Shrinkery

The awkward moment in a role play when your acted role becomes blurred with your own experiences. You begin to wonder if the psychiatrist can feel that the acting is too realistic. They sound genuinely concerned (see, they are good actors, my friend commented that therapists are cheats pretending to care). So genuine, that you begin to worry if they feel that you are the patient. Then, you almost ask the psychiatrist in the middle of role playing for a corridor consult, feeling that, talking to a caring therapist is quite soothing.

How have you been feeling this week? Do you feel like you should cut down on the drugs? Yes, sometimes people self medicate to drown out the difficult feelings. Perhaps you can find some different ways to cope, how about getting out more and scheduling some activities throughout the day. Another awkward moment. The subconscious transformation of the dinner conversation from social to therapeutic becomes conscious.

The disturbing Mount Misery comes to an end as the psychiatry rotation comes to its last week. The only book I've managed to read during semester without major disruptions to my routine - reason being, I can't stand it for more than short spurts on the train, or in between waiting for patients. Freud, penis and mothers, dude, what were you thinking? Insightfully put in the narration, "the real perversion of Freud and analysis was to take the essence of something and reduce it to something else - the present to the past, love to hate, joy to misery, life to death - and to do it under the guise of understanding..."

Ah, so long, the land of slow coffee breaks, sweet normality of working hours and waiting for patients instead of patients waiting for you. Nodding nonchalantly at a patient's printed book of erotic poetry, stalking patients to their house, and calling them through their bedroom window to wake up and open the door to let you in. Goodbye shrinks with their long silences that forces you to say more than you intended, shrinks who have long buried skills in sucking blood or managing medical conditions, shrinks with a beard and long hair slightly neater than your average hobo, the ever patient shrinks who delivers care to those who slap them or threaten to kill them. Goodbye imposter parents, successful entrepreneurs, rock stars, devil's clutching hands, televisions that give special messages, armed robbers, drug addicts, arsonists, and people who blow up like balloons on medications.

I wish I could say, goodbye human suffering. But we'll just be going back to a different sort of suffering. In fact, we can't escape the groaning pains and decay as long as we are in this world. And unfortunately, I don't seem to be coping with my own emotions any better than before these six weeks began. Sad. Only thing I realised is that I do self therapy, alot. Extract from observing today's session. Now, what would you tell a friend? To take it easy. Maybe you can tell yourself that when you're feeling upset. (Tick.) What are some things you can do to feel better? Apart from eating tasty food. (Tick.) Take a hot shower? (Tick.) Maybe rubbing your arm (Tick.) or massaging your own shoulders? Next time I want you to write down what you're feeling at the time and your thoughts (Tick.)

I'm beginning to enjoy doing mental exams on anyone whose demeanor or expression catches my eye. That well groomed, unpleasant, sour faced, distracted and irritable hairdresser yesterday. Lack of insight. Damn you, you cheat, this is how people get sued. Fortunately for you, no one sues for hair because it grows back. I was offered a tailored therapy (not self therapy this time) - now, you feel that she ruined your evening, but is it true? You want to harm her? Jesus loves her. Pfft, why would Jesus love someone like her. Besides, I'm not Jesus and I hate her. But we're supposed to be like Jesus. Okay, still! Distract me.

Oops we've sidetracked. How strange it will be to go back to "real" medicine. But, the benefit is that our eyes and ears will be attuned to another layer of the patient's story. To some extent, what Roy said in Mount Misery will be true:

"Much of what I saw was psychiatric: belly pain, anxiety, phobias, depression, suicide attempts, hallucinating crazies. Before, these had been "turkeys," unfathomable and untreatable, mocked by us real docs and turfed to the shrink or back out onto the street. Now they were familiar, and easy. In a few minutes I got the feel of where this person stood in the world. I had learned something in my year of psychiatry, something about how to listen to intense feeling without flinching, how to make sense of it."

Living within books

I hardly touch novels during semester, because the irresistible desire to keep reading and reading, and reading until I finish a book overrides the sensible prompts to sleep and be awake for school the next day. So each holidays, I pay a visit to the local library and borrow a stack of books and slowly churn through them with great enthusiasm.

I love classics in particular. Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, and even that Tess of the d'Urbervilles we all dreaded studying in high school. There is a quirkiness and mystery of a time and era past, and people who have such distinct ideas about women, about class, that fascinates me. These text have a richness - patient descriptions, colours, references to Biblical ideas or other popular texts at the time (undoubtedly, these are the elements which make them substantial for study by high school students over generations). Unfortunately, this art of painting a world and immersion into the character's lives is stripped to a bare minimum in many of today's popular novels, whose fast paced scenes, and flurry of dialogues, serve better as film material. But for all that I'm an impatient reader too, and for each classic I named above, I've had to start these books many times before I succeeded in passing the first one or two chapters.

A list of my holiday adventures:

A Tale of Two Cities - I remember the vivid references to this book from Sara in A Little Princess. Last holidays I managed two chapters before I gave up. This holiday I persevered and was rewarded with a story of love, of the terrible savage nature humans are capable of in times of desperation and of a mob mentality reminiscent of that scene in To Kill a Mockingbird. I've heard of but never studied the French Revolution and the novel gave life to this overthrow of aristocrats, and the impacts of this on daily life that I could never have gleaned from history books.

The Conversations at Curlow Creek - dreamy, poetic writing that was difficult to follow but I enjoyed the stories that ranged from a bushranger, to the childhood of a soldier from Ireland, on a backdrop of the harsh and wilderness of the "cursed" Australian land.
Anne of Green Gables - re-read, probably for the 30th+ time. I laughed at such lovable, comical characters. How come as a child I've never noticed, nor felt the twitch of irritation at how much Anne talked and talked. How is it that I didn't see Marilla's dry humour and sarcasm sprinkled throughout the novel. Being older, I could also smell the developing romance of Gilbert and Anne from miles away.

North and South - ah the stubborn Margaret and Mr Thornton. The strange commonplace practice of ladies "fainting" at shocking news. The contrast of north England with its factories and bustling cities, to the the south, with its idyllic landscapes, farms and small villages. The symbiotic relationship between masters and "hands" during the industrial revolution.

The Curious Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - I can see how such an improbable story would nevertheless resonate with each of us. The fascinating coexistance of our good and upright self, and our ugly and hateful being.

Others - I picked up a true story of a translator working for the inmates of Guantanamo Bay. The accounts spoke of such dehumanisation of individuals, and physical and psychological cruelty. Without the accounts of these detained men and the wives and children waiting for them at home, I would never have given much thought to the injustice of the whole operation. Another story I read was the autobiography of a schizophrenic man and the gradual paranoia that everyone was whispering about him, and all things were signs that linked to a grand plan to exterminate him. How horrible it would be to really be convinced of such things, as unreal as they are.

When we study symptoms of disease, the doctors tell us what you don't consciously think about, you won't see. I guess when we look at history, at our world (at the injustice, the divides, the hate, the mentally ill), what we don't learn to think about, we won't see either.

But when I live within the world of novels and imagination, I feel less and less connected to the reality of my physical existence. I should be careful not to slip too far. I've spent enough time over there and it's time to come back.

Love: two choices

If you had two choices, would you rather:

1. A passionate, all consuming love like Heathcliff's; dramatic, with times of sweetness, times of bitterness and haunting pain.

OR

2. A selfless, good and constant love, like that of Mr Linton.

Wuthering Heights was one of those books that would sit on my bookshelf for years. I would attempt to read it from time to time, but never made it past the first page. But actually, it was a fascinating and engrossing story. Classics are classics for a reason.

On a side note, why are novels considered academic, and a more wholesome form of entertainment than say, movies and magazines? In the days before television, were these books, full of scandals and drama, not equivalent to today's soap operas?

Letting go

I understood this before. When I missed my childhood I reminded myself that they can never return in the same way. Whether it's those holidays in China in 1998 with my cousins and family, the way reading novels could transport me to a magical world, or the fascination I found in computer games. My dead relatives cannot come back to life, my little cousin and I can never play like siblings again. Harry Potter can never fascinate me in the same way, I will never wish to go on adventures like the Secret Seven. I can't play make pretend games with my dolls and mice, or have so much fun with playgrounds or sand bombs again. My rats are gone, my dog can't walk with me to the beach again.

This year I often miss high school life. I miss the regular routine of going on the bus in the morning. I miss learning in a classroom environment, doing questions and playing games instead of merely listening to lectures. I miss my favourite subjects, miss having my teachers as mentors and friends. Studying with my friends in study lines, or late at night at the uni library; the food and laughter we shared every recess and lunch. Thinking of it makes me feel lonely now. But like childhood, it will never come back in the same way.

The same applies to friends. My best childhood friend and I will only contact each other a few times a year. I will only have memories of friends who I've lost contact with. My ex and I will never again share that same feeling when we see each other. Mum and I may never be so completely open to each other again. And my best friend in high school may never again share so much in common and understand me in quite the same way.

Even the most fun and enjoyable times end. Even the best friendships transform. We can only treasure those memories and be glad that we have them at all. I know I should enjoy and appreciate what I have now before it becomes something of the past. Hard to do though...

For you dear friend, I'm sorry I can't always be there for you in the same way. Here's a poem you will be quite familiar with:

Louise MacNeice

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold,
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.