: Eilidh C. Richards
: Journey to the Centre of the Mind a Mental Gap Year
: Books on Demand
: 9788284513157
: 2
: CHF 4.80
:
: Gegenwartsliteratur (ab 1945)
: English
: 320
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Our journey follows protagonist Hannah Higgins, a fortysomething woman, who goes through a turbulent year marked by inner and outer turmoil. The story revolves around her battle against self-destructive behaviours, including excessive drinking and self-medicating, unhealthy relationships and emotional breakdowns. Despite her attempts to appear functional in society, she struggles with feelings of loneliness, anxiety and lack of direction. Through her somewhat chaotic gap year, the reader gets a deeper insight into her mental state, her battles with the healthcare system and her slow journey towards self-awareness and mental recovery, with a hefty dose of dark humour to brighten the more serious parts of the book. Will there be light at the end of the tunnel for Hannah? Or just another brightly coloured shitstorm on the horizon? There is only one way to find out.

Eilidh was born out of desperation on the third day of September in 1983, the year of the pig. She started writing at the age of four and has not stopped since. With a BA in linguistics and an MA in Journalism, you might have thought she would have been able to do something productive in her life before now, but it would take a full-on mental breakdown for her to finally find her own voice and actually listen to it. A long-time sufferer of sometimes crippling OCD, complex PTSD and depression, Eilidh has been in and out of the public and private healthcare system in both her native Norway and the UK. This has given her considerable insight into how overwhelming the experience can be for the patient when they cannot fit into the neat little boxes the system demands. Eilidh has found through her writing an outlet for dealing with her own mental state, as well as profound pleasure in delving into the research and psychoeducation needed to better understand the makings of her own mind, her quick wit and dark sense of humour making the end result rather palatable for the reader. This is her first novel. Eilidh currently resides somewhere in time, but her still-beating heart will always largely belong to Edinburgh, the town that took her in when she had nowhere else to go.

Chapter 2: January – There is no bottom


‘OH. GOD. NO. NO! NOOOOOO!!!’

As Hannah awoke to the sound of her own screams on New Year’s Day, all she wanted to do was to crawl up her own rectum and disappear. How on earth was it possible, or even allowed, to be so fucking stupid? Taking in her surroundings (she was not on the couch this time but had actually made it to bed for once); shoes, coat, bag scattered across the room, as well as a bloody traffic cone (what was she, 12?!), she shook her head in disbelief. The shaking of the head summoning an orchestra of bongo drums and crash cymbals in her head, adding to her agony. This ‘no drinking ever again’ schtick sure as hell hadn’t stuck this time either. ‘FAAAARK’, she groaned and pulled the duvet over her head in an attempt to go back to sleep.

Of course, last night’s festivities had been planned. She’d been invited to someone’s party for once, and due to the fact that the other attendees were all a decade younger than her, she’d opted to down an entire bottle of proseccobefore she left the house. Which was the best option, she’d decided, as she was starting to feel a bit fluey. Might as well kill off any bacteria before they started breeding. To add insult to injury, she’d used the bottle to break a 36-hour fast,after a 10-mile run – also taken in a fasted state – which she’d embarked on to decide whether or not she was too ill to go to the party. She’d survived the run, so now she had to woman up and go socialise like a functional human being. She should’ve consulted her magic eightball instead. She’d contemplated staying in and not drinking, keeping up the sober streak, but had decided she didn’t want to start the new year off with any booze in the house, so she might as well go. She’d already made enough enquiries to the host that she was absolutely certain she wouldn’t be the only single person there, so this could actually turn out to be a nice evening. She’d just take it easy on the drink. Tomorrow was a Monday, after all.

She arrived at the party just after five, and she found she was glad she did. Greeted at the door by her new pal Jen’s partner, Justin, she was relieved to see that, a) he – much like herself – didn’t seem too fussed about dressing up as some sort of Met Gala reject either and, b) he seemed to have been out of his nappies for just about as long as she had. And none of the people there were of the breeding kind, so all of that sort of inane small talk would be unnecessary, and they were all there because they had something in common, rather than their kids attending the same nursery, or some equivalent of the latter. It was really nice to not be the odd one out for a change! So, Hannah handed over a bottle of red for the hosts and began to relax. When she was offered a welcome drink, she accepted with a smile, forgetting she had yet to eat, and that dinner was at least an hour – i.e. at least three units – away. Needless to say, the party had been great. Until it wasn’t.

So, what actually happened last night? How did she get home? Had she been asked to leave? She vaguely recalled trying to pull one of Jen’s female friends – drunk Hannah wasn’t one to discriminate – after not getting anywhere with the boyfriend. Whether that had been before or after they had gone outside to