Artist: Shaun Garea

In honour of Mental Health Awareness Week, I am releasing a silly short story I wrote after a therapy session last year.

On top of being a love letter to terrible puns, it’s the most shameless self-insert I have ever written (though I have never worked as a district councilor, only reported on the goings-on within the chamber). I am thinking of adapting it for the Never Trust a Penguin short story collection I am (slowly but surely) working on, but in the meantime – if you have ever dealt with imposter syndrome or the twin lying bastards of anxiety and depression, this one’s for you.

Ortant the invalidating imp

For Diane (who helped me identify the little bugger)

“You know they’re not going to listen to you. You’re a woman, and you’re under 50,” a voice rasped in my ear.

“Ortant, shut it,” I replied.

“Also, you’re a bit shit – and everyone knows it,” the creature continued, gleefully swinging spindly legs from his perch on my shoulder.

 “Look, I don’t have time for this right now, go be a dick somewhere else,” I said, in my sternest internal voice. He hummed, legs still swinging.

“Now!” I projected with all my might. Ortant froze, chest puffed out indignantly, and disappeared to wherever it is imps go when they aren’t tormenting people.

I took my seat at the council table, spread out my papers, and waited for my turn to speak. It was true, I was one of the few women in the room and, at 29, definitely the youngest councillor there, but that’s where the accuracy of Ortant’s taunts ended. Yes there was still a bit of small town conservatism, but our district council is a lot more open-minded than it used to be back in the day.

I stood up and said my piece on our long-term community plan. I’d worked hard with my fellow councillors to bring together ideas that were sustainable, affordable, and would keep our district vibrant. There were some who still needed dragging out of the Victorian era, but by and large, we had pretty good buy-in. I stated our case, rebuffed a few pointed questions, smiled sweetly, and sat down. There was a lot of nodding, muttering and note-scribbling, but I thought it went pretty well.

As I left the building, I felt a familiar weight settle on my shoulder.  “You promised!” a little voice hissed.  

“I’ll do it tonight,” I replied in exasperation, looking over my shoulder when I realised I’d said the words out loud. Imps can hear perfectly well when you talk to them inside your head, but sometimes it’s hard to resist the urge to respond with your voice.

But I get ahead of myself. I made a promise, and now I’m keeping it. When not immersed in local body politics, I’m a writer. Although some (looking at you Big Ears) try to convince me I’m not a very good one. I’m a writer, with an imp – and this is our story.

#

We’ve all got that voice in our head. The one that tells us we’re not good enough, that we don’t deserve good things. When bad things happen, it tells us we’re over-reacting, and probably deserve it. The voice is louder for some of us than others. For some it can be the only voice we hear.

Mine piped up during my second year at university. It told me I had no right to be there, I wasn’t bright enough, I was wasting everyone’s time. When I actually ended up doing well in my courses, it changed tack. What was I going to do with a Bachelor of Arts anyway? I clearly didn’t want to get a real job.

I tried everything I could to shut the voice up. I argued with it – it could always one-up me, pleaded with it – zero sympathy, and finally decided to completely ignore it. It couldn’t get to me if I denied its existence. Genius plan!

Spoiler alert – it was not a genius plan. The more you try to not think about something, the more you end up zeroing in on it. That old ‘don’t think of an elephant’ chestnut, exists for a reason. The more I tried to ignore the nasty nothings whispered in my ear, the more I focused on them, and the louder they became.  So loud in fact, that one afternoon I found myself sitting in my living room with my hands clamped over my ears, yelling “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”

“There’s no need to be rude!” a nasally voice interrupted. I dropped my hands from my ears and looked up in shock. There, sitting on the sofa across from me, was a small, muddy-green, creature. About 60cm tall, it had long gangly limbs, beady eyes and enormous bat-like ears.  I shook my head, figuring I’d finally cracked from the stress.

“Name’s Ortant,” it said, walking over to me and offering a scrawny hand. Dazed, I shook it, surprised at how solid it felt beneath my own. “I’m your imp.”

 “My…imp?” I asked, stifling a hysterical giggle. Only my tragic brain could come up with an imp named Ortant, I thought.

“Hey! Cut that out,” he replied. “Those kind of thoughts are my job! And there’s nothing tragic about my name.”

“Okay,” I said, playing along. “So you’re an imp. What are you doing in my house?”

“Invalidating you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Invalidating you. It’s my job. I’m an invalidating imp, and I’ve always been in your house. You shouldn’t be able to see me,” he continued, bushy eyebrows knitting. “But the more you people try to ignore us, the more you draw us out.”

I sighed in despair. I had been doing so well. Straight A’s in political science and English. I’d even started putting serious thought into my career outside of university. Trust me to start hallucinating and ruin it all.

“You were always going to ruin it all,” Ortant interrupted my wallowing. “You’re not really smart enough. You just fluked the last few essays.”

“You nasty little shit!” I snapped, then froze. Ortant’s words were almost exactly those of the doubting voice in my head I had been trying so hard to pretend didn’t exist. “You said before that you’d always been in my house,” I said, staring at the little green creature curiously. “Have you always been with me full stop?”

“Now you’re getting it!” Ortant cackled gleefully.

“You horrible thing!”

“Hey, I’m just doing my job lady,” Ortant replied, skinny arms crossed defensively. “You don’t have to believe what I say. That’s on you.”

“It’s what?” I snarled furiously. But before launching into a tirade at the bat-eared little bastard, I paused. Arguing with the voice in my head never worked, so arguing with its gangly, green, manifestation wasn’t likely to either. But it had just told me I didn’t have to listen to it. If I accepted the fact there was an imp in my living room, then perhaps I could accept I had the power to send it away?

I fixed the creature with my fiercest stare. “So, if I don’t have to believe what you say, that means I don’t have to put up with your shit, right?”

Ortant raised a bushy eyebrow, but said nothing.

“If I accept that you are actually here, and tell you to fuck off, then you have to fuck off,” I finished triumphantly.

Almost imperceptibly, the imp nodded.
 
“SO FUCK OFF!” I hollered. Ortant stared in shock, took a deep breath, and disappeared in a puff of green smoke.

#

Of course that wasn’t the last I saw of Ortant. He was with me when I graduated university, and when I went to teachers’ college. He was there when, after a couple of years, I decided teaching wasn’t for me (he was particularly gleeful about that one.) He was there when I discovered my love of writing, and succeeded for a while in preventing me from submitting my work for publication.
Eventually, in all those situations, I managed to call him out and send him packing. But then he followed me to my home town.

After deciding I wasn’t a teacher, I moved back home to work out what I wanted to do with my life. My parents had downsized and sold their home for a ridiculous price. Thrilled their only child had moved back to town, they used some of their newfound wealth to help set me up in my own home. This gave me the time and space to get to know my community, and become involved with its politics.

I know how privileged I am. My guilt at seeing so many others struggling makes me all the more determined to give back to my community. I know, but Ortant loves to remind me anyway. He actually manages to get a few hits in too, because there’s a kernel of truth in what he’s saying.

“You’re only here playing politics because of Mummy and Daddy. There are so many people who deserve this more than you,” he’d say, perched atop the blender on my kitchen bench. Some days I could just shove him off and continue making my smoothie, but others I would wind up in a ball on the kitchen floor sobbing.

Strangely, Ortant didn’t pipe up so much when I made the decision to run for council. I suspect it was because, deep down, I never thought I’d make it in. Ortant didn’t need to needle at me, because I was already doing the job for him.

When I was elected by a landslide however, he took up his duties again with aplomb. “You’ve hoodwinked them all. Wait until you get around the council table, then they’ll realise you’re an utter fraud.”

I told him to stow it, but it didn’t work, because part of me believed him.  It turns out I’m a slow learner too because, the closer it came to my first day at council, the harder I tried to ignore Ortant’s shenanigans. It seemed to help for a bit, as he left me alone for a few days. I really should have known better.

#

There was quite a crowd gathered in the council public gallery, including my proud parents. Even the local paper was there with a photographer. I was desperately trying not to show how nervous I was, when I saw a flicker of green from the corner of my eye. My heart sank.

“Okay, okay, I get it, you’re here. Can we deal with this later?” I frantically thought. Ortant was having none of it. I watched in horror as he skipped around the table, kicking up papers as he went. Councillors clutched at their work, blissfully unaware of what was sending things flying. Cackling gleefully, Ortant launched himself off the table, swinging from one of the light fixtures. As my gaze followed, my jaw dropped.

In my nerves, I had avoided looking my fellow councillors in the eye. Now that Ortant had me looking up, I was greeted by a bizarre sight. More than half of the people sitting around the table had a creature with them. Sitting on their papers or their shoulders, hanging from the backs of their chairs. I’d been ignoring Ortant’s existence so hard, I’d started seeing everyone else’s imps. 

They all looked slightly different. Some were twitchy, others aggressive. One, laying listlessly across a councillor’s papers, was the image of despair itself. Some were leaping around, others whispering in ears – and not a single person, other than me, could see them. My heart went out to my colleagues. At least I knew where my dark thoughts were coming from.

“Okay Ortant, enough. You’ve made your point,” I told the imp.  “Get out of my sight and take your little friends with you!”

Ortant squawked and disappeared. My fellow councillors’ imps vanished too. I didn’t know if they’d really gone, or I just couldn’t see them anymore, but it was enough to get my head back in the game. It was less scary knowing my fellow decision-makers had imps of their own. I immediately felt dreadful for thinking that, but not enough to invite my one back.

Once people had picked up after the ‘wind’ that had blown through the chambers, I was able to make my introductory speech. It went quite well, as did the newspaper interview afterwards, but I knew I was going to have to do something about my imp.

#

It was actually something completely uncouncil-related that helped me come up with a plan to keep him out of my hair. I was working on my latest novel, when Ortant showed up with his usual “why do you think anyone’s going to care about what you write? What makes you so special? Bit arrogant really,” rubbish.

“Noted,” I said, rolling my eyes and getting on with my work. Annoyed, he tried again. “You’re desperately seeking attention,” he said, making his voice even shriller, “look at me, I’m a wriiiiter. Notice me. Notice meeeeeee!”

Notice me. Seized with sudden inspiration, I stopped writing. I looked the imp directly in his beady eyes. “Go away Ortant,” I said clearly and calmly. The little creature hissed and vanished.   

Notice me. That was it! Imps are desperate for attention, but it’s that need for acknowledgement that’s also their undoing. Our noticing them is what takes their power over us away. It’s how we can say “yes, we know you are there, but you’re just not that important.” Ortant’s need to be noticed would be how I’d get him to leave me alone.

#

Okay, I’ll cut you a deal,” I told the imp, when he inevitably popped up before my long-term community plan presentation. Ortant stopped his cavorting and stared. “I need you to leave me alone during council meetings. You can annoy me in my downtime, but when I’m at work I want you to stay away.”

“And what do I get out of this?” he asked, hands on hips.

“I’ll tell everyone about you. That I can see you, that you’re in my thoughts. I’ll out myself as an imp-host.”

 “You’d never!”

“I would,” I said calmly. “I’ll write a story about you and publish it on my blog. Then everyone will know.”

Ortant raised an eyebrow. “So I just need to leave you alone when you’re in council, nowhere else?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay then,” the imp said, proffering a green hand. “You write about me, and I won’t tell you how rubbish you are when you’re in the council buildings.”

“How can I be sure you’ll keep your end of the bargain?” I asked.

Ortant looked offended. “An imp’s word is sacred,” he said solemnly. The serious look on his face was something I had never seen before, and enough to convince me.

“Deal,” I said, pumping his hand.

#

I actually feel pretty safe writing this. Most of my work is fiction, and I’m certain the majority of people reading will take it for that. And if people with imps of their own recognise anything in here, and it helps them feel less alone, then that’s an added bonus.

I was interrupted a second ago, by a text from one of my fellow councillors:

Vote looks like it’s going to go through in our favour. Mayor’s sold on the community hub, and even Archie agrees we need to sort the recycling. Haven’t seen this much movement in years. Ever thought about running for mayor? 😉

“Pfft! As if you’d ever run for mayor!” my imp interrupted disdainfully.

“Fuck off Ortant,” I said with a smile.

Anna Kirtlan

Visit mhaw.nz for more information about:

Mental Health Awareness Week

Mental health resources and support