When I began writing this book, I did so in the effort to shore myself up against the whirling chaos of my mind. I was in fear of disintegration, though I couldn’t, and still can’t describe what I mean by that. I had no idea that my terror would give birth to a book. What has been important has been the act of turning blankness and confusion into narrative coherence, however provisional. And though I started by doing that with my experience after Jesse’s birth, I quickly found myself doing the same thing with my earlier life. Though it’s not effaced from my memory in quite the same way as the more recent past, I had no sense of coherence for any of it. I didn’t know, before I began, how to go about making it out.

Two weeks in, the first shock of ECT ringing in my skull, continuity went. What I have left are mostly incidental snapshots of memory, recollections in monochrome, without atmosphere or expression. There is no affect, as a psychiatrist might say. They have none of the contrast of black and white, none of the warmth of colour. Were I to make a montage with them, all I’d have would be the static posture of someone who had lost her animation and was living a life by rote. From the start of my breaking down, Hugh was shocked by how much I seemed entirely myself. It seemed more terrible to him than if I had been unlike. But the narrowed, self-hating, minimal self, brittle as a Giacometti sculpture, that he visited every day is lost to my memory once ECT had begun. I no longer remember the shape of my despair. There is only a figure in grey, without thoughts or actions, without a voice even. No rage any more, waxing or waning.

Fiona Shaw described her experience of puerperal psychosis in Out of Me: The Story of a Postnatal Breakdown. It is an eloquent examination and exploration of the origins, nature and consequences of severe mental illness in the postpartum period. This excerpt is from Out of Me (pp. 72 & 204), Penguin Books, 1997.

Chosen by Femi Oyebode.