The Yellow Wallpaper

I’ve got one bit of work out of the way – an article written and submitted so that’s one thing crossed off the list. Now I’ve still got some redrafting to do and an academic essay to write too, but none of that needs to be in until Friday….

So I’m writing more for the blog…

Are you beginning to see a common thread here? It’s true what they say about writers – that we *have* to write – but that said it doesn’t mean that I get things done.

I’ve always been that type of writer – as a child I kept a diary, in fact sitting in an attic somewhere are volumes of my teenage diaries – tens of thousands of words, all teenage angst, all written in longhand, every day for years. I guess keeping a blog is no different – maybe a little less of the teenage angst and more of the thirty-something angst...

I know that if I went and looked at those old diaries now just opening them would slip me back into my 14 year old self – I would still remember writing those words, feeling those things and very possibly experience the same shock and embarrassment that we all suffer as self-obsessed teens. Or maybe I’d look at it all and not remember any of it and it would feel as if a stranger had written it – that often happens to me with fictional short stories I have written – I no longer recognised sections and wonder if I really wrote that – particularly when it strikes me as being good.

I think that keeping a diary is like holding a conversation with oneself and I suppose depending upon the state of ones’ mental health it will be calm and considered or mad as a box of frogs.

I had a long conversation with Roo the other day – we met for lunch (anything to thwart my deadlines) we were discussing mental health and as she is a nurse and my novel is about a mad woman we’ve both got bits of knowledge about some of the issues surrounding being barking. Aside from which as we both went to the same all girls’ boarding school we spent many years sharing confidences with plenty of crazy females.
One of the best fictional accounts of a woman’s descent into madness is the story The Yellow Wallpaper – it’s about a woman during the late 19th century who is suffering from post-natal depression, she’s alone in an attic room and pretty soon she begins to see figures in the yellow wallpaper and ultimately she swaps places with the wallpaper woman and loses her mind. The story is told in lucid detail and every step of the way the reader can see both sides to the story – yes she’s going mad, but also haven’t most of us seen faces in inanimate objects and then if you’re suffering with an elevated temperature the faces may move….It’s all within the normal bounds of experience and all too easy to understand this woman’s slide into insanity. I think that’s what frightens so many people about mental health problems – we wonder if it’s catching because we understand it so easily….

Or is that just me?

That formed part of my conversation with Roo too – if you’re aware that you’re unhinged does that mean that actually you’re sane? It’s a paradox…And Roo admitted that when she did her psychiatric rotation as part of her training she went to an open psych ward and didn’t know staff from patients….