He was writing a song.
‘She’s not crazy,
That’s just the way she is,
She’s not the one that’s writing love songs
For someone that don’t exist.
She’s not crazy,
That’s just the way she lives,
Like she’s half way down a mountain,
Like she’s half way up a cliff.
She’s not crazy.
And, if you wanna know
If her day is short or long
Then that all depends
On where she started from
And so it went on with a wee guitar solo here and a repeated
verse and chorus there.
The song concerned his big friend, Donna who had long been
medicated for her bipolar condition. He, Steve, had seen her at both manic
extremes. Enough to convince him that no way was she putting this on. When she
was high she could have ruled the world, all bustle and arranging folks lives,
getting her friends benefits sorted, bawling out grasping landlords into doing
repairs. You name it, nothing was too daunting for Donna when she was in this
mood. But O, she told him, how she feared coming crashing down again and she
could sense when it was coming too and she tried out-running it but it caught
her in the end.
And then, the lows.
It was actually cruel to contact her when she hit the awful
doldrums for she couldn’t stop crying but you couldn’t help because you were
worried for your friend.
But, she wasn’t crazy. This was her normality.
Medication, then changing medication. One could only surmise
that without the medication she would be even worse than this; be in even
greater torment. It had side effects too as her overwhelming sweats
demonstrated and she was anything but even-tempered and her work suffered.
Sometimes Steve would receive a call at half seven in the morning and he’d have
to talk her in to going to her work. She’d complain that her desk was too near
so-and-so and he smelled. She wanted to work on her own in a room just to
herself and was in a state because this wasn’t being provided. She was worried
she was going back into a manic phase and she just couldn’t face it.
Then, one day, a simple recommendation during a consultation
with her psychiatrist – who she didn’t like – changed Donna’s life.
“Why don’t you get a dog?” was all he said.
Somewhat glib, you may think. Was he being flippant? Fed up
with her and her complaints? All these things Donna thought in her paranoid
state. But, the idea grew in appeal.
“A wee Pomapoo” she suggested to Steve during one of their
Costa meetings for coffee.
“A wee whit?” asked a puzzled Steve who half-mocked Donna’s
daft ideas but she didn’t mind because Steve was a gentle soul and she trusted
him. Is there something about folk suffering mental anguish that they have a
keen instinct about who they can trust?
“A Pomapoo. Half Pomeranian, half poodle” she said this as if
everyone should know these new manufactured dog breeds. Steve didn’t say that
he had strong objections to this whole dog-breeding industry. If it helped his
friend, then he could overlook such qualms.
She likes the song and asks him to sing it over and over
again. She asks what it means about writing love songs for someone ‘who don’t
exist’ so he tells her the story.
Many years ago – twelve? Fifteen? - on a social network site
named ‘Multiply’ which no longer exists he had been introduced to a person on
the site named Mandy.
“Take it easy with Mandy” advised his real-life and Multiply
friend, Julie “She doesn’t immediately take to people she doesn’t know, but
I’ve vouched for you”
So, he took it easy and was to learn that this ‘Mandy’ was
quite a remarkable individual. Professional psychologist based in North Wales,
her back-story was indeed quite something. Her husband had died some years
previously and in his honour she was setting up a centre for disadvantaged
youth. In her own background she was an orphan from Manchester who had
succeeded against incredible odds. More recently she was an amputee and was
currently suffering from successive cancers which she fought with great courage
helped by her powerful sounding feminist troupe of friends and her foster-son,
Joel, who was a very accomplished pianist who accompanied her own equally
accomplished clarinet playing.
This went on for maybe two years and a little group of us
followed her travails devotedly even when, after one particularly serious
operation, she was deemed to have lost all memory of the last ten years and had
to be re-informed the devastating news that her husband was dead.
We believed it all and Steve even went to the extent of
writing and recording a couple of songs for her (partly to boost her morale but
mostly to impress her because ‘Mandy’ was actually quite fanciable).
Eventually, between a Christmas and a New Years Day, one of
her powerful friends came on the site to give us the news we all dreaded; Mandy
hadn’t made it through her most recent operation and had passed away.
In actual fact she’d been rumbled. A Canadian baker had
fallen for her from afar and was threatening to travel thousands of miles to
visit her. Coincidentally he’d googled a picture she’d posted of herself at a
younger age. Turned out it was a picture of a blonde Austrian skier.
She – a pyschology graduate living on the Isle of Wight -
came on later to apologise for the ruse.
Hence Steve had written love songs for someone who didn’t
exist.
“She did exist but just not as you knew her?” suggests
Donna obviously mystified.
“Yes. Online Munchausen they call it”
“Munch-whit?”
“Munchausen. After Baron Munchausen, a German worthy who told
outlandish lies about himself. Munchausen Syndrome is about folk who pretend
they’re seriously ill to get attention”
Donna ponders this while picking at her muffin.
“Nice to know I’m not the only nutter in the world, innit?”
Rory is her wee Pomeroo and her wee best pal. Dogs are
sensitive to human mood and so it seemed that Donna made the effort to quell
the wee mite’s anxiety. There was a soul that needed her to be more stable, so
she was. The little dog was cute and ever so playful; it would have been hard
not to be happy in its company.
It would be silly and cruel to suggest that the cure for a complex
mental health disorder such as Bipolar was as simple as ownership of a dog or
indeed any pet, and yet….!
“What were the songs you wrote for the mad munchy woman?”
“The mad munchy woman? You mean Mandy wi’ the Munchhausen’s?”
“Aye, Mad Mandy”
“One was called ‘Can’t Help but Shine’ and the other was
called ‘She Makes me Want to Live’”
“Wow! Good titles. Did she like them?”
“The wee wifie fae the Isle of Wight said she did”
“And were you pleased with them?”
“Best songs I ever wrote apart from ‘She’s Not Crazy’”
“You seem to excel in writing songs for nutcases”
Steve thought about this for a few seconds before replying.
“They’re not crazy. That’s just the way they are”
Wee Rory grew bored with all this human chatter. He just
wanted his walk.
