...I finished my essay on: ‘Is mental health a valid concept?‘ and returned to work. I’d only been in hospital for about ten days. Work was okay for a couple of weeks, and I was free of those experiences that had seemed to place me on the edge between reality and psychosis for a few hours at a time. We had a visit to the local prison which fascinated me; the kitchens, the hospital wing, being shut in a cell for a few minutes - my overriding memory was of the warders whose lives were dominated by their keys. We were introduced to different ‘nursing models’ and different wards where they were supposedly used. I attended an out-patient clinic, my talks with the consultant seemed to be all about medication, when and how I should reduce it. Then one night the snow came.
I was enthralled by it, I believed it was building higher and higher on the roof into a kind of tower. I decided to rearrange the flat. Move everything from the bedroom into the living room and vice versa. I took a couple of objects at a time from one room to the other, picking up some new ones for the return journey. Soon the scene became totally disorganised - like the inside of my head. I remember a walk at night, following street lights, trying to make sense of their patterns. Once I saw Bill (who two years earlier had been my therapist and was now one of my nurse tutors) standing in the shadows, he didn’t do anything but it was good to know he was looking out for me. I can’t remember the events that led to my return to hospital, but I know I was taken there again by ambulance and for a while refused to get out. I was disorientated in time and space, physically uncoordinated, disassociated from my surroundings and recent events. It was then that I was sectioned for the first time (compulsorily detained under the mental health act - either because I posed a danger to myself or others). I was taken to ‘intensive therapy’ (a locked ward).
I found this first period of confinement claustrophobic, the ward was too hot, the windows fixed so as to only open a few inches, there was one living area and a corridor with five single rooms on each side. We ate with plastic cutlery, our belts were taken away. If you wanted a cigarette you had to ask for one at the nursing station and they would give you a light. In the first few days I learnt just how interactive live TV could be. You had to watch from a certain angle, and synchronise eye movements, but then the people on the screen could send you personal messages.
I was only there for a week or so. After a few days my mood began to fall and I was relatively normal for a while. In a more rational state you begin to remember basics truths - like the easiest and fastest way out of a prison is the reverse of the way you came in. Whilst physical means of escape present themselves at times - the real trick is to get those who wanted you in, to want you out. It was a long walk through the remaining snow to the new acute ward. The section was lifted about a week later, now I settled down to trying to get on with another set of strangers, staff and clients. I started to feel depressed. The ward had been recently renovated, the contrast with the rest of the hospital was striking. The staff seemed proud of it, anxious to keep it neat and tidy. Despite being aware on some level that it was longer-term changes in mood, coming from within me, that were in some way fundamental; I was prone to deny it, and think in terms of ‘fate’, or of sometimes being ‘surprised by joy’ and of course - of being in ‘control’ of my responses to life events.
But my mood continued to drop and my surroundings appeared grimmer and grimmer. The most depressing place I’ve ever seen in my years in the world of ‘mental health’, was the patient Snack Bar. It was in the basement, poorly ventilated, with low artificial lighting. The one place in the hospital patients could get tobacco. Through the gray mist, ghostly figures sat a stools, communicating only with themselves. A nightclub for the half-dead. To be outside was too cold, roaming around inside did nothing to lift the mood. I did manage once to get access to a full size billiard table for an hour or so, but it required getting someone to unlock several doors in order to get there. I slowed down, time slowed down. The consultant stopped the tranquillizers, and started me on an anti-depressant. (No one explained the basic facts; that they take about two weeks to start to work [anything else is environment or placebo] reaching their maximum impact after six weeks. If you haven’t improved by then - you may be amongst the 20% for whom they have no effect). I was not aware of the pills helping me, but I kept taking them. When I started to express suicidal thoughts I was sectioned again. Soon I was facing the prospect of spending Christmas on the ward.
The high point of the day was the arrival of Mary. She was one of the night staff and was the one person I seemed to be able to relax with and have a normal conversation. It was easier to settle down at night and get some sleep when she was there. The future looked awful, I’d never be able to hold down a job or maintain a relationship. I was defeated. As usual the TV was on all day, with nothing but news of the build-up to the Gulf War. The future was unbearable to think about - I could only look to the past. About a year before I had bought an audiotape of Laurie Lee reading some of his poetry. I thought of one entitled Boy In Ice:
O river, green and still,
By frost and memory stayed,
Your dumb and stiffened glass divides
A shadow and a shade.
In air, the shadow’s face
My winter gaze lets fall
To see beneath the stream’s bright bars
That other shade in thrall.
A boy, time-fixed in ice,
His cheeks with summer dyed,
His mouth, a rose-devouring rose,
His bird-throat petrified.
O fabulous and lost,
More distant to me now
Than rock-drawn mammoth, painted stag
Or tigers in the snow.
You stare into my face
Dead as ten thousand years,
Your sparrow tongue sealed in my mouth
Your world about my ears.
And till our shadows meet,
Till time burns through the ice,
Thus frozen shall we ever stay
Locked in this paradise.
Just before Christmas my father made the long journey to see me, baring gifts from my mother. He was supportive, as he always is. His apparent simple ability to endure never ceases to impress me. Something I am still trying to emulate. His being there reminded me for a while that there was a life outside the hospital. Christmas would have been tolerable if the staff had not decided to give us a party on the ward. Music, a DJ and disco lights for what seemed hours on end. Now I slowed down even more, spending as much time lying down as possible, I hadn’t the energy to kill myself anymore. I thought again of Laurie Lee and Twelfth Night:
No night could be darker than this night,
no cold so cold
as the blood snaps like a wire,
and the heart’s sap stills,
and the year seems defeated.
O never again, it seems, can green things run,
or sky birds fly,
or the grass exhale its humming breath
powered with pimpernels,
from this dark lung of winter.
Yet here are lessons for the final mile
of pilgrim Kings;
the mile still left when all have reached
their tether’s end: that mile
where the child lies hid.
(Mary came alone to my single room, knelt by the bed, put her head close to mine, and spoke for a few minutes. She took my hand, then stroked my arm; but it was with a lover’s touch, and it was enough - she gave me undeniable evidence that I was alive, and likeable).
For see, beneath the hand, the earth already
warms and glows;
for men with shepherd’s eyes there are
signs in the dark, the turning stars,
the lamb’s returning time.
Out of this utter death he’s born again,
his birth our saviour;
from terror’s equinox he climbs and grows,
drawing his finger’s light across our blood -
the sun of heaven, and the son of god.
Slowly my mood began to recover a little, I was taken off the section, but the increased suicide risk was not recognised by others. (At the lowest point of depression you do not have the energy or organisational ability to kill yourself, the greatest likelihood of an attempt comes before, and after). Three times I went to the bridge over the motorway ready to throw myself off. My stolen car was found by the police, but then my flat was burgled. One night I didn’t return to the hospital, the police arrived, put me in a cell for an hour or so whilst the duty psychiatrist was found, after which I was returned to the hospital. At one point I spent many days in bed in my flat, but was visited by a couple of the nurses from the hospital who persuaded me to return to the ward. My diary shows an appointment with the consultant, presumably as an out-patient as late as mid-April. There was talk of returning to work, joining a new intake who had started in September, it would mean doing just one essay to catch up. Then one day I was looking at the reading, it was all about ‘nursing models’, and what should have been a simple task for a graduate to take apart and critically analyse - just seemed totally nonsensical. What I was reading just didn’t register, I had no concentration, it was utterly baffling. It was then that I threw in the towel. (I’ve not worked since). I would resign, leave the flat, stay with my parents on the coast. I was almost thirty-two, had been trying my best since I was eighteen, and had lost…
(That was the third period in my life when I’d been in and out of madness, and there have been many more since, some more extreme, others less so - yet you learn nonetheless, up to the point where now it seems I can live in parallel realities, switching between them at will!)
The above events took place at Christmas 1990 at All Saints Hospital in Birmingham, a Victorian asylum next to Winston Green Prison. Neither exist anymore of course, the Home Office acquired the hospital site, and the other Victorian asylum was renamed The Birmingham Prison.
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| 2015 |
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