Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne

tried to force me to go to school again, but I’d barricaded myself into my bedroom by pushing all my furniture against the door.
    Have you ever barricaded yourself into a room? Honestly, it’s the most definitive way of confirming that, yes, maybe you have gone mental.
    And that confirmation unleashes the emotional landslide – where, suddenly, after fighting for so long, your brain gives up and erodes in on you, spiralling your thoughts into monsters who seize the city and tell you nothing is going to be okay ever again. That this is your new life now. Fear, and pain, and confusion. And your mum hammering at the door, screaming that she’s calling the police for your truanting, and you don’t even care – just as long as you don’t have to leave the house.
    Eventually Mum gave up – thinking if she stopped “giving me attention” I would “snap out of it”, because that’s what every parent of someone who gets head-ill believes at some stage.
    I was left in peace.
    To ruminate into madness.
    The problem with that is, there’s only so much delirious spiralling you can do before your brain gets a tad bored. Not bored enough to move the furniture, open the door and say, “I’ll go to school now.” But sustained crying was exhausting and, without drinking, due to the barricade and such, it got hard to keep producing tears. So eventually I started looking for things to do and found an old DVD Jane’d lent me – she’d been going through a Johnny Depp obsessive period – and shoved it into my laptop.
    Films had never been a huge deal to me before. They were things in the background in a friend’s room, or a way of passing time on Christmas Day when the family is bored of one another. But the moment Edward Scissorhands began, with its haunting music and blizzarding snow and magical fairytaleness, it did the impossible. It made me forget what was going on in my head. For one blissful hour and a half I was distracted by this story of an odd boy who didn’t fit in, in a boring town just like mine. It was like going on brain holiday. And it was so beautiful and poignant and perfect. That was the film that did it.
    And for the following years film was my only escape. I chased gorgeous story after gorgeous story, usually old romances, my film pile growing ever bigger and my movie knowledge ever greater as my brain got gradually worse, and then much worse, and then better.
    â€œSo why Edward Scissorhands ?” Oli asked, his basily eyes wide with interest.
    â€œOh. I just like Tim Burton,” was my reply.

Eight
    Sarah couldn’t wait to hear about my disastrous date. Naturally.
    â€œHow did it go?” she asked, before I’d even sat down. Her pen was already poised above her notepad.
    I picked up the dilapidated rabbit. “Aren’t you going to ask me how I am first?”
    â€œHow are you?”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œSo how did the date go?”
    I shook my head. “You’re getting it all wrong. We’re supposed to sit here in awkward silence first, because obviously I’m not fine, that’s why I’m in therapy. Then we make small talk for at least five minutes before I open up.”
    Sarah narrowed her eyes. “You’ve imposed rituals into therapy, haven’t you?”
    â€œNo,” I said sheepishly. Maybe I had a bit. “It’s just you’re not saying stuff in the order you usually do.”
    â€œAnd does that make you feel uncomfortable?”
    I narrowed my eyes back at her. “I’m in therapy for an anxiety-related disorder. EVERYTHING makes me uncomfortable.”
    Sarah let out a small laugh. “Fair enough. Let’s do this the usual way.”
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œDo you have this week’s Worry Outcome survey?”
    I rummaged in my bag and plucked out a wadded ball of paper. It took a moment to flatten out the creases on my knee.