Marian Byrne darts from home in Raheny, north Dublin, each morning at 8am, her walk brisk and determined. Dyed hair swaggers behind her and curtains twitch as she passes. She pushes through the crowds, furrows for room on the bus before it rushes her to the city centre. Nothing unusual there except she’s got no job to go to.
People watch Marian through the corner of their eye. A vivacious air screams “life has begun” and in many ways it has. Marian Byrne from Dublin has lived with mental illness for 30 years.
“Living with schizophrenia has had serious effects on me,” she explains as I try to keep up with her. She’s scaling the stairs of the bus two at a time. “My mam was diagnosed with schizophrenia before my birth. She fled to England to have a child. There’s a seat,” she yells, while countless eyes survey her. “She never told my dad I existed and raised me as she saw fit.”
Refusing to talk in a quiet setting was Marian’s idea, agreeing to be interviewed on one condition: if I could keep up with her. In her own words, “I’m a girl on the go.”
“Very early on I knew my mam was different,” she says. “She’d have hallucinations and hold them with great conviction. I’d play make-believe games too but I never really believed them. She would. She’d believe that she was someone famous like Marilyn Monroe; that’s where I got my name.” Her mother’s schizophrenic episodes worsened after Marian’s birth. “She wouldn’t let my Irish grandparents come to visit me. But that’s nothing,” she says, shaking her hand dismissively.
“When I was three a neighbour bought me sweets and when I played with the packet instead of eating them my mam freaked out and signed herself into a mental home. We stayed there for months. Nurses from the psychiatric hospital were the first real ‘mothers’ I knew. No wonder I’m a bit dizzy,” she guffaws. Heads turn again.
“I don’t know why the health board didn’t take me from her. That’s the 1970s for you. You see she could turn on an act, pretend that she was okay. She was probably more okay than me because I was at her mercy.”
Moving back to Ireland, things did not improve. “We returned to live with my grandparents because my mam was broke. I still had no support. They were afraid she’d take off again so they left parenting up to her.
“She often told me she was insane. I didn’t need telling; it was in her eyes. She said she wanted to commit suicide and take me with her but she couldn’t because I would die first. I didn’t even say ‘thank God you didn’t.’ I just turned away.”
When Marian began school her mam would run to collect her, perhaps trying to outrun the world, wanting to get to Marian first. “She’d wait anxiously outside for hours. I’d see her like a dark cloud in the distance, waiting to suffocate me.
“In my teens I shut her out. ‘I can’t hear you,’ I’d shout. She’d freak out thinking that maybe I really couldn’t, that perhaps she was hearing an imaginary voice.
“I longed to be an actress. I’d stand in front of the mirror because there was an audience in there. Sad eyes looked back but I never believed they were mine.
“I remember asking for a script so I could be a real actress if I learned it. I never asked for anything but this one thing.
“My mam went out of the room and brought back a newspaper and handed me the television listing. She told me to learn who were in the programmes and the times they were on. I did. She never had to look up the listings again because I could tell her everything. She never got me the script.”
Marian’s voice is understandably raised as she recounts these memories. I remind her that we’re on a bus and the people behind are enraptured.
“Great,” she replies, “there are worse things I could be than entertaining.
“I never said I had an easy life,” she says, easing back into her life story. “I wanted friends but my mam would say ‘why on earth would you want friends? You have me.’
“I was so depressed. I didn’t know what happiness was. I fought for a life but never got it.” At this I scan her heavily made-up face for hints of sadness or emotion. There are none, not even in her heavily lashed eyes. “You can’t change the past,” she shrugs. “Sure, but you can feel it,” I prompt. “I’ve forgotten how to feel it,” she concedes.
In 1987, aged 18, Marian left school and was in receipt of social welfare payments. “Because I had money I could go out on my own. It was so liberating just to shut the front door and leave her behind. My mam would watch me walk out with tears in her eyes. All day long I’d stroll through shops and hop on buses everywhere.
“When I had money I bought flashy clothes so I could be noticed. Did you see anyone looking at me?” An affirmative nod causes her to smile widely. “That’s brilliant.”
“Every makeup available goes on my face,” Marian declares just as the bus swerves into O’Connell Street. A chipped nail is hidden away in her pocket, but emerges time and time again as she lends actions to her words. In her strive for perfection, life steps in.
“After years of loneliness I made a friend. I didn’t know what it was to enjoy myself until then. I had no social skills. I never forget going to town to meet up with my friend. I couldn’t believe my luck that someone would be waiting to meet me, to talk to me.”
Walking alongside Marian I see that her eyes scan everything. She does odd things like greeting strangers while waiting at traffic lights. “Look,” she says as we pause on O’Connell Bridge and watch swooping birds and a retreating River Liffey. “This is life,” she says nudging me excitedly before pointing at the rushing crowds, “and I’m a part of it.”
I ask Marian if any issues result from her unconventional upbringing. “When I tell my story, people fear that I am schizophrenic. Because my mam is I had about a ten per cent risk of developing it; if both my parents had schizophrenia the risk would increase to 40 per cent.
“If you haven’t noticed people think I’m insane. It seems you can’t wear pink and look happy to be alive unless you’re mentally ill. But I’ve escaped a nightmare and I’m free. That’s a fantastic feeling. People who’ve always been themselves tire of it. But I’ve just found an identity.”
Due to Marian’s unfailing spirit things have improved. “I’m looking for a job. It will help me move further away from the past. I persuaded my mam to seek help because I won’t be around.”