If you’d asked me what I learnt last term when I was
a senior in high school, I would have told you that I’d learnt that time in
lessons went by much faster if you talked to a friend. Perhaps I would have
told you that I learnt that the best
place to sit in class is right at the back, to the left of the classroom and as
close to a window as possible. There was always something more interesting
outside than in a trigonometry lesson. I definitely would have told you that I’d
learnt to spend as much time at school as possible because home meant parents
and parents weren’t as much fun as the boys at school. No. No they weren’t.
Parents meant forced homework and forced family dinners and forced chores and forced
talks and forced everything else. No. I preferred to be at school with Bobby.
Hello everyone. My name’s Emma Gloss and I’m insane.
I had a baby at the age of nineteen, exactly a year and a half ago today. We
named her Sky. I had just started university then and I was doing an accounting
course that I quite enjoyed. Sky’s father travelled frequently and sometimes my
parents couldn’t take her so I often took her to school with me. I would make
sure she was sufficiently fed, that she had on a fresh diaper and that the
window was slightly open to allow for some fresh air so I could leave her in
the backseat of my car. I mean, we’ve all had to at some point, haven’t we?
Lessons were only thirty minutes long so I’d always found her just as happy as
I’d left her. The year went on, the material got more and more complicated, lessons
had to go on longer and longer and I continued to leave my daughter in the car.
I mean, what would a few more minutes hurt?
August the twenty-first, just after midday, I left
for school as usual. I was running a little late on the day but I made sure
that Sky had everything she needed before I left. What mother wouldn’t? That
time, however, just that one time, I didn’t open the window. The next thing I
knew, I was in a hospital listening to a doctor explain how my daughter had got
heat stroke and died.
The words “crazy” and “insane” started flying around
a few months after Sky’s funeral. It had started with the windows. All of a
sudden I felt the need, almost like a craving to open every window in range of
my gaze. I wouldn’t let it be closed. I wouldn’t let Sky die. Not again. Not my
baby.
My obsession with windows quickly expanded to car
doors and then fridge doors and then church doors and then any door at all. I
began to run around the neighbourhood every morning at 5:45 am to open all the neighbours’
doors. It was the same time every morning, like clockwork. A few weeks after
that habit began, I couldn’t sleep at all knowing somebody’s door or window was
shut, so I’d run. I’d leave my home and run to wherever I thought a door or a
window would be closed. I started to think I could hear Sky crying from behind
the closed doors. At first, Sky only called from around the neighbourhood, and
then more and more each day, I found myself running further and further until
my body gave out and I had to be admitted to hospital .After a careful
psychiatric evaluation I found myself in Kupenga Mental Institution.
So a quick fast forward to the present and a repeat
of the question about what I learnt last term at the Mental Institutions School
for The Insane.
Last term I learnt not to look at my roommate because
every time I did, she drew secret government codes on the wall and then licked
them off. Doctors didn’t like having to pump crayon from a sixty year old’s
stomach. Last term I also learnt that it wasn’t alright to miss my daughter the
way I did, that it wasn’t alright to feel guilty or killing her the way I did,
that it wasn’t alright to love Sky the way I had. Last term I learnt that there
were accepted methods of grief and acceptable ways to handle loss. I learnt we
don’t always have the freedom to choose. Last term I learnt to leave people’s
doors and windows closed, even when I heard my baby die behind them.
zvipoc
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