“Information in this letter is intended for medical personnel.  Please discuss with me before showing to a patient, as it may prove harmful.”

True.

 A faded typed warning at the bottom of a psychiatric report. 

The report lives with too many others, in my desk drawer.  The third one down, as it sags from the weight.

They are depressing reports.  Some would say a millstone around a fragile neck. 

I argue albatross, because they feel punishing.

My overweight albatross.

A wretched creature, sometimes nested in the drawer, sometimes strung around my neck. 

Off, on, off, on. 

Depending on my self-esteem at the time.

Kept because?

Because. 

Each report is a morbid little chapter yanked randomly from twenty or so years of my life, condensed to 600 words or less.  My story, from the perspective of others.  Telling words.  I can tell who was listening to me, who took in anything of what I said, who misinterpreted, and who really was multitasking instead of taking therapeutic notes.  

Most of the authors, no doubt, assumed that I would never ever see them.  Who could have foreseen that Freedom of Information laws would fly these into my hands, many years later? 

A regrettable decision – it is how I learnt the two-edged sword lesson.

While most of them are just shoved into the albatross drawer in my chaotic way, the “may prove harmful” report is castled in its own envelope, razor blade smooth, along with its photocopy – lest I lose the original.  

It is that significant. 

The author?  Less so. 

As I ponder the report, over and over, and over, the only thing memorable about him are his shoes, as I rarely made eye contact.

His warning could refer to any part of the document really, but I suspect he had the last bit of his final sentence in mind.  Just eight words. 

He knew how to use words, or perhaps not. 

Did he realise that there are better ways to damage someone than with fists? 

I have to assume that wasn’t his intent, as I was never supposed to read the thing. 

However, intent or not, this report (along with the others), is like a stolen bank note, jealously guarded.  Few know that I have them.  Simply because I do not want anyone to read them.  Words read can never be unread.  Assumptions made are rarely unmade. 

A thought which has teased with my trust, stewing over years a terrible suspicion of psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors, social workers, specialists, doctors, and allied health people.  It may be a physical health problem, mental, a bit of both – it is irrelevant what I am seeking help for, as my assumption is the same -  he/she is silently scrutinising every facial expression, thought pattern, every word I say, attaching a she-is-crazy meaning to it, and reporting on it.  Secretly. 

I assume this because way back in the report writer’s era, I never imagined this man was thinking up his gloomy prognosis as I stared at his feet and muttered sullenly in one- or two-word sentences.  He never let on.  Not even a jot.  So. 

Which other mental health/medical care person has smiled at me deceptively, before writing me off?

How many other Hope-is-a-hopeless-case reports are lurking around out there??  Worse, who has read them, and believed it all - their brain sailing along a tangent far, far from my truth? 

What are these people writing in those reports?

An insidious question which runs through my head as eyes narrowed, in consult after consult I try to read (upside down or sideways) jotted notes typed/hand scrawled too quickly.  It is as if I am lip-reading – 1% accurate, 99% distrust laced guess.  My paranoia so deep that even print outs do not completely mollify me.  After all, the kindly worded document presented to me could merely be an imposter – a substitute for the REAL one, squirreled away in some unseen dossier.

On dark, dark nights, futureless seeming days, I’ve often wondered why this man’s crystal ball prognosis went from his brain onto paper, mucking up too many of my health care relationships.  Why did he feel the need to write it? 

Because the thought was so strong that he needed to say it, and that is the haunting part.

The face of this pessimistic psychiatrist did not linger long in my memory.  However, although mostly out of sight in that little envelope, his words are rarely out of my troubled thoughts, because they summarise a belief written into my mind long before his half a sentence made it into a report.

Hope has no future

My own thought, twinned with my father’s, full of his overuse of “stupid, bloody stupid”. 

Every time I read that report.  Every single time, I place it too carefully back into its nest.

My fat albatross.

It wears Italian leather shoes.  And speaks in my father’s slight accent. 

I guard it, check on it, feed on it. 

A kind of bizarre self-harm.

Sometimes, I kick the drawer, just a little. 

If I could work out how, I would release the thing.

Every hope-less word:

“I am not overly optimistic about her outlook”. 

I was only 18.

 Note: 

What did those words really mean?

For years I assumed it was a write off – “Hope is a hopeless case.  Hope is a deadbeat.  No point in helping her, no point in even trying.  She will never get anywhere in life”. 

So, every time I’ve failed something I’ve thought – of course I failed.  I was doomed from the start. And I start to wonder – if I was a better person, a stronger person, or if someone had intervened earlier, when I was a child, would I have had a more optimistic outcome?  Would I have achieved what so many of my peers have, and I have not?  (Ever forgetting as I think these thoughts, of what I have managed to achieve, despite it all).   

I’ve always seen the words of that psychiatrist as damning, and feared that others also interpret them so.

But.  

Flip these thoughts, and his words could be interpreted another way.

Perhaps he somehow saw a glimmer of my truth, hidden behind the ‘perfect family’ façade.  Perhaps he knew how difficult it would be to move through life with the weight of a toxic childhood on my shoulders, that my day to day existence would be a real challenge, every achievement hard won. 

Perhaps he was sympathetic rather than condemning.

Maybe what he was really saying was:

“I feel for Hope. She is only 18.”