I was walking my puppies at the park when a girl I shall call Lily engaged me in conversation. At first it was all about the dogs and we chatted amiably, but she flitted from one subject to another and dispersed into the conversation enough of her opinions for me to know from the outset that she had some eccentricity or other. I don’t always enjoy eccentricity in conversations with strangers any more than I enjoy receiving phone calls from strangers trying to tell me that I am the winner of a holiday package, but I felt not the least unease as I spoke to her. Rather than making excuses that I needed to get moving, I found her rather fascinating and was keen to know more about her.
She moved through a variety of topics and her own personal life story at enormous speed and in the course of thirty minutes I knew a great deal about her. Her father was an alcoholic who drank himself to death. Although she didn’t say so specifically, he must have been a mean drunk because apparently he told her constantly that he hated her. She had wanted to be an actress but she thought that perhaps she lacked the confidence to follow through with that desire due to the messages she received as a girl. It was the one and only time during our conversation that she expressed any regret or self-pity, or any sense at all that she was looking backwards and not forwards.
There was considerable mental illness on one side with her grandparents. One grandfather tried to take his life many times and her sister tried to take her life nine times, although she is relatively stable now “compared to what she was”. She feels fortunate to have the genes of the other grandparents who were creative and resilient. To generalize, she said that her family was quite “mad”. It was not a complaint. It was a statement of fact.
She told me that she had been an art and drama teacher but that state government policies had closed down half the art, drama and media courses in public schools at the time of her graduation (she is right) and that most of her contemporaries never worked in the profession for which they had been trained. She did procure a job at a local secondary school but the Principal and Vice Principal had been having an affair for years, the school was in chaos and the “bastard” made sure that she didn’t get her job back in the new academic year. (New teachers are often employed here year by year, with no certainty of what the next academic year will bring.)
She’s done other jobs, not focussing at all on money but rather looking for “experiences”. She worked in a prison for a time conducting an art and drama course for the inmates and she started up an after school care program at a school where those children could be involved in art and drama at least in an after school capacity. I suspect that she has considerable creative talent and great flair when working with other people, especially children but that her difficulties with order and with keeping up with the paperwork required for such jobs meant that people could feel she was not performing as required. Although she was wholly responsible for the only dog that she was walking for payment, she rarely checked to see that he was still there. To be fair, the dog chose to be by her side the vast majority of the time.
From what I could make of it, right now she is just walking the dogs for her income although she may sell some paintings. She referred to herself as both a writer and an artist. There was no question she was very articulate and well read, with a strong interest in film (her major), although she had no interest in print or television media whatsoever seeing it as mere manipulation, untruthful and unworthy of her time.
Most of all, Lily likes to move, to walk, to be outside and to engage in conversation with others. She said that she could tell right away that I wasn’t put off by anything she had to say and this prompted her to go on. She said that was rather unusual. She loved going back to study as a mature age student although she admits she “starved” to do so and her family were completely unsupportive of this initiative.
She was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) at the age of 44 but I strongly suspect she means ADHD since she has clearly been very hyperactive. She seems less the kind of person that would get lost day dreaming in a classroom as she would be in trouble for expressing herself inappropriately. In fact, she said social situations have been difficult since she would interrupt people when they were speaking and not realize that it really bothered them.
Lily has been all over the city looking for help for many years. She said that even psychiatrists at the top of their profession had been unable to help her until one day she looked up the yellow pages phone book and decided to make an appointment at the medical centre where I happen to go. In fact, she found herself sitting in front of my doctor. She couldn’t remember his surname at the time but she knew his Christian name and I volunteered his surname. She was gobsmacked that we should share the same doctor but as soon as she had began to speak of what a wonderful doctor she now had and how he had saved her life, I knew of whom she spoke.
Chris is a man who has made it his business to understand various neurological conditions, most especially ADD/ADHD and somehow or others the gods have sent many troubled people his way to be helped. We have spoken of it often for various reasons not to mention that there have been incidences where we needed to stop what we were doing whilst he took a call from some institution that was holding a patient of his who had asked them to ring him. He would politely tell the caller he had made great strides with the person they were holding, to please advise him when his patient was to be released and to tell him or her to come and see him then; that together they would sort it out.
Chris sent Lily off to a psychiatrist and had her assessed so that he could prescribe suitable medication, gave her the titles of books to read, the names of people who could assist her with setting up positive thinking modes and order in her life. They get together to review regularly. She told me that a great many things had fallen into place in her life. She now realized why she had behaved as she had all her life and she was able to articulate her personal characteristics with great clarity. She said that ADD people are not just anxious at times of great stress, but they are anxious a good deal of the time. Whereas most people walk into a room and wonder for what purpose they did so every now and again, this kind of distractive behaviour occurs to her all the time.
Being a girl with ADD was especially difficult she thought, because she can’t do what girls are expected to do: to keep the house neat and tidy. ADD people can’t stand to be bored, requiring constant stimulation of their frontal lobes to feel good and so doing things that are boring to them is like water torture. They hypo focus, she said, and so become immersed in projects wanting to know everything about a subject of interest. Often, what needed to get done was put aside for other pursuits that were more compelling.
She felt proud of herself that she hadn’t given up and had the tenacity and the resilience to go on. In fact, she clearly loved life, lived alone in an apartment that was expensive for her but she was paying her way , rode her bike everywhere, loved animals and nature and most of all, she loved talking to people. She talked in detail about internal pain and how people can feel desperate to do anything to stop the pain; that her sister discovered the strategy of self-harm to avoid pain by chance. A mirror broke and shattered and she discovered that a shard of glass that cut her skin had helped. However, she expressed disdain for people who took their life if it involved other people. If they wanted to take their lives that was all right but if they decided to jump in front of a train and destroy the life of a train driver who got to relive the images all
his days, then that was very wrong.
She offered all this information very freely. There was no need for me to tell her anything about myself at all and since I remained interested in what she had to say, I only needed to agree, to nod, to express interest or to ask for clarification and that kept the conversation moving on. There came a moment when she wanted to tell me something that she considered “private” and her pace slowed somewhat and her voice dropped.
“This is rather private, but, you know, my father was a sadist and perhaps because of that and the way he treated me, I am attracted to sadists. I identify as a masochist.”
I gave nothing away. I merely nodded in acknowledgment. Eventually, we began to walk and talk on our way out of the park with the dogs and she asked me what star sign I was and I told her that I was a Scorpio. She felt sure that I was, she told me and she proceeded to tell me all about myself. I don’t give hardly anything away on the surface but underneath I feel very deeply and have great empathy for people. I am very curious. I care a lot about people.
“I’m Lilly, by the way.”
“Vesta.”
“Well, it has been wonderful talking to you, Vesta. I am so happy to meet you.”
“It has been wonderful to meet you too Lily. Do you come to this park regularly?”
“Nearly every day.”
“Then, we shall see one again.”
We said our goodbyes and my head was full of what this amazing woman could achieve if we could only get it (and her) organized. We had spoken of the need for educators to understand conditions such as ADD so that students could be better cared for and have better outcomes and I suggested that she would be an ideal person to talk to groups of students about her life and what had helped her. She agreed she would love to do that and had considered it, but of course whether the education department would fund it so that she had an income from the work is another matter.
Lily is articulate, engaging, bright and well versed in conditions that have made life a challenge for her and her family. It is the sort of story that could turn life around for many students who would connect with what she had to say in ways particular to them.
When I told my husband about her my main concern was that she was so vulnerable to sadists who would simply use her and spit her out for her submissive state of mind and I admit I have a desire to shelter her from harm. In the hands of a caring, attentive and loving sadist, I really think she could shine.
