AustLit

'THE FIRST TIME I was hospitalised, my mother visited me in the dank psychiatric ward bearing a three-tiered lacquer bento box packed with handmade delicacies. I told her I couldn’t eat. She began to sob, and in between wet gulps, confessed that my severe depression was her fault – the cause must be the frequent soap enemas she had inflicted on me as a baby, she explained. I began to cry then too. We hugged each other. We might even have shared a subversive giggle. Later that day, I informed the psychiatrist that I’d had a cathartic breakthrough, hoping that he’d release me from the horror of the locked ward, its floors reeking of spilt urine, the walls stained with other people’s anguish.' (Introduction)