Whisper to Me(131)

I was not, let’s say, strictly rational.

But anyway, the antidepressants are it for now—most of it’s using the techniques Dr. Lewis has taught me. I’ve got one more year of school, and I’m going to make it count, go to college, study Classics. I’d like to anyway.

And the truth is, I hardly hear the voice anymore. And when I do, it’s helpful, it’s nice … Well, okay, not nice. But it’s like my friend now, it points out things that I might have missed, it gives me clues, it gives me cues. It’s useful.

And it really is no more than a whisper, it’s so quiet, and it’s hardly ever there.

What else?

I joined Julie’s roller derby team. I suck at it, but it’s fun, and I like feeling part of the group. A group that doesn’t involve people talking about their invisible voices. Though I still go to that group anyway. How long I’ll be able to hang out with Julie for, I don’t know. I want to go to college, and I think I’d like to leave Oakwood to do it. But for now it’s good, I mean she’s good, I mean she’s my friend and that’s good.

It’s nice to have a friend. That sounds like the lamest, most bland thing anyone has ever said, but it’s true.

And anyway:

This is who I am.

So.

So I lost myself for a long time, and I did some terrible things to you and told you some terrible lies. But this is me now, okay? This is my real voice, my one true voice, which I am sending to you through the ether, over the wires and the wireless, so that you can hear it.

I’m like Echo, speaking to you when you can’t see me, I’m like the voice that came to whisper to me and insulted me and made me hurt myself but in the end, right at the very end, became my friend.

But now I want to be a real girl, not just a voice, I want my body back, and I want you to be the one to hold it; I want to hear my name on your lips.

I want you to be the one to whisper to me.





SEND.





Author’s Note


I have only heard voices once. I was babysitting at a house where I would often spend the night if the parents were going to be out late. The children were asleep, the parents were still out, and I was lying in bed, and I could hear people, in the room, discussing me. Discussing me in very cold, contemptuous tones. “Look at him. What an idiot. He can’t even see us.” It was so profoundly disturbing—a precisely accurate term in this case—that it bubbled up years later in this book.

I can only imagine though what it would be like to hear voices more often. And that’s what I have tried to do in Whisper to Me—to imagine it, and imagine how it could be conquered.

Because these kinds of illnesses—or traumas—can be conquered. That’s something I don’t have to imagine, since for a number of reasons and in a number of ways I have had close and direct experience of mental illness for a large part of my life. And I know, for an absolute fact, that people can get better. Things can get better. Life can get better.

Estimates vary, but statistics reported by the Mental Health Foundation put the proportion of teenagers suffering from some kind of mental problem at around 10 percent. It’s not unusual, it doesn’t make you weird—it’s very common. And it is extremely important to know, if you happen to be one of those teenagers, that help is available—and it works.

Never listen to any kind of voice inside you that says things will not get better.

Things can get better, and with help, they will.



In the United States:



National Alliance on Mental Illness (www.nami.org)

The Hearing Voices Network USA (www.hearingvoicesusa.org)



In the United Kingdom:



MIND (www.mind.org.uk)

Hearing Voices Network (www.hearingvoices.org)



The techniques used by Dr. Lewis in this fictional work are similar to those employed by the Hearing Voices Network, a support organization inspired by the academic research of Professor Marius Romme and Sandra Escher. They have coauthored several fascinating books on the subject, including the seminal Accepting Voices.

In real life, as in the novel, there is some tension between this approach—which stresses the roots in trauma for much voice hearing and the practical tools that can be employed to deal with it—and the psychiatric one. However, this is Cassie’s story: it isn’t intended to present my or anyone else’s view on that debate, and I hope that it gives as balanced a perspective as possible. It also goes without saying that Cassie, Dr. Lewis, Dr. Rezwari, and all the characters in this book are figments of my imagination and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.





Acknowledgments


I am deeply grateful to psychiatrist Dr. Martine Lamy, MD, PhD, and psychologist Dr. Michelle Madore, PhD, for their assistance in reading an earlier draft of this book and making comments. Any errors that remain are, of course, mine and mine alone.

My wife, Hannah; my editors, Cindy Loh and Rebecca McNally; and my faithful Second Reader, Will Hill, all made invaluable suggestions that helped me in the shaping of this story. It was a hard one to marshal, and without all of them it would be a mess. Thank you.





PRAISE FOR THERE WILL BE LIES



‘This novel is such a series of revelations that it would spoil it to talk about the plot. Lake’s writing is clear and skilful: he creates Shelby’s down-to-earth voice with humour and credibility, brings home to us the value of all our senses, juggles shifting notions of reality, describes places and emotions vividly and resonantly, and keeps us curious throughout this gripping novel’