Normality Is a Warm Dog

 

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.