That Was When People Started to Worry

Windows into Unwell Minds

Nancy Tucker

• Publisher: Icon Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781785782930
• eBook ISBN: 9781785782947
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology

' This is mental illness. It is unexpected strength and unusual luck and an uninterrupted string of steps. Then the next wave comes. And while you wipe grit from your eyes and swipe blood from your knees, the smiling faces in the distance call out: Why do you keep falling over?! Just stand up! 'Conversations about mental health are increasing, but we still seldom hear what it's really like to suffer from mental illness.Enter Nancy Tucker, author of the acclaimed eating disorder memoir, The Time In Between. Based on her interviews with young women aged 16–25, That Was When People Started to Worry weaves together experiences of mental illness into moving narratives, humorous anecdotes, and guidance as to how we can all be more empathetic towards those who suffer. Tucker offers an authentic impression of seven common mental illnesses: depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, self-harm, disordered eating, PTSD and borderline personality disorder.
Giving a voice to those who often find it hard to speak themselves, Tucker presents a unique window into the day-to-day trials of living with an unwell mind. She pushes readers to reflect on how we think, talk about and treat mental illness in young women.

Georgia

	Who’s house are we going to tomorrow??
Mais xox
Not mine, Alfie has scouts
Charl <3
Yours G?
	Yep sure
Mais xox
Thank yooooooou
	Yes haha
Charl <3
Is your laptop fixed
Charl <3
Dinner
Mais xox
	Same
Charl <3
Bye
Mais xox
Be good
	Don’t die

A greyscale horizon: winter-ravaged trees claw at a barren sky.

‘We cut and kill flowers

Because we think they’re beautiful

We cut and kill ourselves

Because we think we’re not …’

A pencil-and-paper girl, mouth obscured by a swipe of charcoal.

‘Don’t get too close

It’s dark inside …’

A wan face, features crumpling again and again on an automated loop.

‘The girl who seemed unbreakable, broke

She dropped a fake smile and whispered to herself,

“I can’t do this any more …”’

Letters carved into skin, blood spilling like ink.

‘I’m not OK …’

The laptop is open on Charley’s knee, her finger tapping the down key, hungry eyes sucking in the ghoulish posts. Maisie rests her head on Charley’s shoulder, the string of her greying friendship necklace clamped between teeth. Her pink cheeks and glazed eyes make her look feverish, and I gently untuck her hair from her shirt collar, blowing cool air onto her neck. She doesn’t move. When I have to look at the screen – when Charley nudges and points – I make my eyes blur so the pictures swim murkily together. The loud, proud misery of the black-and-white images makes me feel dirty.

‘Can we do something else now?’

I lift the sweaty scarf of hair from the back of my own neck, but no one whistles cold air onto my skin. The room is stuffy and smells strongly of us. My English book is rucked inside the sheets, uncapped pen leaking blots of blue. I always mean to do my homework, but something happens to time when the bedroom door is shut and the curtains are closed. Time is sucked away in a vacuum of us. I look at my worksheets and I write the date and I read the assessment objectives, but my attention flits back to the two heads, nestled together above the laptop screen, and I am drawn to them like a moth to light. I need to be with them, moving and seeing and breathing in time.

Back at the beginning, back in Year Seven, I had Maths with Charley but not with Maisie, and English with Maisie but not with Charley, and Maisie and Charley had Science together but I was in the other half of the register. So we didn’t become friends that quickly. We trickled together from different classrooms at breaktime and lunchtime, and chatted about teachers and television, and then at some point we were bound together by something stronger than cement. I don’t know when or why. The friendship squeezed us together, like a noose pulled tighter and tighter.

Now, Maisie texts from my doorstep at 6.30 each morning, and I creep out like a spirit, and we yawn our way to the 6.45 bus. Charley lives on the other side of the high street, so she meets us in the form room at 7.00. Our eyes are puffy as pink marshmallows, and by fifth period I want to put my head on my textbook and fall asleep, but it is worth it. From 7.00 until 8.30 each morning it is just us, alone in the form room, and that is the best thing in the world. At 3.30 we ditch the bus and walk, stretching out the fifteen-minute journey like bubblegum: an hour, two hours, three hours. We dawdle indirectly home, alternating licks on a sherbet-dipped lollipop that burns our mouths raw. One afternoon, mid-winter, we sat on the wall outside Maisie’s house for so long that when we stood the backs of our skirts were frozen solid. We laughed then, bodies convulsing and converging around one another, the warmth of infatuation melting the ice on our clothes. We fell in love with each other that winter, when we were thirteen and completely grown-up. Then, as spring brewed, we fell in love with suffering.

I would never describe Charley as happy, and she would never want me to. She is snippy and sarky and confident in an off-hand, don’t-care sort of way, but her face is always frowning. Even when she laughs, it sounds frowny, like there is something wrong inside that she only lets out through a wrinkled forehead and a not-right laugh. The first time Charley came round for tea in Year Eight, we sat in the lounge for a while, squashed together in the armchair next to Mum’s sofa. Mum chatted to Charley, and my face prickled red hot, and once we got up to my bedroom I mumbled without knowing what to say.

‘She has to lie down. She’s not well. She’s got stuff wrong with her. Like, with her bones. They’re really achy. That’s why she’s lying down now, in the middle of the afternoon.’

Charley shrugged in a don’t-care sort of way, and we flopped on my bed and played with Snapchat filters. When Charley left I kissed Mum on the forehead, and inside I apologised for apologising for her.

‘Did you like Charley?’

‘Mmm. Interesting girl. Seems a bit troubled.’

Troubled. What a desperately, painfully romantic thing to be.

Maisie isn’t frowny – Maisie is a space cadet. Maisie is wispy, as if she were made of candyfloss or communion wafer or something else that dissolves on your tongue, and her hair is so straight it is like there’s a weight tied to each strand, dragging it down towards the ground. Maisie is barely even there at all, and certainly not there with enough conviction to determine our direction as a threesome. It was always going to be Charley who sent us down the track we followed. Charley and her frowning forehead and her not-laughing laugh and her Troubles.

Charl <3
Are you coming to mine tomorrow?
	Yessssss
Mais xox
My mum says I have to be home by 6
	6???
Mais xox
Ikr
Charl <3
Ffs can’t you stay later?
Mais xox
I can’t my grans coming over
Mais xox
Will you come to mine on Saturday??
	Yes for sure! We’ll have all day then!
Charl <3
Maybe
Mais xox
Please come Charl …
Charl <3
Got to go
Mais xox
Ok …
	Bye. <3

When Charley shuts her bedroom door and rolls up her sleeve to show us the red line bisecting her arm, I ask, ‘What’s that?’ and I hate how high and tight my voice sounds. It is the sort of scratch you would get ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Voice to the Voiceless
• Abby – Depression
• Yasmine – Bipolar Disorder
• Georgia – Self-Harm
• Freya – Anxiety
• Beth – Disordered Eating
• Holly – Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Maya – Borderline Personality Disorder (also known as Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder)
• Presences and Absences
• References
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright