Successful. Failure. Confident. Anxious. Settled. Restless. Turns out, the headlines never told the whole story. Here, Billie Piper writes exclusively for ELLE UK on what she’s learnt about herself, her mental health and why it’s all still a work in progress
Give me a familiar biscuit. I want to remember myself.
I want to be still. I want to feel safe. I want to eat my biscuit in this white room, while a nurse makes their checks and tells me I’m fine, for now at least. No questions, just statements. Soft, unthreatening, concise snippets: ‘I’ll be back in an hour.’ ‘I’ll bring some water.’ ‘Enjoy your biscuit.’
I will, I think. The stomach pain that landed me here is starting to pale into insignificance. My eyes and heart are turned by this ordinary, often-ignored British staple biscuit. It’s stealing me back, wrapped in blankets. ‘God, it’s good.’ I’m almost home. I could eat another. And another. And another.
You’re ill, I think. This must be what it’s like to lose your mind. Am I losing my mind?
I’m 34 but this feeling isn’t unfamiliar; this spiralling soothed by the strange comfort of a sterile white room. I felt the same thing when I was just 17, enduring another – albeit entirely different – physical crumpling. Awful, in many ways. But, my God, the enforced pause. That was welcome. Even more so now. Recently I’ve thought of poisonous mushrooms and oncoming traffic. The kind that just clips you but puts you down enough to enjoy an achingly slow passage of time, statements not questions, white rooms and malt biscuits.
Leave a Reply