Chapter 5 - Mum, Dad, I'm a.....Cliche

We are allowed to watch TV at night. Despite the fact it’s summer programming, some people just can’t get enough of it. Some people spend the whole 4 hours of TV time sitting and staring at the screen. All they would need is a singlet, a beer and an abusive spouse and they would be right back to pre-rehab land. I can’t concentrate on TV in here and besides summer scheduling is enough to make u feel like smoking Ice. The juxtapositions are quite stunning. Tonight it’s America’s Next Top Model on Channel Ten followed by a documentary about infant rape in South Africa on the ABC. Apparently, many of the infants grow up with complex psychological problems – including the need to be Tyra Banks.

Fred Nile appears on Today Tonight talking about a proposal to build an Islamic School in New South Wales. He says Moslems are anti-Christian and the school should not be built. It’s a security risk he says. "Something fishy is going on here. I think its cover to build the Islamic nuclear bomb" I say and no-one laughs “I think love affairs cause more pain than Moslems” I add still without getting a reaction.

Well, I’m less concerned about terrorism than I am with hairdresser boyfriends with don’t return with text messages in any event.

I go back to the villa and I overhear Brad the counselor talking to one of the residents outside.
“I’m really concerned about the direction our society is headed in” he says “People just want big houses and plasma TV’s. Backyards are getting smaller, kids aren’t playing sport, its all about me and me and me. People are so self-absorbed and so concerned about what other people think of them. It’s ego-mania out there”

I start thinking about my apartment in Melbourne. It was ok, with ok things. I bought all new furniture. I had a spare bedroom in my apartment. Three years later I felt that all my furniture was out of date. My apartment looked scummy. I couldn’t afford all the whiz-bang gadgets that my friends in the corporate sector could afford. I remember how it all started to eat away at me. I remember feeling like I’d been conned, that I was somehow coming off second best for not chasing the dollars. I never thought I would afford to own a house, when my parents owned four. And I went to University and they didn’t.

For some reason, I think about the time I went to a protest rally as a journalist and get repeatedly by the police with a baton. I remember how hard I tried not to side with the protestors. How hard it was not to empathize with the angry young men in masks wanting to tear the world down.

I remember moving out of my apartment and putting all my furniture in storage. I remember not wanting to go home to my povo share house and just wanting to go out and stay out and not participate in waking life.

I kind of feel like I’ve got a migraine right now. I lay down. .

I feel lonely and I feel like going out and getting smashed.

I kind of feel how I felt when I stopped being a workaholic journalist and started being a full time party boy.

Or that feeling u get just before u go out, when u know ur going to escape. It’s like u know the rapture is coming and u have been chosen and ur going to float off into self-confidence, grandiose illusions, love for all, instant happy and fucking good hair. I'll have a make-over, pop a pill, pick up boy then get stoned and cack myself with my friends about the silliness of it all the next day.

I'll still be glamorous on Monday, so I'll skip work with a migraine and a touch of the psychosis - go out again Monday night, feel like men are all over me...use them for drinks and cover-charge and then maybe reluctantly fuck one of them if they get me drunk enough and promise to drive me home. On a good night Ill put a queen back in his box, scare a straight guy, reject a fatso, declare myself the best dancer and watch how easily I can fit with the 'in' group. Ill come home have a breakdown, think I'm ugly, hallucinate that I have a hole in my face, drain my friends of their last emotional reserves and wonder why X, Y and Z haven't text me back. I stare into my best friends eyes and ask her “Do u think I’m ugly?”
“Looks aren’t important, Luke” she would say.

I might then have an anxiety attack, believe that I am the ugliest thing that has ever walked the earth, smoke a bong, pine for a boy to cuddle up next to me, scheme a way to get more drugs and then if all that fails then its probably time to get some heroin. I finally go to work on Wednesday, where one colleague tells they are worried about me "because your shaking like a leaf" and then another tells me how terrible I look. But hey,'I’ve still got a good job and date for the weekend. My life really isn’t that bad"Thursdays are often spent working out why I’ve been dumped this week and then trying to pretend I don’t really care. I'll go out on Friday in a brand new outfit, worried I look try-hardish and out of shape. Perhaps I dress too young for my age. I try to impress tag-along friends with how many people I know, that I know the right people and even the hip young drag queens who are very selective about who they talk too. See, here, nobody wants to bother fucking with me here....I can get anything I want...."Imagine if the whole world was gay, I'd fucking rule this land" I say. But really I’m feeling anxious and awkward and self-conscious and unattractive and FUCK I NEED A PILL....got one...need another...and another. Its close to morning and I feel tired and I’ve got nothing to go home to and I don’t want to go home and so I’ll buy some ICE and go smoke it in a sauna.

That’s what my life became. That’s what is became after I got sick of trying. I got sick of trying to have the perfect life and the perfect job and play by society’s rules and feel like a big fucking loser anyway.

Sam walks in.
“Guess what happened”
“What?”
“Celia has been kicked out”
“Really, what for?”
“She smuggled in Xanax in her shoe and she’s been popping it left, right and center and do u know how they found out?”
“Cause she was talking shit all the time?”
“No cause one of the staff caught her off her face, eating a cockroach”
“Oh my god”
Sam starts laughing
“What do you mean? She was so off her face she ate a cockroach like how she was saying she ate that cigarette”
“Yeah man, she thought they were chips. It took her a while even after she got caught to realize she was actually eating a cockroach”
“Well no matter of plastic surgery is going to fix that broken head” I say
“I tell u what though, Celia is exactly the kind of girl I would start dating”
“Sam u r not serious”
“Yep, all my girlfriends have been fucked-up, domineering and gorgeous”
“I’m guessing ur Mum was like that”
“Except she’s not gorgeous and she’s really Christian”
“Christian, hey…um, so Sam how r u going with sleeping now?”
“Yeah good, sleeping 8 hours now, feeling fantastic”
He was radiating just a little bit. Maybe, he did find a cure for being dumped.
“What’s different?”
“I don’t know I’m working out two hours a day, I’m eating well, I’m clean, I like learning all that psychological stuff in class and also Bolivian Tennis”
“What’s Bolivian Tennis?”
“Watch this”
Sam turns on the ceiling fan in my room. Leaves the room and comes back with an apple and an orange. He extends his arm and throws the apple full pelt into the fan, it shatters into quarters.
Justin walks in and starts laughing and comes back with an orange. Justin pelts the orange at the fan. I go an get an apple and pelt into the fan. Sam throws his orange and then another apple and then comes back starts throwing utensils at the fan.
We are all laughing our arses off. There’s fruit splattered all over the fan and shattered all over the room. It was like the Fruiterer had reached boiling point and decided if life had no meaning, then he may as well see the beauty in its destruction.
“Bolivian Tennis does help” I say
Eventually we stop and I lie down and eventually I fall asleep.

I’m awake and it’s morning and I remember what Sam said about exercise and so I work extra hard. I don’t care what I look like. I don’t want to be a Celia, I don’t want to believe “I’ll only be loved if I am perfect”. I work out hard because it feels good.

Feelings check.
“I’m different” I say
Everyone claps.

We have more classes. We are told that thoughts control everything. We are told that we have complex psychological reasons for drug triggers. Shirley says most of our heartache is caused by own thinking. She says most negative thinking is the result of errors in reasoning. She calls them thinking distortions; they are things like 'overgeneralisation', 'magnification ‘,’ all, or nothing thinking', and ‘personalisation’.

She asks us to pick one that we use and how it gets us into trouble. Christy, a tough jail woman from drug court says she uses 'magnification' when she has an argument with her husband.
"I blow it out proportion, I think the argument means the end of our relationship so I go and get on speed"
"That's also called catastrophising" says Shirley
I look at Christy’s big fat arse and think that she must have had a good relationship cause clearly she didn’t use speed all that much.

Sarah, a pretty blonde head says "when somebody is in a bad mood and they snap at me I take it really personally. I just think fuck off u jerk, I think familiarity breeds contempt in friendships. The longer u know someone, the more u hate them"

"You have to recognise that u and the other person are separate individuals with lots of things going on. U have to know yourself, Sarah and understand that other people have their own agendas when they snap at u"

It seems that Shirley has got an answer for anything.

I'm too scared to read mine out, it's embarrassing. I don't think people would read out there really personal ones either. Mine is 'all or nothing' thinking. I don't get a text back from someone I like and I start to think that means I must be really unlovable and unattractive. One single knock-back and I'm a mess, I can't cope, and I take drugs or self-harm. And I have no idea why I am like this.

For some reason, the emotions start to rise in class. People start complaining that there is too much talking and that a few people are dominating the class discussion. The flaky hippie girl says that we all need to have more compassion and then runs out crying.

Matt, a bulky speed addict, said that Shirley was running the class with different rules for different people. Shirley said she wasn’t going to treat everyone the same. Christy said the conflict in class was making it "less enjoyable". We got told again that thoughts control everything.

Thoughts control everything.

I wasn’t so sure about that. What about instincts? What about sexual attraction? What about asthma attacks? What about Mel.

Mel is proving a bit of a problem.

I kind of get the impression that she had been made an outcast in her villa full of tough girls. I do kind of feel sorry for her.

"When you move to Sydney we will catch-up and go clubbing" she says.
"Ok"
"My sister is a lesbian and she wants to move into inner-Sydney"
"Ok"
"Where do you want to live in Sydney?'
"Um, Newtown maybe"
"My sister wants to move to Newtown, you can move in with her"
"Ok"
But I’ve only known you for two five minute conversations.

Every time I see her she wants a hug. I'm not into hugs, especially not with people I've just met. Besides which there is a 'no-touching' rule in rehab anyways.

I’ve started hiding from her. I’ve started not wanting to leave my villa. I shudder every time I see her. I'm not sure how to tell her I don’t want her filthy fucking hands near me.

Before feelings check, she reaches over and strokes my face. All while looking at me like I was an adorably disabled child or something. She freaks me out. I can picture her sneaking into my room at night and driving a knife into my chest with that same 'I love you' expression on her face.

After feeling check, Penny the alcoholic psychologist plays a brilliant Beethoven rendition on the piano after feelings check. Mel stays sitting right next to me.

I get up and leave and go and hide around some trees at the far end of the property. I watch two Kookaburra's sit right next to each other on a low-lying branch.

I wonder Mel Jess bothers me so much? I'd hate to think I was ever like that, that I was ever that clingy with guys. I think about the time I slept with a guy and sat stroking his face after. He asked me to stop. I was shattered. I never want to impose myself on a human being like she does. It’s plain awful. She’s the needy child in all of us.

More classes. The funny outgoing blonde girl talks about injecting speed while her daughter played in the playground. Manic Elizabeth tells the group she had a panic attack this morning, she tells everyone about her problem with Phenergan. A couple of the jailbirds snickered at her.

I think I am starting to fit I for some reason, with all these funny messed-up addicts....I start to feel right at home.

We look at changing negative thoughts. As a class we make a list of negative thoughts that lead to drug use on the whiteboard. Stuff life "I'm worthless", "nobody knows", "why doesn't anyone love me" and "I'm not as good as other people".

My negative thought is "I hate being alone". The idea is too replace negative thoughts with positive ones. I put a new spin on it "I hate being alone" changed to "I like spending time on my own". Which I do, I guess the problem is when u feel like u don't have a choice but to spend time on ur own.

We then had to make a list of positive thoughts. I tried to make a list even though I didn't really believe all of it.
"I love myself"
"I like having a clear head"
"I deserve to be happy"
"I'm strong"
"People are good"
"The world is a nice place"

Shirley tells me after class that she thought I had low self-esteem and that our self-esteem was usually a result of our relationship with our parents.
"I get the impression Luke that you've never really had unconditional love in your life"
I feel like crying. She tells me I should feel comfortable crying in front of her if I liked.
"It's sad if you feel like you have to hide your emotions from me, Luke" she said "Why do u think u hide the way u feel about things?"
"I'm not sure, I was bullied a lot in high school and I guess I didn't want to give people the satisfaction of knowing how much it me"
"Ok, Luke, what I want u to do is go back now and think about the relationships u had in the early part of ur life. Think about what characterised, it's the key to working out what makes us tick"

I'm back my luxury villa. I don’t want to blame my parents for all my problems. It seemed so cliché. I'd always felt like my parents did lots for me. But there were things about my Mum in particular that still annoyed me to this day. She was controlling, she invaded my privacy, I was put on display around her friends, she always took my bad behaviour as a personal attack, she smothered me, she discouraged me from having my own friends, she was comfortable with me being a social outcast at school, I remember when she kicked me out of home and I had to get food vouchers from the Salvation Army. But none of that quite added up. How do all those things make me a self-harming, suicidal drug addict trying to clean his life up in rehab? It doesn't quite add up, does it?