt, like I did when I ruined my relationship with my boyfriend because I believed I was the daughter of God and he was beneath me. There’s a novel’s-worth of excoriating, humiliating, mortifying escapades. You crash further into depression until the guilt and lamentation leads you to attempt suicide.
But you survive. We are all survivors. We deal with our demons by swallowing pills, going to different therapies, spending half of our lives in community mental health team appointments and groups. And we get on with it.
Bent-double, like old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed, coughing like hags (from our 20 cigarettes a day habit), we curse through sludge.
We deserve anything but to be thought of as merely “crazy” or “mental” or “loopy” or “schizo” or “a screw loose” and never trusted, or taken seriously, as everyone’s too scared of us, or thinks we’re just broken or they plain don’t give a shit.
I’m hereby coming out as a mental case. I’m Sophie, I suffer from anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, bipolar affective disorder, emotionally unstable personality disorder – impulsive subtype, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
But I’m also a qualified English teacher, a volunteer at Oxfam and in the elderly wards. I had to defer because I was very ill, but I’m going to St Andrews University next year to study theology and literature. Then maybe I’ll do a psychology module just because it’ll be a piece of piss. I’m an expert by experience!
I love Sam Cooke and the Beatles all the way through to Bruno Mars and the Arctic Monkeys. I like to map decades with the lyrics of their songs. I paint pastels when I can be bothered and can play The Sims 3 for a week straight. I smoke Camels when I can afford them and Amber Leaf when I can’t. I fancy the pants off Alex Vause in Orange is the New Black but it breaks my heart that she’s a scientologist in real life.
Without breaking the unwritten but holy confidentiality between patients, the stories these people in hospital tell can give you a stitch from laughing so much.
This is not me showing off or going on about how brilliant I am. I can be a royal pain in the ass. But I’m a person, just like you.
We are people, not diagnoses.
- In the UK the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
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