<\/p>\n
We live in enlightened, feminist, non-racist, non-sexist times \u2013 or so we are told. So we are taught to believe. Girls can do anything<\/em>: so the slogan ran when I was a girl. And so the picture of Keisha<\/em> Castle-Hughes riding on the back of a water-bound mammal would have us believe.<\/p>\n I grew up in a kind, caring, loving household. There were boundaries, of course, but they weren\u2019t too draconian. I was raised to believe that I could achieve my goals: I could put a marker-post down in the future, head towards it with conviction and vigour and, all things being equal, I could reach my goal. I could compete with the men \u2013 and with other women. I could be a go-getter, an achiever, a winner. If not Numero Uno, then perhaps Numero Novantanove. My parents tried to teach me strategies that I could use to protect myself. When I was bullied while cleaning a fish factory \u2013 \u2018you\u2019ve missed a fish scale\u2019; \u2018look me in the eye when I\u2019m trying to bully you\u2019 \u2013 my parents told me to complain to the manager. The bully promptly pulled her head in and I was given a glowing reference stating that I had great \u2018strength of character\u2019.<\/p>\n I progressed to university, a nice middle-class girl doing a B.A.\/LLB \u2013 inoffensive enough, and yet people seemed determined to treat me as somehow other; different.<\/p>\n When I was taken home to meet the parents of my first boyfriend the quizzing began.<\/p>\n \u201cSo what kind of contraception are you on?\u201d asked his father.<\/p>\n \u201cUm, I\u2019m sort of on the pill,\u201d I tentatively replied. \u201cI am.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGood. Because the next thing you know I won\u2019t be supporting just you and Richard, I\u2019ll be supporting thirty-three kids as well.\u201d<\/p>\n At the age I am now, thirty-eight, with no children at all, I find myself wondering what I did to deserve such treatment. Perhaps being born female was enough. Born this way, <\/em>as Lady Gaga would say. How could I have understood, when I came sliding forth from my mother\u2019s womb, that my gender would prove to be so constricting? My parents created a safe place, a shelter. I was protected from many of the world\u2019s evils. I was taught to play nice. I wasn\u2019t warned about all the people rolling crooked dice. The wolves and the jackals. Little did I realize how riddled the world is with corruption and vice; with envy, with spite, with foul play. <\/em><\/p>\n When my first novel came out I hadn\u2019t expected such a furore. Sure, I was only young, but did people really have to get so up in arms about it? I found myself in the middle of a bizarre process of simultaneous deification and vilification. This wasn\u2019t what I had wanted. I had wanted to publish under a pseudonym, but it had been written into my contract that I had to use my own name. I had to put up with public humiliation, pack hatred, people sneering at me in the street.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy don\u2019t I tell you to just fuck off then!\u201d yelled an announcer at Radio New Zealand after I baulked at reading a passage from my novel aloud.<\/p>\n \u201cSuicide\u2019s good for sales\u201d, said my editor\u2019s husband.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat makes you think anybody wants to know what\u2019s going on in your head?\u201d asked my father.<\/p>\n \u201cToday\u2019s news, tomorrow\u2019s fish and chips\u201d, chimed in my friend\u2019s Dad.<\/p>\n Still, it could have been worse. Some writers get death threats. I seemed to attract a sort of morbid curiosity, like a weird lab specimen that somebody had captured to keep in a jar for public display. People seemed more interested in me than the book. I came to realize that (O, how Plath-like) there would have to be two of me; the public self and the private one. The more that other people are trying to invade your privacy, the thicker must be the wall that keeps them out. I, for one, had no desire to end up as tabloid fodder, a literary Middleton, preyed on by paparazzi.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n There were role models but they were few and far between. There were examples of people who had won despite, or perhaps because of, obstacles. There was Kristen Hersh, who started up her band in her early teens when some form of mental illness started making its shock waves felt. My schoolmate Cindy Mosey lost her entire family in a plane crash of which she was the sole survivor, and yet she went on to become three-times world kite surf champion. She was a good example of somebody who had lost everything and then gone on to win. All I can tell you about being female is this: Any time I was good at something I got harassed. <\/em>So, why bother? Surely it\u2019s better just to lie low and sit around the house, smoking pot and watching Dogs With Jobs<\/em> on the telly all day. Maybe I really am an obsessive over-achiever. More likely, I\u2019m of the personality type that has to have something to do. Also, once I learn how to do something, I am quickly bored by it. For me, the fun is in the learning.<\/p>\n When I moved to London in 1998, I felt as if I was engaged in a complicated game of chess. All I had to my name were my two novels, my honours degree in English Literature and two thousand pounds that I had saved while fruit picking. I wondered what would become of me. My anxieties and doubts circled my head like tortured flies. How would I find the time to pen my tomes? How would I support myself? How would I survive? How would I find my way in the world? I was playing straight, but everyone around me was crooked. I felt as if somebody had set me down at a chessboard and told me to play my game, while all around me other people were performing their own very complicated manoeuvres. Or maybe it was the other way round. Maybe I <\/em>was crooked and they were straight. The city was a jungle. Games were being played. And what sort of chess piece was I? A queen, a pawn, or something mid-range, a rook or knight perhaps? The female sales executives in the fund management firm where I worked seemed pathologically competitive with each other. One would even delete the other\u2019s emails from the boss\u2019s inbox, so that he wouldn\u2019t be able to credit her with the work she\u2019d done. What was to stop me from becoming like the people around me? What was to stop me <\/em>from becoming an exploiter, a bully, a crook? Conscience, I think. Morals \u2013 if I still had any. But why should <\/em>I be nice? Why should I be good<\/em>? Maybe being a bitch would get me further. Maybe I could turn into a bully to deter other people from bullying me. Maybe I should just ditch whatever morals I had and turn into a complete crim. Start dealing coke and whizz, stealing cars, maybe turning tricks in a brothel.<\/p>\n So, what do you know about Fund Management?<\/em> I was asked by an older gentleman at the interview for a P.A position.<\/p>\n Not a lot, but maybe you could tell me something about it,<\/em> I responded.<\/p>\n Oh, I hate people who throw the question back at you,<\/em> was the reply.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The British version of bullying is to try and make a person feel ganged-up on, out-numbered, mobbed. When I was made redundant from my Fund Management job, I was called into an office where a number of my colleagues were gathered around a table in a manner designed to intimidate. They were all on one side of the table, sitting up, backs straight, all very formal, like the judges on The X Factor<\/em> or Dragon\u2019s Den<\/em>, while I, a lone ranger, was on the other side. Perhaps, I thought, they are hoping for me to audition for a different role \u2013 Flashdance<\/em> style. No matter how polite I was, no matter how humble, no matter how sweet<\/em>, I still had to put up with being vilified. I\u2019ve endured being physically hit at work, not by a man, but by a woman \u2013 \u2018Helena Carr, Senior Sales Executive.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n There I am, a good little Kiwi, working God only knows how many hours per week, not bothering anybody, and along she comes, to cuff the back of my head.<\/p>\n Belt. <\/em><\/p>\n Don\u2019t touch my head.<\/p>\n Belt.<\/em><\/p>\n Don\u2019t (pause<\/em>) touch (pause<\/em>) my head.<\/p>\n In the end, despite being brought up to be a pacifist, and never having hit another human in my life, I just turned around and belted her back. Shortly afterwards I was made redundant but it was worth it for the satisfaction of whacking her. A writer will take revenge through fiction. Helena told me that Boxing Helena<\/em> was based on her. When she was living in California, a writer, let\u2019s call him James, had a crush on her. David Lynch\u2019s daughter, <\/em>Jennifer Lynch, had a crush on the writer. Jennifer observed the relationship between Helena and James and wrote the script for the film Boxing Helena. <\/em> Constantly writing about somebody, or making them your muse, can be a form of appropriation, oppression or \u2018boxing in\u2019.<\/p>\n Women, far more than men, are made to feel vulnerable and threatened. We are picked on more. We are harassed, put down, patronized, belittled and made to feel small \u2013 more often than not by other women, as well as men. Recent research shows that women are 71% more likely to be bullied by another woman, whereas the chances of a woman being bullied by a man are a much lower 46%. Then there\u2019s the good old female favourite \u2013 ostracism. Bonding through exclusion. The typical teenage trick. What woman hasn\u2019t experienced being driven out of a gang of girls? One of the main reasons I got into I.T. was that I thought it would be male-dominated and therefore less bitchy \u2013 as it turns out, most of the men were just as catty as the women.<\/p>\n I hate my life. I\u2019m looking for a victim<\/em>, admitted my last boss as she cruised the office for targets. Is it me, or is workplace bullying becoming endemic? Surely I\u2019m not so much of a nerd, so socially retarded, that I actually invite abuse? Or am I? No, it\u2019s not just me. Bullying is on the rise. According to a recent global survey by Monster, 63% of respondents and a massive 83% of Europeans say that they have been the victim of workplace bullying. Why? Personally, I think it\u2019s because they\u2019re all crammed in together like chickens, frustration oozing from every feather and nobody to peck at apart from the chicken in the next coop over, or more likely and more often, the chicken in the coop underneath. A European corporate chicken is a battery hen; a New Zealand chicken is relatively free range. And yet, workplace bullying is on the rise here too. Maybe when times are tough the sociopaths and psychopaths know they can get away with more nasty behaviour, because people won\u2019t risk standing up for themselves in case they lose their jobs.<\/p>\n Bullying can be insidious and sneaky. You can set somebody up to fail by allocating them tasks that they are unable to complete in the given timeframe and then complaining that they didn\u2019t complete their work on time. Patronizing somebody is also a form of bullying, since talking down to a person is designed to make them feel small and powerless. Then there is the trick of standing somebody up \u2013 saying you are going to be somewhere or do something and failing to deliver. My career counsellor pulled this trick a couple of times. I was as busy as all hell and he kept setting up appointments with me and then forgetting, or failing, to turn up. Helpful behaviour from a career counsellor.<\/p>\n These days, we have cyber-bullying: one kid threatening, humiliating or intimidating another online. This form of bullying is prevalent amongst teenagers. Suicides can result. And bullying is present in academia \u2013 my sister\u2019s PhD supervisor returned her thesis with HATE IT penned across the top in bright-red ink. We\u2019ve all heard of male lecturers who mark the women harder than the men. And no matter how much I tell myself, it\u2019s not you, it\u2019s them<\/em>, I can\u2019t help but internalize some of society\u2019s misogynistic hatred. By publishing fiction I am, in my uncle\u2019s words, \u2018an ego-tripper.\u2019 No matter how truthful I am, I still have to put up with being called a liar. It\u2019s only envy. <\/em>Is it? <\/em><\/p>\n After three years working as a secretary and personal assistant, I decided to find a profession that would enable me to earn the money to buy the time to write. I settled on Computer Science. It seemed like something I could master if I put my mind to it. I had the curiosity. I wanted to know how it all worked. There weren\u2019t too many hurdles and some of the people I studied with were genuinely nice. I was doing fine until my supervisor told me to rewrite my entire Masters thesis three weeks before it was due, on some flimsy pretence such as \u2018Class Diagrams can\u2019t be used with PHP\u2019 and then falsely accused me of using foul language. He was Greek. He spelt it fowl<\/em>. Perhaps he\u2019d overheard me clucking in the corridor. It wasn\u2019t the end of the world. I swapped supervisors and was given a \u2018B.\u2019<\/p>\n I joined a posh, blue-chip firm, and was put to work under Ed Simpson, who was clearly one of life\u2019s brighter sparks. He\u2019d turned down an offer at NASA to take this job. Ed and I had at least one thing in common \u2013 we both wanted to be fighter pilots when we were young. He seemed driven by inner demons, and would work until midnight and beyond. I have fond memories of leaving work at three a.m., drunk with tiredness. Neither of the men I was with had thought ahead to book a hotel or a taxi. I guess they were so wrapped up in solving their own complicated problems that they forgot to arrange transport or accommodation. There was nothing funny going on between us; we were just three exhausted people looking for somewhere to rest. After all, sometimes, clever people do stupid things. My father, who is a retired electrical engineer, nearly electrocuted me after forgetting to turn off the mains while we were installing a lamp.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve put up with verbal abuse. By various male colleagues I have been called a bitch, a smart arse, a tart <\/em>and a psycho. <\/em>If things were genuinely fair in the gender war, why did I have to put up with that <\/em>bullshit in this day and age? Especially in a company that bleated on about \u2018inclusion and diversity in the workplace\u2019. I\u2019ve been followed home from work by fellow Peckhamites. \u201cHey you! You pretty lady. Why don\u2019t you stop and talk to me?\u201d Um, because you might rape or murder me. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sometimes I demonstrated not so much bravery as a sort of naive stupidity. Walking home by myself through Hackney at midnight with my headphones on, listening to British Sea Power, I was almost mugged. I say \u2018almost\u2019 because the mugger seemed to lose interest partway through.<\/p>\n \u201cGimme your money,\u201d he muttered half-heartedly.<\/p>\n I\u2019d just had a lovely holiday in the Greek islands, so I was very relaxed.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve only got ten pounds,\u201d I said, opening up my purse.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, forget it then,\u201d he said, and wandered off.<\/p>\n Funnily enough, I almost felt cheated. Aren\u2019t I even worth mugging?<\/em> I felt like yelling. Come back here and mug me properly. I\u2019d get on that bus if I were you<\/em>, a local black woman shouted out her window.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been mugged in a shop. My ex-husband and I were living in Dalston on the edge of Hackney, and I was working full-time and studying in my evenings. I stepped out to buy a pint of milk. Two large men entered the shop. As the shop assistant was ringing up the purchase, one of the men pulled out a gun and shoved it in his face. The other man grabbed me around the shoulders. I squirmed and ran free, went sprinting off down the street, heart thudding. When I returned to the scene to give evidence, the cops didn\u2019t want to know.<\/p>\n Beware of thirty-three<\/em> \u2013 so Jarvis Cocker tells us. Perhaps I should have heeded his warnings, for when I hit this age I suffered some sort of drastic cognitive malfunction. I couldn\u2019t cope with my double load of I.T. and attempted literature. My mind went blank, or hit a blackout. Call it an early mid-life crisis, call it burn-out, call it an undiagnosed brain tumour starting to make its effects felt \u2013 suddenly, I couldn\u2019t understand what people were saying to me. Nothing seemed to compute. It seemed as if I was expected to leap through a series of flaming hoops while juggling miscellaneous objects. Most citizens of modern society will know the feeling: we know we\u2019re headed for a breakdown when the demands being placed on us by ourselves or others exceed our adult capabilities. My right shoulder seized up with RSI so I went to an acupuncturist. When I told him I was a writer he said, \u201cSo do you think you\u2019re quite a perceptive person?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI guess\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo if a woman was standing behind you staring at the back of your head would you feel it?\u201d \u201cWhat if it was the stare of a horny man?\u201d<\/p>\n It was a terrible trick, an invasion of my personal boundaries. I didn\u2019t say anything, but for some reason this comment has haunted me ever afterwards. I think it was because it was such a high-end acupuncturist, situated in Harley Street, no less, that it creeped me out so much more than if it had just been the good old Melbourne Grove Medical Centre.<\/p>\n When my father wrote to the doctor at the Melbourne Grove surgery about the acupuncturist, he was told that he was a \u2018revered figure.\u2019 A revered figure who sexually harasses his clients. Great. What was I supposed to learn from all this? That the nice guys finish last? That upper-class British men still think it\u2019s all right to sexually harass women just because they are in positions of power and influence? There was the agent who stared at my tits and told me I \u2018looked marketable.\u2019 There was the world-famous poet who made smutty comments to me at a literary prize-giving \u2013 something about \u2018wanting to take all somebody\u2019s clothes off and lay them out on the table.\u2019 Why, Lord, why? <\/em>Maybe they were trying to intimidate me into not succeeding. <\/em>Perhaps it was meant to be flattering, but it came across as creepy.<\/p>\n I went on a city ski trip to Italy with some people from the company. A bunch of yobs were getting pissed in the courtyard outside the hotel window. I waited until three in the morning, and then told them to pack it up.<\/p>\n Shut up ya Aussie bitch or I\u2019ll come up there and rape ya, <\/em>one gentleman hollered back. <\/em><\/p>\n British chivalry at its finest. He started climbing up the railing. I grabbed the nearest bottle of Veuve and hiffed it out the window at him. It narrowly missed him, but fell to the courtyard below and smashed into a thousand pieces. The following morning, a colleague of one of the yobs came up to me and apologized.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t have bought him along, but he\u2019s one of our best skiers. He doesn\u2019t have any fear. He just points his skis downhill and goes for it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s okay,\u201d I said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t offended that he called me a bitch; I was miffed that he thought I was from Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n Women are patronized. There\u2019s the boyfriend who says \u201cHey, you\u2019re really cute when you\u2019re angry,\u201d (thus invalidating a genuine emotion). There\u2019s the friend or acquaintance who comments \u201cGosh, I just love that dress you have on. So much better than that awful frock you were wearing last week,\u201d or \u201cYour hair looks great dyed red. Especially compared to that jet black colour you had last year.\u201d<\/p>\n But wait. It gets worse. I slogged my guts out for two years solid and was up for accelerated promotion. A new manager named Richard was rolled onto the project. He saw what a good worker I was and especially asked to have me on his team. I didn\u2019t have to ask him a single question and yet Kent, the programmer sitting next to me, continuously asked questions and was still promoted.<\/p>\n \u201cHey, Laura. In Greece the man beats the woman like an octopus,\u201d said Kent one day, slamming his palm down on the desk with quite some force. Sometimes perceived as difficult <\/em>was written on my file.<\/p>\n But what about Richard and his <\/em>managerial skills? Coming into work and shoving his cheque for thirty grand (a gift from some aunt or other) into my face, whilst knowing full well that it would take me ten years to save such a sum. He told me that he\u2019d been kicked out, or rather \u2018sent down\u2019 from Cambridge. He gave me all the work and hogged all the glory.<\/p>\n \u201cSo who do you think said you shouldn\u2019t be promoted?\u201d he taunted me.<\/p>\n \u201cEvan.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThomas.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHarry.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo, what will you do if you don\u2019t get promoted?\u201d<\/p>\n Various options flitted through my mind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Option A: Go postal, shooting myself and taking out a few of my colleagues at the same time.<\/p>\n Option B: Flee for the colonies.<\/p>\n Option C: Jump out the window.<\/p>\n \u201cLeave, I guess,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n I wonder now why I played along. I should\u2019ve told him to stick it and walked out.<\/p>\n \u201cYou just don\u2019t have any respect for me, do you?\u201d he queried one day.<\/p>\n What did he expect me to do? Bow down and kiss the hem of his Eton-educated garment?<\/p>\n Apparently I wasn\u2019t \u2018mature enough\u2019 to have my promotion. And yet I had seen my previous manager, Ed, rant and rave and yell and they still gave him his <\/em>promotion and all I\u2019d had was one little \u2018girly fit\u2019 \u2013 a yap<\/em>.<\/p>\n So much wrong with this company, <\/em>commented a colleague, and yet nobody could really do anything about it. And now, to be honest, I don\u2019t care. I\u2019m in my happy place \u2013 working for myself.<\/p>\n On the final project I was on, a third of the people were off sick with stress leave. Most of those left behind despised their lives. The boss started bullying me by telling me to do the wrong things and then laughing at me when I obeyed her instructions. Telling me to fix bugs and then laughing at me when I did it. <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe clue was that nobody else was doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s wicked\u201d, said her boyfriend, who was on the same project.<\/p>\n Bye, bye. Wave bye bye, <\/em>he said as I was leaving work.<\/p>\n They started up with the wolf laugh. Oh hoo hoo. <\/em><\/p>\n What the hell was all this anyway? Some kind of weird mind-game? What are these people getting out of playing these games? A power trip? Are they really that fucked up, that their only fun is attempting to give somebody else a nervous breakdown for blood-sport? I thought they banned fox-hunting in Britain<\/em>, commented a friend when I relayed the incident to her.<\/p>\n My colleagues were workaholics. One senior executive admitted he suffered panic attacks on holiday. Surely that\u2019s not normal. Money and status were gods to these people; their entire sense of self-esteem seemed bound up with whether or not they were ever going to make senior manager. They wouldn\u2019t date anybody further down the corporate food chain than them. Feeling unable to cope with my double workload of literature and IT, I headed to my local GP in East Dulwich, hoping perhaps to be prescribed anti-depressants or rest or both.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t go on like this,\u201d I wailed.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, of course you can\u2019t\u201d, he glibly replied in a tone that implied that he didn\u2019t give a toss.<\/p>\n Part of me thinks it\u2019s unethical to encourage employees to sign out of EU working time regulations, since those rules were set in place to protect workers from exploitation. It\u2019s the ten grand joining bonus that lures them in. A likely looking piece of bait. Chomp<\/em> \u2013 down comes the mouth upon the hook.<\/p>\n The decent manager, Ed, left for greener pastures and now works for J.K. Rolling-In-It. I had a nervous breakdown from the pressure, couldn\u2019t work out how to get home from work one day, was diagnosed with a brain tumour and now work for myself. Anybody who succeeds or stands out risks becoming a target. But I wonder about the other women. The ones who come along after me. No doubt they too will have been raised to believe that their hopes and dreams can be fulfilled. Then they end up with their heads in ovens.<\/p>\n Trickery, treachery, deception: if you read Churchill\u2019s Wizards<\/em>, you\u2019ll begin to realize that the British admire these qualities. They are seen as valuable psychological tools \u2013 weapons to use against an enemy. Is that how they saw me \u2013 as an invader from the Antipodes, a foreign body? <\/em><\/p>\n Then there are the medical professionals. We are taught to put faith in them. To trust them. We don\u2019t expect to be harassed by a doctor, nor do we expect them to be negligent. If a man goes to the doctor he\u2019s taken seriously. A woman gets told \u201cit\u2019s psychological\u201d. Even if she does have a genuine complaint \u2013 such as, for instance, a brain tumour.<\/p>\n My intuition and my perception were telling me not to continue in such a ruthless, cut-throat environment. I was too thin-skinned to be around these people all the time. I began hearing ominous music playing in my head each day as I was walking into work. I didn\u2019t want to end up like Amy Winehouse \u2013 a walking train wreck, with the onlookers gathered round, all feasting on theSchadenfreude<\/em>.<\/em> What good would fame do me anyway? You can\u2019t eat it. You can\u2019t sleep with it. Fame was fickle and capricious; here today, gone tomorrow. I found myself caught up in worlds that were glamorous, but treacherous. As slippery as black ice. You could easily go for a skate.<\/p>\n During my last days at work, I felt the borders of my world disintegrating; I was fading away, melting, like the Wicked Witch of the West. I started laughing and talking to myself.<\/p>\n Not fit to be in an office, <\/em>read my last work assessment.<\/p>\n I was chain-smoking, down to forty-five kilos. A walking skeleton. I collapsed in the tube station, unable to find my way home from work and was admitted as an outpatient to the Maudsley. I was told that it was a psychiatric emergency and that if I tried to go into work they would hospitalize me.<\/p>\n You are two feet away from complete psychological collapse<\/em>, said the shrink. I laughed in his face. I couldn\u2019t help it. In times of extreme stress (being hit by a car, working seventy-hour weeks) I don\u2019t start crying, I laugh. Some people experience this phenomenon at funerals. They don\u2019t mean to be rude, or socially inappropriate; it\u2019s stress relief.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve seen it all before<\/em>, the nurses told me. People work too hard, they get caught up in the rat race, they burn themselves out. They run out of energy. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Don\u2019t go on your own<\/em>, the Maudsley nurses told me when I suggested going to a Ware poets evening to meet Tamar Yoseloff and Co. I wonder why. Perhaps a woman on her own looks like prey to a predator. A man is allowed to be a lone wolf and nobody bothers him; a woman on her own is either socially retarded or just plain dumb or both.<\/p>\n Thank God for family. Dad flew over from New Zealand to help me get back on my feet. I had choices: I could stay in the UK or return to New Zealand. I made the decision to return to New Zealand, and I have to say I\u2019m glad that I did. For three years or so I wondered if I really did have some sort of mental illness. At first I just accepted the doctor\u2019s diagnosis, which was burnout due to being in the grip of a manic episode. But something wasn\u2019t adding up. Why was I struggling to write a shopping list? Why couldn\u2019t I organize a ski trip?<\/p>\n The world is a dangerous place. Yet, why should I cower? Why should I hide away? Maybe it\u2019s a writer thing. Some of the best writers have been recluses. I\u2019ve met my fair share of brain-boxes. They all seemed more confident than me, but maybe they were just faking it.<\/p>\n In my last days in London I was far from with it. I believe I may have had some kind of seizure, during which my spirit left my body. Where it went, nobody knows. Roaming in the Scottish highlands, perhaps, or malingering in the London Underground. A restless spirit; a hungry ghost with its sights set on reaching the other side. A dangerous high-wire act.<\/p>\n Three years and ten doctors later, they found the brain tumour in my left frontal lobe. They\u2019d been all too eager to diagnose me as having manic depression, the mental illness du jour, but after sitting at home for three years, more bewildered and confused than manic or depressed, I knew that there must be something more wrong with me. They checked me into the local mental health unit, gave me an MRI and found a lump the size of a lemon. Millimeter by millimeter it invades my brain. It\u2019s not the death sentence I once thought it was; you can live for decades if you take them out. My neurosurgeon, Mr Mee, tells me that he operated on a couple of people with grade two astrocytomas in the 1980s and they\u2019re still going strong. Further, there could be bright spots on the horizon. Science advances all the time, and stem cell research is being pioneered. Perhaps in the future, somebody could grow a new piece of brain and implant it \u2013 which leaves me wondering how I would turn out if they did slot in a new brain segment. Would I emerge with a new personality? The tumour is in that area. Perhaps they could insert an extrovert segment so that I could cope with having a public persona. I could emerge a whole new woman. It\u2019d make a good story.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t get me wrong: it wasn\u2019t all bad. There were cool parallels between the art world and the world of IT. Working for Fast Search and Transfer in Norway, I learnt that their CEO bought Ingmar Berman\u2019s estate. Nerds could be into art and film. Into music. Many developers get to listen to music all day on iTunes and nobody bothers them as long as they get the work done. It\u2019s not such a bad job, but to succeed in that world you probably have to be better at playing politics than I am, be far more cut-throat, more ruthless, more downright ambitious.<\/p>\n Sounds like a right shark pit<\/em>, commented my father, when I reported back from the front line.<\/p>\n I think you\u2019re being a bit hard on yourself<\/em>, said the Senior Executive I worked under.<\/p>\n But I didn\u2019t understand what he meant. I<\/em> wasn\u2019t being hard on myself. They<\/em> were being too hard on me. I didn\u2019t burst into tears. I simply snapped.<\/em> I don\u2019t care now. Maybe I\u2019m one of the lucky ones. I don\u2019t have to work in a sweat shop. I got the house. I\u2019m in a safe place. I have support workers and parents who still care, despite the turbulent adolescent years. My honest feeling was that I was surrounded by corruption or that all was phoney<\/em> as Bob Dylan says. Nobody was to be trusted. Everything was coated in sugar; enticing but bad for you. As for me – God, you\u2019d think I were the devil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Rising Epidemic of Bullying We live in enlightened, feminist, non-racist, non-sexist times \u2013 or so we are told. So we are taught to believe. Girls can do anything: so the slogan ran when I was a girl. And so the picture of Keisha Castle-Hughes riding on the back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1124,"parent":957,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-629","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1008,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/629\/revisions\/1008"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cSort of? Are you or aren\u2019t you?,\u201d he shot back.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI suppose so.\u201d<\/p>\n