 
#  Hospital Story

By Earnest Long

Copyright 2017 Earnest Long

Smashwords Edition

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# Chapter 1, Parkland

I went for a change down another road in the 'park' to the one I usually chose. It was leafy, unlike the normal circuit that went around the hospital. However, in places, the road was deteriorating to do with the hospital closing soon. Of the most interest I noted, was how the flowers grew. There were all kinds of flowers in the beds. I had watched them growing from when they were buds to now when they were in bloom. The day was bright and beautiful. If beauty is found anywhere in a mental hospital, then the grounds are splendid. However, patients getting well and going back to the community is the purpose of the hospital. The day rolled along at a slow pace whilst elsewhere, the world moved faster perhaps. I had time to take in the park on this summer's day. And I reflected on what possibilities existed for me that I might not have had a few years ago. Some nursing assistants were fond of telling me how lucky I was. A nurse told me when I said that I worried that to give to anyone or anything you only must take the treatment on offer to you.

After walking back, I found the ward welcoming and I thought my life was all right. A nurse had reassured me I would not be here forever. He said that I did indeed have a good future, even if I sometimes found this hard to imagine or I felt resentful. Also, he said that on balance it was not wasted time if I could get better, leave and live a normal life again.

Occasionally at mealtimes, I pass conversation. Sometimes I would visit friends on other wards. And when I had finished speaking, or they had, I would come back to my ward.

There are occasionally new admissions that included some attractive girls from time to time. I see them in the evening in their nightgowns and this makes me feel a bit better. Also, I try to make conversation sometimes when I see them. They seem more relaxed as they've had a bath and been given fresh nightclothes. Patients get fresh nightclothes every night if they want fresh ones.

Sometimes I try talking to the girls at the breakfast table. However, I rarely find anything much to say. My mother tells me that such women would not normally tolerate, or have to tolerate, someone speaking like that to them. She did not explain why they would not like me talking to them. But her saying this still made me feel small. 'I'm not so bad looking', I would say. My mother would say back that this was not what girls felt attracted to as eye-catching girls wanted something different. This confused me, as I didn't feel it was true. The girls were not always on the ward, as they could be in bed or elsewhere in the hospital.

On the ward, there was a bookshelf. I saw that someone – I assumed a nurse or OT – had stocked it with books. Later, I found that a patient had done so. She told me she was not particularly bothered if anyone read them. And she laughed when I expressed surprise that she had read all the books she put out.

# Chapter 2, Chat

I feel that whilst I may have liked to chat generally, I could not chat about just anything to the nurses. One reason I did not like to chat generally was that they might have to treat you for a physical illness even if they normally treated you for being mentally ill. Because of this, I found that when I needed to talk to them about a physical illness that I didn't like it if I had talked before normally. Also, you feel chatting is a human need and a normal thing to do. And you often only have nurses to talk to as patients might have little to say or be ill. Still, you may have nothing in common with many nurses. Perhaps you have done nothing in life to talk about. But nurses can tell this kind of thing even if your notes did not say how long you had been in the hospital. Nurses have done things in their life, which always makes it unequal in some way. Also, you don't know them to start with. And after some long-time, you've found out nothing about their lives even if you do chat with them. Seeing them and discussing your mental illness does not count as social interaction. However, I hardly ever talked about mental illness directly. You usually talked more generally. Sometimes, you might talk about anything you just happened to think. Or you might say anything that you would say to anyone.

A patient felt distressed talking about illness. Sometimes nobody could understand it unless the patient spoke about it generally. Also, the personal details don't matter so much as patients express the same mental illness differently. This is because patients know about different things, but the illness is still the same. Sometimes nurses said they were only finding the patient's mental state. Once when I had talked perfectly sanely for a few days, a nurse told me that they were not there to chat socially. And the nurse said that I would have to practice my newly learned social skills on someone else, even if I had said they might go back to zero if I spoke to nobody at all.

There were female patients on the ward. Female patients were less aggressive than male patients were as male patients were likely to punch you if you talked to them. So, I avoided them. The hospital did not allow physical relationships with female patients under dire threats. They could lengthen your stay and perhaps keep you in the hospital for years if you had physical contact with them. This was as a punishment. And you often had to wait until you were in the community before starting a relationship. Or at least, you could only start a normal relationship when you were back in the community.

In art therapy, you could have a chat and draw a picture. You did not talk about art directly but discussed the feelings you had. Most of these feelings I confined to the dust heap once I had discussed them. I did have an interest in art but did not pursue it as a hobby. Nor did I learn much about it like someone would do normally for a hobby.

There is in all things a nexus and a nadir. In mental illness, the doctor discharging you from your stay is what you most want. And you must look forward to leaving the hospital to give you hope. Hope of discharge keeps you motivated to do any activities that are on offer for you. These activities are so you keep active and pass the time constructively. Because I refused medication on the ward, I had to settle in for a long stay. For refusing, the nurses held you down and injected you. You had the drug anyway. But they would now lock you up as well. If you refuse medication a second time, then the process repeated itself. And they kept you in for another few years.

The nurse who is telling me to get out of bed says that there is breakfast in ten minutes. Next, he threatens to drag me from my bed if I do not get out of bed before he comes back. Grudgingly and just as he comes up the third time, I make a play with my clothes to show I'm trying to get up. My clothes, as I can see, the nurses have put at the end of my bed. I appear at breakfast, which was always cereal in any hospital that I stayed.

A metal frame high on the wall holds a TV, but it is not switched on. A rather fat man in an old jacket is sitting on one side and thinking something for a moment. Then he gets up and walks off somewhere behind me changing his chair.

"Do you want me to do that every time?" he said. "Or are you going to get up when they come behind you?"

I get up, as I was aware of somebody behind me. In the months that the hospital locked me up on this ward, it occurred to me to develop a sixth sense about this sort of thing. And I would get up a dozen times a day or so. Until that is, I realized that some seats had walls behind them. Only those arriving last had the other chairs. A nurse would sit at times behind the patients when the room was full.

During the day, I was almost the only patient on the ward. Patients had portable stereos and music played most times of the day. The TV went on at the same time in the evening every day. These were the only entertainments of any kind. Everyone listened intently from the first moment the TV went on. They felt anxious to take everything in that was on and then they would think of it the next day. I did not realize that the TV was the only form of mental stimulus for some time and nor did I realize that it was a vital part of many patients' stays. Instead, I had gone to the quiet room to listen to the radio. But then the radio played the same tunes all day. I noticed this, but I still listened. Also, I began thinking I must have a sad life when I heard the same songs played repeatedly. Now I became bored and wanted to stretch my legs. I paced up and down the ward. My 'mental health' began to suffer as opposed to 'mental illness'. This is if anyone uses these words differently. Watching TV would make me tired if I did so now. At times, I would go to the dormitory to sleep. Sometimes I would feel bad. Or I would feel physically sick from lack of stimulation.

On the first night on the locked ward, the buzzer went and the nurse went and let in my mother. My mother often came to see me on the ward until they gave permission for me to visit the family home. When she visited the ward, we went to the quiet room to talk. Often, we would only talk about my stay so far. I said to her on this first night and then many times afterwards that I did not want to take the medication. Really, I couldn't think of anything more to say. But as well, I often didn't feel like discussing anything else either.

One time I complained about the medication to the doctor as I said I felt doped up and couldn't concentrate. The doctor explained patiently to me that it was like medicine and I should take it as it was doing me good. But he did not offer to talk about any other worries that I had around medication or hospital. Later, when I had moved to a new ward, the ward doctor said that I appeared to have been on too much medication and I had it reduced. My ability to remember things returned. This was if I was trying to remember something from just a day earlier. Generally, I accepted the principle of taking the medication. But when things like this happened, I wanted to reject hospital entirely. And this included taking the medication.

My mother asked about OT for me and the nurses said I could do OT soon. The workshop for the locked ward did not want me to come to their workshop for some reason. And the ward doctor allowed me out to my old workshop that I'd attended on my earlier open ward. Every day this meant a long walk through the hospital grounds from where I could have easily escaped. When I happened to mention OT, the nurses expressed surprise that I went out not escorted. Some nurses felt this was rather taking the proverbial. They wanted to know why I hadn't run away. I replied that the doctor had persuaded me not to so I could do some OT. This was when I had said I would very much like some activities. But it was only if I went to my old workshop and I agreed not to escape. I assumed that he tried to persuade everyone the same.

Also, the nurse said that I could only be released when the qualified medical staff decided I was better. She said that an illness had caused all my problems. As I had no way to judge my own mental health not having any kind of medical qualification that I might regard my stay in a mental hospital as being only to get well. This was all they could do for me when this was all any hospital did for anyone. And it had nothing to do with any other ideas that I may have heard of such as patients benefiting in any other way. Also, because I never spoke to anyone or had anything demanding to do, I should leave it to the doctor's medical experience to decide if I was well and could cope outside. The nurses still seemed unconvinced I would not try to escape, but they seemed more so when I told them I had no money to go on the run. That evening the nurse interrupted my bath and told me to pack my stuff.

On arrival at the new ward, I saw a woman in her nightgown because my new ward was a mixed ward. And it made me feel I had left some confines behind.

The nurse came up to find me as I unpacked my stuff in my bed area and he said the doctor wanted to see me. The doctor on my new ward asked me a few questions about what I thought of being in the hospital and taking medication. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I mumbled something about it being possible you could lack insight and that everyone had told me I was ill. Also, I said that probably the medication was doing me good. He asked me what I thought of going home for an evening and then maybe for longer periods. I said that I would very much like that and do everything to work towards it. 'Yes, I would take the medication they gave to me including when I went home' I told them. A cloud lifted. I would do what the doctor told me if that was the first stage for me leaving this nightmare. In the future, I would continue taking the medication to keep me well. And I did so almost. But things didn't work out as I might have hoped.

I had some 'bad thoughts' as was my pet name for my symptoms. I convinced myself my past was different. I was this famous person in the news. Or, at least, I wrote his speeches. Or I spoke to the Press on his behalf when he didn't want to. My family reasoned with me. They said things such as, 'nobody speaks to the Press on anyone's behalf or writes speeches unless they're paid. And you have not been paid for any job more than a pittance'. Or 'you know your history, don't you...? What was that job you had for a bit...? You remember it, then... how much do you think someone who works in PR earns... what, you agree now you weren't in PR... why... I explained it... all I said was... never mind. We'll visit you next week'. But although someone had reasoned with me, I sometimes still liked to imagine it. I perhaps felt I was these things a little although really, I knew I wasn't any of them. But I thought I had a psychological need to imagine I was. Yet I don't think I ever crossed the bridge of telling someone I was the things I imagined, but only I was famous or in the papers. Or I thought that my parents had adopted me. But then a nurse had told me I wasn't and said she knew how to tell. I was not adopted, I knew what school I had been to as I did not think I went to a different school and I'd had the jobs I knew I'd had. And I knew I was in the hospital. I knew all this but still spoke about how I was famous. It is possible anyone will talk about wanting fame. But I could not think to put it like this if this reflected what I thought. I did not think to say this was my thoughts, although I peppered my remarks with words such as 'feel' or 'imagine'. Someone told me that I had no right to think people wouldn't worry about me when I said this. Or I had no good reason to think others should understand I only imagined it when they did not hear me say that. As well, the nurse said she could tell because of how I said it that I was ill. If I hadn't wanted to go back to hospital, I shouldn't have spoken like that – 'what made me think I could speak like that to my parents or to anyone?'

The hospital admitted me again and my father took me in his car. I half-heard the countryside as we drove, although everything was so quiet. Our headlights on a full beam were the only light for miles around. At one time on the way, I saw what looked like a light from a farmhouse with someone who put something outside as we drove past. Really, I did not know you could drive so long through the countryside without coming to a town or village. The lights of the hospital spilled out – literally thousands of watts. In the middle of nowhere, there were tons of bricks and bright lights. The bricks were taken there at the end of the nineteenth century and the lights added later. You could see nurses in their starched uniforms going around in the bright lights of the ward that contrasted against the countryside darkness outside. The hospital did not change, but my life could have been different if I was not here again and no different from before.

We had to wait in a waiting room. It had a coffee machine and luxury fittings. My father felt impressed and wanted to talk about how reassured he felt he was from what he had seen. But I was not interested in his viewpoint. And he said that I was being rude.

Someone said, "Where is he?"

A nurse who was waiting for his lift home intervened on my behalf and said that I had waited there the entire time, as much for my father's sake as mine. One of the nurses said that either I could walk or be put in arm locks. Anyway, where am I going? They had grabbed hold of me when I didn't know the way. And they pushed me down the corridor and out of reach of the normal world for some more months. Nurses often held down new patients and injected them. However, you did not see all the times that this happened. And you could not stay if it started. When the patient woke up, he seemed completely calm and relaxed. He might on rising merely be told to go to his room and lie down for half an hour more if he was dizzy.

I never talked to any of the nurses on this ward. If you wanted to say something about those things in your head, you spoke only to the doctor. This was because if you said something beforehand, you didn't get to say it when it mattered. There was a little tittle-tattle on the ward and patients did speak, but they did not have to say anything if they felt ill.

Keeping your room tidy could get you out of hospital – because anyone normally did so. Also, if they had not helped you clean your room, you would have been very ill when you often couldn't do it for yourself. As well, it is helpful not to have the aggressive tag. And it was hard to lose it even if you only got it talking about how much you hated it in the hospital. I did leave after some time and go to a care home.

# Chapter 3, Life

I existed and all in terms that seem expected of anyone unless you feel they are strange. Then being told someone dropped me on my head as a baby or my mother fell when she was pregnant will mean you pay no more attention to anything I say from now on. However, you may attach some truth to such incidents on some day that is now very long ago as you would to any truth. But it is not clear this happened. Someone said it, but then nobody said anything more about it again. These are certainties of a sort or just part of my illness. And sometimes someone puts them forward to me as such and at other times, they do not mention them.

I might say how I came to my lot. Really, my parents make me angry. They would tell me I had to stay because I was ill even when I had no symptoms. But I had no family or friends I could go to, no job to pay my way and no social security unless I stayed in the hospital. My parents had the power to discharge me, but they didn't do so. So, I could have stayed at home, read books and applied for jobs. But I didn't as I was still in the hospital.

Really, you did not let your emotions all hang out as on daytime TV. Perhaps nurses hadn't heard of such TV because nothing seems more guaranteed to keep you in the hospital for longer. It does not serve many purposes to feel anger or complain. And I do not want to say something that serves no purpose whatsoever, but to antagonize my thoughts and it makes writing more difficult when I would propose to make it easier.

When I was at school, I felt at times protected and whilst I would not say I felt bullied in the physical or mental sense, there were always those who would stick up for me. However, I should tell you that this is not true at all – I was never bullied at school and stuck up for myself. Now, I really can't remember. But I let my mind wander onto what happened to others and try to see my experiences for what they are as well.

I remember speaking to a nurse and saying, "At the time I took it all for granted. I did not feel embarrassed that they had done this for me and then shamefacedly I asked them about their friends. I was hoping from this an introduction. And I was given this despite them arguing together about it."

However, the nurse walked off as if to say I was talking nonsense. Or another nurse said that 'a patient might say something only because they are ill'. They knew what you said because they had to train. When patients did speak like this, though, I thought it was only a bit of general knowledge a lot of the time. Some patients disguised what they said when they had taken it from a newspaper. And they said it as though only they knew about it.

Perhaps some patients were ready to leave, but the staff often saw such things differently from the explanations given by the patient. Training for nurses is not something you can get out of a book. I was grateful. Indeed, nursing is a profession or you 'need a qualification'.

If you behave oddly, someone is likely to set upon you in the harsh outside world. In the hospital, you can behave oddly. Or at least you can sometimes. But at other times, it annoys some patients. You didn't speak to paranoid patients. And you may get problems after you leave the hospital if you do talk to them. Originally, the thing was a mystery about who the paranoid patients were. But then I found that being a mental hospital you could ask them.

Inpatient treatment has a poor reputation. You hear they lock patients away in the countryside and forget about them. Or their families put them there and don't want them released. This was for reasons such as they might want to get on with their own lives. My parents still saw me. Also, I had done no harm. So, I was unusual. Although, saying they would not or could not release me merely because I was 'ill' did not make complete sense. And I sensed a measure of vindictiveness and control that they liked to have over each of their children but in different ways. Also, someone who is mentally ill is difficult to talk to if still ill. You can't get a proper conversation or genuine emotion out of them or understand even what they are saying. Whilst the patients recognized their visitors and gave them their time and attention, the patient might make spiteful or untrue remarks during these visits. Also, relatives might not live nearby and not be able or want to give their time.

Of course, being in a hospital is not as bleak as it once was. I was able to visit my parents for the weekend. And whilst taking my tablets I felt no signs, or almost no signs, of illness. So, I did not feel that I was anything except normal. Nor was I in mental distress. Of course, I should say there is some doubt about this when I do not always feel perfectly normal. Stirrings in the mind pass by like so many clouds on a summer's day when waking from a nap late in the afternoon. And for a moment, it was as if I was back on some other summer's day such a long time ago.

Medication is the medical treatment – without it, the hospital restrained you for up to 24 hours a day. Nurses give you the meds and make your stay comfortable. You have art that you can do. And you can go for a walk around the grounds and visit the hospital café. The library times are on the ward notice board and you have time to read – more time than most to read. Other things do go on in the hospital. Time goes on for one though you don't notice it.

I would as if in some conversation to the boy I once was feel I had nothing to do but apologize to him. Coming from school, I ate a snack before homework and started a boyish conversation with my father about such matters as I had recently learned about. At weekends, I read propped up on one elbow on my bed. This was on glorious summer days that are now in the past. And years later I read propped up on my elbow in the hospital. My hand and wrist bent and sore by this were older and I could not remember what I had read those years ago. Only I could remember that I had done. Since childhood, I have had very few experiences of any sort. I see no need to rush or go fast from one place to another – you live but you do not live well.

Learning, when you have all the time to do so, you do infrequently. The doctor told me on one occasion that learning might be stressful. And he said that the nurses would not allow me to go to the library. This was a decision taken in my case conference without me and they told me it would be for life. I remarked to the nurses that I wouldn't be able to read a book from my age now at 20 until I was 60 years old.

"Before that," the nurse said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you will be a cabbage by the time you reach 40, literally a vegetable."

"Why? What are you telling me? Why would I?"

"Didn't you hear what I said?" she angrily remonstrated. "Listen! Your illness is one where you can't take too much of any stress. Learning is stressful and for your short-term good, so you can have, yes, you, a decent life, you must not read anything, not books, not the paper and of course this will affect you later."

"Sooner," said the other nurse laughing.

"What's the joke?"

"Don't expect her to look at you again like that. You must know how anyone looks at a cabbage and nurses can tell."

"I want to read and I am going to complain."

In fact, they did allow me to use the library. It was stressful to start with. I hid whilst reading behind the curtains of the bed and once or twice, I felt like asking for a counselling session. I knew the consequences of such an action, which was a quick answer that I could not read anymore.

Of course, what you say to the nurses like not wanting to become a cabbage may seem normal and rational to you, but the nurses tell you that they do not understand this as you do. They tell you that you are not making sense and you do not know what is best for you. Also, they say that as nurses they have a skill set that they use and that you do not understand.

The nurses told you some things that were to your advantage I'm sure, but the only one I can think of now is, 'take your medication'. The nurses also said, 'the drug companies haven't spent millions developing drugs that don't work and patients do leave hospital'. Or they said something like, 'read the newspapers and you know about care in the community and the opportunities you have. This is really your big chance. Nobody ever did anything when in a hospital, went out and got a job, had relationships of any value with another human being who wasn't mentally ill and likely to turn on them, or literally did anything'.

My father had spoken to some older patients and said, "Do you think patients they say are all right after twenty or thirty years in the hospital really are so good? They do not know who their best friend of twenty years is or who they would be if they saw them outside of here. Take the medication, as the only purpose you have in life, for now, is to get out of the hospital. And then when you do, stay out."

But this was not or could not be. The nurses told you that if you chose to ignore the advice given to you about what treatments were available, then you would stay in the hospital. And that if you accepted it, you could live your life normally. But if you didn't, you would become a failure.

'Nobody has written of such a failure even in the novels you read', my mother said. 'Taking the medication is all you need to do to be a success', said my father.

The tablets might work or might not work. But they probably did work and at least they worked in a way that was for your benefit. And you could hope they would work well for you and your illness would respond to treatment. They even told you how they worked and said they were dopamine re-uptake inhibitors. Dopamine controls the thoughts in the brain and too much dopamine gives you abnormal thoughts. Or rather, they are the same as sane thoughts, but too many of them and you can't cope. So, dopamine re-uptake inhibitors stop you thinking so much. However, you can think on a lower level. Yet you are still able to follow reason and learn new things. And unless you want to enter the professions or go to university, then there aren't normally any problems. You can do most jobs and even interesting ones as a doctor told me once. You use your mind and they pay you well for it. They do because, he said, you have some skill. But that doesn't make you a lawyer or a doctor. Unfortunately, nobody explained these facts to me early on. This is although, as a seventeen-year-old, I was outside the ward office whilst the nurses told my parents. My parents did not tell me what the nurses said because they did not think, they later revealed, that the nurses were suggesting they tell me. And they said that nurses only told them being as they were my parents. Another fact that might have changed my mind about refusing to take medication was if I had known that if you did not take medication you relapsed and from this relapse, you really were likely to become a cabbage. The medication stopped this, which was the opposite of what I thought.

In a sense, you do live in the same world as the one you always occupied and still occupy today. You go home for a day. And you read books like you have done since you were a child. Also, you do exercise as you did. And you live near your parents. As well, you see the same things out of the window of the bus or train. But somewhere or somehow or for some reason, you are not in the same world. And so much water has passed under the bridge you know absolutely nothing about. However, I feel I speak normally to my parents and my siblings. Some item in the paper is there to discuss or else some TV. I could watch a show and say what it was giving me. But others complained they had seen the same thing and they said I was in the wrong somehow for not realizing everybody felt the same and got the same things from any TV show. I had experienced something and I was grateful to experience anything at all and even just the television. But it hurt me to speak up and to feel that even as I had won this small thing for myself but that I was losing more. So, although I thought I spoke normally, in fact, I probably didn't. Yet I had come a long way even to be here.

At school, when I was about 14 years old, I decided I would like to do some hobbies I had not done until now. I missed joining hobby societies on my return from the summer holiday because I was away the first day of term and nobody would tell me how to join them. Someone did say where you should look for the notice that was stuck up and that would tell you. But I still didn't find it. I forgot to do it or did not see it somehow. Everyone else said it had been up and I could have asked where it was again. Perhaps this was the beginning of my illness. I did not really like it or I began not to like it. My father would mock my version of events that I might relate to him or I would find something he said rattled me.

Soon I began speaking to nobody about anything because I found my conversation a problem. I wondered why nobody noticed, though not occurring to me to talk about it.

Today, I go to my room at times because I have since I was a young child. One time I did this was when our relatives paid a visit and my uncle gave me a book. He told me about the book and said he would be pleased if I read it. The adults were meeting downstairs over dinner and I had to leave and go to my room. I began to read and my mother came up and found me wearing pyjamas and reading in bed.

"You do that! Do you like the book?"

"Yes."

"What is it about? Who wrote it?"

I replied and she said, "Tell me who it is by without looking. And describe what it is about in your own words and not what's on the back cover."

I said I would and I told her about the story when she came back to see me a few hours later.

"You read all that?"

"Yes, I've finished."

"You can't possibly have read so much and so quickly at your age."

She didn't believe me. And she tried to look for a review within the pages. Not finding one, she put the book down abruptly by my bedside and left.

My father would also send me to my room. And when he saw me reading during my punishment, he took my books away from me. This was because reading in my room was not a punishment.

When I was a teenager, my mother thought that deep down something was wrong. She felt that I was possibly depressed, although she did not use this word to me. But she did mention it later. She worried about all her children but decided to send me to a doctor. I said to mother that there was nothing wrong.

She screamed uncontrollably and said, "There is! Can't you see?"

When she had calmed down a bit, I would say 'no' to this. She would say again, 'there is something wrong'. And then she went to the phone to call the hospital.

She came back from the phone and said, "Tell me why, please, in your own words, you don't want to go."

My words were, "They have a bad reputation. You're locked inside and you don't even leave the part of the hospital that you are in."

"That's not true. They do allow you out and we'll come to see you. I spoke to the doctor and he told me you can go around the grounds."

"But you might only see me once in six months and it may be miles away. You may not even be able to walk in the grounds if you are a patient on some wards."

"They're a long way from anywhere for a reason. And they're the most wonderful grounds. We'll ask them if you can come for a short walk. I'm sure we can. The rules are not rigid."

"Once I'm inside if you're going to answer this in the fatuous way you've used so far," I said as she listened tight-lipped, "you are locked up and forgotten about and... and..."

"It's not true and we won't forget about you," she sobbed.

Again, she went to the phone. And she came back happier.

"I spoke to him at length. He said that you weren't a psychiatrist and he would tell you what you need to know when you get there, as you can't possibly know a thing now."

"Did you speak to him?"

"Yes, I did. Someone had to. And let me tell you that if you don't go, then I don't know what anyone can do for you. I don't want the nurses disturbed by them coming here. I'll tell you that."

I started packing a few old suitcases just as my father reappeared. He expressed surprise that my mother was in tears in front of me on the phone to the hospital.

"Usually, she only does that when you're in bed," he said.

I remember seeing a social worker not long after I was in the hospital, or rather relatively not long after. He talks about 'we all' and 'sometimes we don't', etc. What was the word, 'empowered'? 'People whom society sees the need to put away, to lock up – who are not welcomed to the treasure chest for them to take their full share and more besides'. I asked him how I was empowered as a mental patient. And I said that I felt I had no power whatsoever.

"Right," he said. "Why do you feel you have no power?"

"Because," I said, "You only have to take the meds that I'm forced to do anyway. And I feel the meds make me ill."

He looked astounded and said, "You don't mean the medication makes you feel ill?"

"No, it doesn't make me feel ill. But I can't do what I want."

He looked bewildered and said, "Don't the meds mean you can do anything like anyone else? I was told they did mean that."

"No, they don't really. They make you really a bit dim."

"What about patients who I've been told have left and got good jobs?"

"I don't know about them. But I feel brainless on tablets. Literally, I can do nothing for myself. I can't hold a proper conversation and not really a conversation at all. It must be the medication as what else can it be? That's the only thing that's changed."

He looked sympathetic. And he said he would see what he could do, but that something really must be done. Next time I heard of him, he didn't want to see me again. This was because he had felt humiliated when he raised the issue with my nurses and they'd told him that he lacked some professionalism.

"I don't think it was just you," said the nurse, "but something he said as well."

Of course, there are general rules for living, but you forget them after a while when you've been in a hospital. And the nurses need to remind you. Long-term patients go to rehab.

"Very few places exist in rehab for patients like you who have not been before the courts. If you want to go to rehab with secure hospital patients, then you can," the nurse said. "But you may not like it. You'll have to go up to a secure hospital or you can stay here."

"Why can't I be treated here?"

"You've already been treated. You need to leave but you won't cope in the community. You might be in luck, though. They are closing rehab in secure hospitals. You will get a place along with all the other patients just like you."

On the rehab ward, I met a very large, well-built patient. But I did not think he was violent despite his size. This was because in all my time on the rehab unit I had seen no violence at all. Nobody had even been aggressive. And I mentioned this to the patient I saw now.

"Unless you want to start something," he said laconically.

I did not want some things and without much doubt, I did want other things. I did not want to have more medication than I needed. And nor did I want 'my bad thoughts' to disturb me – as my pet name was for my symptoms – and nor to have them at all.

"Have you thought," said my father, "you could not have them at all if you took the medication and did the activities that they gave you. The doctor has said that, whatever they used to say in the past, someone with your illness should keep active."

Someone once said to me that when I have bad thoughts, I should try to think of something pleasant. I replied that I could think of nothing that was. But this was because I had nothing at all any kind to think about. Later, I was to find that thinking of a few lines of a well-liked or memorable poem helped.

And to learn facts from a periodical over a few hours and note on a paper pad how many I could recall before my mother arrived to see me, improved how I felt no end. It was not just a matter of feeling a bit better about, but happiness itself. I do not know if it is the same thing that affects my mental illness as that which improves my conversation. Or it makes me feel happier. But my father says that whatever the causes that the nurses have given me only two things to do. These two things are to take my meds and do something with my day.

In my teens, I was all work and no play. But I have happy recollections of my school days and the evenings at home, though my homework didn't sometimes finish until late at night. My mother encouraged me and I said I would finish my homework soon. But it often took longer than I intended. Now as I read, I felt the same sadness.

I did exercise in hospital from time to time. I ran and went to the gym. And I improved my strength and fitness. At one time, I was one of the strongest patients in the hospital. But I kept this to myself because the nurses saw it as aggressive to mention going to the gym. However, you could discuss how you felt about exercise with the gym instructor. There was a gym in the hospital and I would do sit-ups and push-ups when not in a hospital or near a gym. But for some years in my thirties, I did not do exercise and put on weight to a horrifying degree. And I had a long struggle to regain fitness. I put this lapse down to not going to the hospital gym or not having a floor area large enough to do exercise. This was when I had done exercise well enough using the dormitory floor. I needed to make a big personal effort for yet another time in my life to get fit, to read more, to make friends, to look presentable and to have a good mind and body. These were in short fitness and health. And to have these two things and keep them was my perennial problem. As well, it never really changed. Sometimes, I did get 'better'. Or I got nearly better, but not quite. Or the thing never lasted more than some several months. Things do change and you cannot live in the past. But time connects you to your past by a thread. Your previous fitness is not always relevant after a while to your fitness now, such as if you were to go below a certain point and so find exercise hard. However, you do move on from one place to another. And you don't stand still because nobody does.

My work in the classroom at school suffered before I left. At one point, I was in some distress because the teacher had asked to see our notes and in the entire term, I had only written a few pages. One day I didn't know what classroom to go to for a lesson. And I hung around in the corridors trying to find the right one. I had omitted to write down the room number for this lesson and I didn't go again to this class for the rest of the time I was in school. The school year went on in other ways as well. But to it all, I was mostly oblivious. Others might have noticed some of my problems. But they said nothing to me about it and I stayed at school.

After being in hospital some time, I wanted to leave. And I wanted to get a job, to date and to take my future into my own hands. My wish was to have a place to live not within the confines in any way of a mental hospital. This is a normal thing to want. But the doctor can keep you in the hospital. And as I said that I wouldn't take the meds, so I stayed. However, I did try to prepare myself to leave by reading and by making conversation when I could.

The doctor told me I was free to leave.

My parents visited. They said I couldn't have my room at home back for some reason or another, but they would look into where else I might stay.

"Will you look for me so I can have a home of my own somewhere? I need you to pay for it when I've no money."

"Yes, I'll do that," said my mother emphatically.

She came to visit. But she had not found anywhere for me.

When I asked her about it, she said, "Apartments are very expensive. If you have no money, you'll not be able to afford one."

The doctor called me and said, "I'm disappointed. You had plans to leave and you have not."

I began explaining that my parents could not afford to help me get an apartment, but the doctor said he was detaining me again. It meant that he could better regulate my stay in the hospital, such as if I spoke rudely to the nurses again, I could go to the locked ward if not informal. I angrily criticized my mother for being poor when I saw her and said how it was because of this that I could not leave.

"We're not poor," she said sarcastically. "You're the one who can't afford a deposit. What made you think I was going to look in the newspapers for somewhere for you? You must do that yourself. Everybody does."

I shouted at her. And I asked her how she could dare do such a thing in all her years. How could she feel it was all right to behave to anyone like that? She began looking around for the nurse.

"Calm down," she said like a nurse holding me down on the floor for an injection.

"You're enjoying this. I can tell."

"You can't tell."

"Yes, I can. What makes you think I can't? Tell me why I wouldn't know that you love this, every minute of this...."

I agreed to take the injection by going to the clinic room and having it.

"You're not in this ward," said the night staff.

"I suggest you go up to the locked ward," said the other nurse, "as you're supposed to have gone there. That was what they said in the handover."

Later however and although I was still in the hospital, they made me informal again. And I decided to look for somewhere normal to live and not take meds. The nurse called me down from my room as I packed saying that there was someone to see me.

When I went out to see who had come to see me, the nurse shook the pill bottle and said, "I'll put it as a refusal, or are you going to take your medication."

"No, I won't take it."

"I'll draw up an injection," he said. "When the other patients have had theirs and you're the only one left, you can take it then."

I went to my room to try to work out how I could avoid this. A nurse came in.

"Medication!"

I hardly responded, but it was negative. She had gone out into the corridor and I could hear voices. On the landing were one or two male nurses, but I felt I could still get out of it. My plan to go to the social security office and not tell them I was a former patient would not have worked. Nor is it likely they would treat me the same as anyone else if I just explained I had nothing wrong with me. And nor if I said all I wanted was somewhere to live and I planned to look for a job would they treat that as reasonable. Nor would it have worked if I had said that I didn't know what training courses were available, but that I would be all right if I were able to do one or two of them. And then I could get a job if the job market picked up. Nor as well would it have worked if I said there was this, that and the other I could do if they helped me. But the medication was stopping me. 'Everything will come to fruition' I would tell them if they just let me leave. But in my stupefied state, I could not see that the social security office and nor anyone else would help me if I discharged myself. I did not think of anything other than that I did not want this injection offered to me. I could see no alternative but I didn't like just to give in. And this was even though this episode might mean I stay in the hospital a few years before discharge again to the community. I had a moral imperative to resist because I felt my mind would be better if I was finally off the medication. The woeful thoughts of almost an entire lifetime took hold. I went to my bedroom. And I was sitting on the bed when the nurses came in. A nurse sat down on the bed and tried to reason with me. But when I still didn't want medication, he grabbed hold of me.

I tried to get up and to strike out.

"Now, don't be stupid!" the nurse said, using my first name. "This is a hospital. You're here to get better. You have to abide by the regulations..."

Other nurses grabbed hold of me and they gave me the injection.

This was largely how it was and how hospital affected you if you didn't want to take the injections when the injection was just a small, painless jab. And if you didn't want it, the nurses gave it to you anyway. Then your whole life could change for years or even for a good part of your life. You could act in haste and regret your decision at leisure.

"I'm not leaving this room."

I was adamant.

"Come on," said the nurse. "Will you get up? We'll allow you to walk. Or if not, we'll put you down on the floor again and you don't want that."

He seemed all too kind. But I realized that nurses could force patients to have injections. They did this because they said that someone who was ill could not make up their own minds. As I was a patient, then this was what I had to put up with and things like it. They took me on this walk to the medical room and then looked at me for cuts, bruises and the like.

"I don't know where you thought you were going to," said the nurse. "Your parents certainly cannot have you back and you have no money to speak of."

Another nurse came back from the phone with a note he had made on a piece of paper of what the main hospital unit had said to him and showed the charge nurse.

The charge nurse looked at the note and then he said, "It's a locked ward, but you will be allowed visitors. It won't be forever. And being locked up itself is not what's bothering you. It's clean, you will be looked after, get good meals and you'll be able to go for walks in the grounds for fresh air. It's been thought out. And it's in no way prison."

"I'll go," I said. "No trouble on the way of any kind."

I thought I had made a mistake.

On arrival at the hospital, we went to reception and the receptionist told us to wait. It seemed I had left the community and come to something else, which was not where I wanted to find myself.

First, I should say that the other patients were all mentally ill. At least my parents saw no difference between them and me although some had come from the courts. Either this was for an assessment or it was for a longer period after their court case had finished. However, I found the ward was safe as far as any violence went.

There were times when the alarm went off. But you rarely saw the incident. From a silly reason for punching someone, a patient like this had to start over again. He had done it because of something in his head. And he may have even had some control over it as he regretted it or could see it was wrong later. Afterwards, he could become quiet, reasoned and practice good social skills when someone spoke to him. But he may rue that he was going nowhere.

The nurses expected you to queue up for medication, not to distract the nurse and to take your tablets quickly with water you poured out yourself. And you should try not to spill a drop.

There was a Day Room with a TV, a dining room and a ward office. At times, staff welcomed patients talking to them.

Some patients would start giving their news to the nurses. Or really, they said anything just so they could talk for a bit. They did when they might have no news. This sort of desultory conversation went on a fair bit. You didn't know what they said though as you couldn't hear what anyone was saying. Most of the nursing assistants were in their twenties and thirties. They looked a bit physically fitter than on other wards. At one point, I ventured to speak to them.

"What do I think of mental illness?" he replied almost angrily, but as if a thoughtless question. "What I say is that anyone can become mentally ill. You could, I could and anyone could."

He then went on in a well-prepared patter some more about this. I felt embarrassed. And whilst I felt grateful that he worked there, the last thing I wanted to do was to talk to him. After he had said all he did and I said nothing back, he told me to go to another part of the Day Room and wait for dinner.

The ward expected you to go to OT and do work there. However, this did not amount to that much a lot of the time.

"We don't like people in OT who do nothing like some horrible monster," said the OT.

I replied that I didn't really regard myself as that and I just felt a little confused because I had been away from doing OT for a while. They gave me another chance to do OT, but a bit better than I had done.

An OT assistant approached me and said that she had a wonderful book with some excellent photos in it. She flicked through the pages and gave me the book to read myself. I did read it, but I stuck it back on the table after a while because I wasn't following it. The ward I was on before didn't have OT and my concentration had suffered.

Once I spoke to a doctor who said that OT was a very carefully thought-out and planned program. Going to OT was all that was necessary to keep your mind in shape as a patient. This was why they had OT. And they had long ago recognized the problems I had talked about myself. At that, he walked out, shut the door and regarded the matter as closed.

Dinner was after OT and I ate it and felt better for having been to OT.

In OT, I discussed silkscreen printing with an OT assistant. She at times looked up oddly at me, but I don't know what it was that she saw. I felt myself as if I was a special pupil. That is until everything went wrong. Doing my silkscreen-printing project, I changed my mind so often I got nothing done. My creative ideas were not any good or so I felt. And nor did I want to do anything that really was very poor. From this not-so-good experience and from whatever else or any good it had done me, they put me back on an open ward.

I found this was different, but really, with its smoking room, Day Room with a TV and a kitchen, it was not so different from anywhere else I had ever been. However, one difference was that you did not sleep in a dormitory. Nobody but the staff was about and they told me all the patients were in their bedrooms. The hospital unit had some 'apartments' on one floor where patients lived more independently. And these self-contained units had their own living areas, a bathroom and a kitchen. This was the next stage of discharge to the community. As they were semi-independent, they did not see staff except by appointment. They had, though, a phone to call the staff in an emergency or if they wanted to be quicker.

At dinnertime, I saw the other residents. It was clear from how slow they seemed that these were the most backward. Later I found that they had indeed come from a back ward in some mix-up. After the meal, I went to the TV room in the general part of the ward for the other patients like me who were not in the apartments. A television turned up loud showed some cartoons that normally only young children would have wanted to see. Nobody was in the room. And anyone who was in the room wasn't watching the TV or even capable of it. The patients looked generally better off who lived in the self-contained rehab units. Indeed, they were better off as only the more well patients went to rehab. The criteria were that they were socially competent, physically fit and not just free of symptoms of mental illness. These apartments had a discharge rate of at least one or two every six months. So, as I was a better patient who should be able to get a place in one, I might be able to leave in a reasonable time as these things go.

Meanwhile, the hospital offered me some OT doing art and cooking.

We did art as a therapy. Today, they said that we would have an 'art therapist' taking the art group. When I approached him, however, he told me he was not an art therapist. As well, he said to call him by his first name. Or 'just call me the artist'. This was who he was. But if he found it flattering, I don't know. He had told me he had no training in art therapy, but I could come along and draw a picture. Before the session, he spent some time finding the patients and persuading them to come. The session started and he gave us pieces of paper and put out some paints. We began to draw and paint. After I finished my picture, I reached for more paper. But when I did this, he asked me what I was doing. He said that one picture was enough for one day and I should finish off my day's art by commenting on my picture to the group. Then he said that he would see what I did the next week and went around the other residents to ask them about their pictures.

I also cooked with one of the nursing assistants. This was the meal for all the patients on the ward and we started preparing it about an hour before everyone came to eat. We chopped or peeled vegetables and opened cans. The meals were not that lavish, but the work made me feel better about myself. I helped prepare this evening meal once a week and I found it was all right really if it kept the mind occupied. Also, you could see other patients enjoying their food. In one of the first cooking sessions, the nursing assistant spoke softly to me saying that something needed doing the cooking. A woman speaking nicely to me, other than the nurses who talked about illness, was something I had forgotten about and how good it felt. One day, though, I said that I was too tired to come and do it and would prefer to stay in bed. This small thing in the scheme of things finished.

At night, everyone should have been asleep. But I know many patients were awake the entire night. Sometimes I came from my room and made aimless conversation with the nurses. They told me to get back in my room. But I felt that I had some important thing I wanted to say and was reluctant to go to bed. In fact, it was probably nonsense all of it. In the gloomy half-light of the ward, I would go to the night station and say that I 'just needed to pace up and down because of things on my mind'. And I could only find out about these things by wandering up and down all night. When I finally wanted my bed, I'd go to sleep with the dawn coming up to mock the bringing in of a new day.

I woke up. Something did not feel right. I did not have a clock and I only knew time had passed by the sun moving across the sky outside my window and the clouds changing. I watched still half-asleep their shifting patterns. It seemed that I was unable to move for an extended period because my body would not do so. Eventually, some sense of normality came back into my limbs. And I could just about pull myself up normally as I had done so many times beforehand in my life without thinking. But I could doubt the most normal of things taken for granted. I wondered if this was not just a temporary trick my body was playing on me or if it was something more permanent. Perhaps my body was trying to tell me something. Now I demanded to see them. And I demanded to see them all. I wanted them to come out and greet me. And I wanted them to tell me why for such a thing my parents came together and they had paid for me when I could not support myself. Also, I wanted to know why anyone ever made any efforts for me at all. This was all because I had spent the morning thus. Whilst human life is short, I would but care an answer. What I wanted was to find a floor to exercise on, someone with whom I could discuss the things of the day, or to have the pages of a book to scan. Eventually, I had been able to move and to get up. Such fresh chances as this mean life cannot be all bad. I spoke to a nurse about it who said that in those circumstances she could get a doctor to give a fatal injection. And I had to persuade her that it was not my intention for her now to call one if it ever had been.

I received a mailing from another unit asking if I would like to go there. At the interview, the ward manager and a consultant psychiatrist spoke to me about how I saw my future. I told them I saw no future where I was and they listened whilst I explained why I thought this. I said that my parents had begun to become distant from me and that I was sure our meeting would give them hope. They asked me what I saw in my behaviour that was wrong. I said things such as it was staying in the nurses' office and not leaving. Then they said that they had asked all their questions and received both my answers and those of the staff. They would leave, but they'd let me know. And I'd see how soon it was until I came to their unit when they sent the hospital a letter to let me know. My impression was they were professional and relaxed and that I was talking to human beings.

I was accepted.

# Chapter 4, Today

A nurse came to my room and told me to pack my stuff and we would go over in the unit minibus. When we arrived, we parked outside and the nurse and I lifted my stuff that became increasingly hard to carry, as we couldn't find the ward. Eventually after knocking on some doors, a nurse who answered directed us on a five to ten-minute walk. We had to go back to the minibus and drive the rest of the way to the ward, though, as we could not carry everything walking round. On the ward, a nurse impatiently waited inside, keen to see me. She was my nurse and initially I was her only patient. I brought all my stuff in and packed it in my room.

The room was austere with a pale shade of paint on the walls. It was a reasonably sized room but smaller than in a hostel. For hostels, the regulations are that you must have a certain amount of floor area per room. But for a slightly larger room, you could have two patients in it. So, you always had two patients in every room. But this did not apply to a hospital.

When I came back from my room, the other patients had already had lunch during the time I'd packed my things and so I had missed it. I had, however, been saved some by my nurse. I would get to know and like her as much as I am able to like anyone now because as my mother says I am still ill and so can't do things well that are like that.

After lunch, another nurse asked me to go into a room off the main corridor to see the doctor for my case conference. Also, at the conference was my nurse who had greeted me at the door, other nurses, a psychologist, care managers and other medical persons. My mother says that this is my chance to get anything I want. And my father says that this is my future and my hope of getting anything.

The nurses had seemed to want to get to know me a bit when I was first there. Whilst the ward had accepted me, the nurse told me they had found difficulty in filling the places on the ward, which was still half-empty. My new unit had a business model, whilst still paid for by taxes, of getting 'clients' by marketing. Other parts of the health service pay them and the clients themselves do not directly pay and nor do they see any marketing materials. This seemed to have changed since I got the mailing from them. Nurses and managers now said that patients shouldn't receive marketing materials themselves. The unit manager was a former nurse whom the hospital had persuaded to go into being a ward manager. As a specialized unit, they could charge more. The ward manager had an office on the unit with a secretary, a desk, files and a computer. And the patients could look in on this office though they kept the shutters up sometimes. However, it did not seem after a while the secretary was there. The Ward Manager told me at one time about the ward's business plan. He said that the unit was not a garbage can for unwanted or unpopular patients, but that the ward would help you.

My nurse felt in a prestigious and desirable place. This unit was a new unit, with a new way of doing things. And her involvement would boost her nursing career. As my nurse, she was my only nurse and I was her only patient. I was due to meet the doctor and I thought that I would give a good impression by not appearing so ill. Now, I was on a new unit with whatever that was to bring. But I felt my appearance was of someone who looked a bit odd or gruff for such a bright new unit. My nurse saw this and she said that it was not right at all when everyone knew I was a sick patient. I was there to get better and the doctor would know anyway if I were ill. I had played chess with one of the patients and now the nurse wanted a game with me. As I played, I talked about chess and the like, as I had once been a keen chess player. After her losing at chess, she suggested a game of checkers with her winning and looking chuffed. She regarded herself as a non-chess player, but good at checkers. She came out of the ward office often over the next few months to ask me if I wanted more games of checkers and sometimes some other games. And for a time, we played every afternoon. After a while, we exchanged more banter although still absorbed in the possibilities of the game. One of the things I still talked about was chess. But we talked about other things as well, such as poetry.

During a game of Pool, we took a break and I read some of my poetry out. It seemed that after our first meeting when she had wanted to talk only a little, now we had better things to talk about. The improvement in my social skills gave me a lot of pleasure. I was able to get pleasure from a small smattering of conversation that I was able to learn how to say. And this was possible in turn from a few books and a TV in my room that my parents brought from home. Also, it was possible from my willingness to sit in front of the television for a few hours or to read for even a few minutes. And I particularly felt motivated from seeing my nurse.

The word 'nurse' does apply to your relationship in the hospital. They were nurses and they were not your friend ever. You spent some time with them, but might realize, if you didn't to start with, that they were only interested in your illness. They did not answer all my questions, but I answered all of theirs and did not learn anything about them. They talked to you usually only so they could find out your mental condition. It all went in your notes. Nor were they trying to make friends. During some conversations, they would tell me to clean my room. But I did not always want to. Also, I found out years later that the state of your room, your own state of cleanliness and if you slept well, were important to whether they discharged you or not. An untidy room could mean you stayed in the hospital. The nurses did not always remind you of this. And that I could have stayed for a shorter time was a bugbear with me. Although, if I had taken my medication when I was first in a hospital, they could have released me even then.

How had I spent most of my time before now? I had spent it in bed and now I felt tired from nightly awakenings and not seeing in the day. I wanted something other than my bed. I would say that during my waking hours I was sick and bored. Nor was this the fault of the medication, which I had incorrectly blamed. And to go to bed at a reasonable time as my mother would say is what 'normal people all do' was completely right. It was not just I was not asleep at the right times, but also, I was not nice to know. I was immature, silly and unable to take a hint or to leave things alone. Only from my perspective was the day gone.

Sometimes others found something objectionable about the way I spoke. This was for reasons, such as mental, intellectual or moral shallowness or for poor physical manners. No one is immune to anger. And everyone had been very tolerant. Probably, this was because they knew I had mental health problems. They had a normal life to lead, as anyone did who was not ill. As well, they saw that I had the diagnosis of mental illness. And I had a history of having problems and they did not. They understood my problems when they had training in them. But they did not have any problems themselves and nor had they ever done as they were nurses and not patients. They said they had a job or a profession and they worked in a hospital and did not come to one because they were the same as the patients. Also, they said that patients were only in the hospital because they were ill. I would take my medication that they gave to me. That was my 'work'. I could not hope to have a job of any kind, as even if I could turn up at the right time, they would soon fire me for social ineptness. And this would be because nobody wants that sort of thing.

The days had gone mostly by the time I woke up and I would feel unmotivated for the rest of the day. If up all night, I would go and have a glass of water and then perhaps I'd retreat to my unmade bed to try to sleep. I wanted my bed only for sleep. Also, it was uncomfortable if you had lain in it for too many hours. And I slept only out of necessity. I did occasionally pick up a book from the shelf on the ward and I succeeded in reading one or two. Other than that, I did some OT when I felt like going.

Later that afternoon, my nurse came out of the ward office and wanted to speak to me. She asked me about some things from my notes and as well, we had a general chitchat. On one occasion, I spoke about something I had seen on TV. She listened tenuously and then left the room.

Later, I spoke to her again about the TV program, as it seemed she had forgotten what I said.

Then as she lost interest or was thinking more about what she wanted to say, I said, "And another thing I was sort of thinking just then was...."

She listened and then said I was to come with her so she could give me a tablet the doctor had written me up for earlier but she would give me now. I did not want to take this tablet. I asked her whether it would work and things like that. But she opened my hand, put the tablet in it and gave me a beaker of water with which to wash it down. I tried to say something more and became a bit annoyed and upset. The nurse told me to go to my room. And I reluctantly followed this suggestion.

In my room and after about half an hour, the morose thoughts went and I left my room to say that to her. Also, I said that as my thoughts were better, the medication must have cleared up some abnormal thought pattern. She ignored me and asked me to go to my room again. But I refused. The nurses gathered around me and I seemed to shout. Then seeing the nurses looking disgusted that I should lose my temper, I offered to go back to my room myself.

Just behind me as I shut the door, my nurse said, "And don't come out."

When the Night Staff had come on for their shift, I came sheepishly out and joined the queue for medication. The nurses treated anything like my outburst as very serious and I felt relieved it appeared to be over.

During a game of Pool some months later, I told my nurse about a new departure in my poetry. And after finishing our game, I read it to her. She said that I had a good mind. When I pressed her further about what she thought of the poem, she ended the conversation and left the room.

In the end, I was to outstay her on the ward. And I got a new nurse. He would be male and very different.

# Chapter 5, Start Somewhere

First, I would wish to give more of the new unit here.

There was no OT on the ward and they did not allow me off my ward to go to the main OT. We were, however, to get some of our own. The new OT asked the patients what they wanted to do for OT. She joked with the nurses that patients had told her all the OT they had done in years in 15 minutes of chat. And I tried to avoid this mistake. But I found I wanted to tell her about my experiences so we could get better OT. Most did the same and I felt they were very tolerant when the OT laughed at them, as someone had said she did. I tried to tell the OT about the sort of OT I wanted. This was the planet we were on – Planet OT. Here appearances are important. But anyone who complained they had not been able to learn anything or showed themselves up talking about something new to them might find they were ostracized. And she said nothing different.

There is a garden at the back of the ward and you can go there sometimes. The grass beyond the large fence at the edge of the garden had the occasional fox. And today there were two people picking blackberries who were a relative and a patient who was a girl in her twenties. She had juice dribbling over her chin and gulped down the blackberries like something from a novel. As she did this, her older relative put a few in a basket almost tearful these should be the circumstances. The hospital planted blackberry bushes for such visits. They did not allow other patients to pick them, as the hospital had not planted enough blackberries for everyone to collect them. I would as I was in the garden pass small conversations with the nurses. They also spent time in the garden relaxing, looking at the garden and enjoying the sunshine.

Some nursing assistants had degrees and patients would ask them about their degrees. The nurses were soon to qualify with nursing degrees, as had the occupational therapists a degree qualification already. Also, psychologists had degrees or higher qualifications than degrees such as masters.

I suggested to the psychologist that the nurses were all better educated than any of the patients were. He said that education levels did not mean much – not anything – as it did not affect social skills or conversations you had. You could know just as much without a degree for the sake of talking.

"The only qualifications that matter at all are medical qualifications," he said. "Medical qualifications matter because this is a hospital and your well-being are in the hands of anyone medically qualified."

I had met a few of the nursing assistants and they had welcomed questions on their subject. In the end, they decided not to talk about their degrees. The college-educated nursing assistants found their decision had an unexpected effect. Some patients they had spoken to at length now had nothing to say to them. The patients had no hobbies and did not read the newspapers or watch TV. But they had been able to talk when they just had to ask questions. Many of these nursing assistants now left for this and other reasons.

The hospital replaced them by unemployed men, some of whom went to the gym. They might read nursing magazines on the ward pleased they had a job. And they felt very sensitive about this for some time. But other nursing assistants had more recently had other jobs. A nurse said the patients could talk to the new nursing assistants just as well as the old. They were not as educated she said, but they were still very clever.

At about this time, I had my injection changed to a tablet, which the doctor said was better medication.

A nurse said that other than getting better there is little for you to do. You just must concentrate on getting well again.

There was no OT for some months, but after that, they had a very helpful program. And though they did not allow me home to visit my parents, my parents came to visit me.

I began having bad thoughts about things going back to when I first went into a hospital. This was going right back to my earliest days in the psychiatric system. I had not had anything like this for years. At times, I thought my parents hadn't needed to call the doctor when they first had me admitted. And perhaps they wouldn't have if they knew where it would lead. They made a slightly problematic child go to a psychiatrist 'who could help'. And they used threats and made emotional demands. That is to help him with nothing. Try helping with years away from anything for someone's good intentions. Don't they think anyone has heard of psychiatrists and knows they don't want to see one? Nor did they listen when their child said nothing was wrong. And nor could he stand his mother crying enormous self-congratulatory tears for no good reason other than she wanted to.

If you want to see someone driven by an obsessive idea, then look no further than my mother.

Of course, I am not privy to know what my parents said to the doctors because my parents never thought to tell me anything other than their decisions. Nor would they have locked me up for so long if my parents had agreed to have me at home. My parents said only the doctor could keep me in the hospital, but I didn't really believe them. When I mentioned all this to my mother, she told me hospitals were not jails but nobody wanted to be in one still. Everyone, she said, was here just like you. Nor had they done anything wrong either and they were here just the same as I was and no different. There were, she said, other reasons you were in a hospital.

"They've committed grave criminal offenses to be here as long as me. Why am I still here?"

"So! They are ill like you. They go somewhere to get treatment, which is here as it is a mental hospital. And who are you to complain anyway, when you are mentally ill just the same as them."

She screwed her face up and almost spat from her lips. But then she appeared to cry. Her behaviour had mentally exhausted me and I asked her as I always did why she was upset. She would never answer. And I could never see why she would not and nor why she ever did or didn't do anything.

When I am ill, I think things more than once and sometimes for a few days and then not again. Like my spaceships. It is as if I am on Earth, but I am a spaceman. And by applying slightly different methods and tools of thought and philosophy, I have seen things so basic and obvious I cannot take seriously the things they say around me. When I tell of these facts, some do not believe me. But I only have to pay heed to things they tell you and not talk about what I have discovered. This is to get on with others and for society to accept me. Really, I know nobody I meet knows very well anything to talk about. But I let them believe it so I can have their company. However, I cannot yet bring all I have discovered in space to help me in my everyday life. And sometimes I accept the mundane and other explanations that anyone gives me and I demur from telling them what I can see are the correct ones. It only gets me threatened or they become upset. But why doesn't anybody else, such as scientists, know this science? Now, my mother has told me that as I am not a scientist I don't know. I sometimes doubt myself that I saw it. Why should this be? Perhaps I'll just have to fit in. And I should speak to doctors because they are there to help you. Also, being able to talk normally to anybody whom you might meet is essential to leaving the hospital. This is more important and the world can do without my discoveries. Really, I am well in many ways. But they say I need to be in a hospital. I take my medication regularly as they ask me. Also, I can shop for myself and I clean my room. And I could look for a job if there were any. What I need though are job skills to have a hope of finding work.

My mother thinks you don't need to do a course, as there are still unskilled jobs that need doing. She says that I should start applying for work. I would like to do a course though as I think it is still easier to find work that way. But I can't afford the cost of one myself and my mother flatly refuses to pay for me. I told her that if I could do a course, I'm sure of passing because most courses are not that difficult. As well, you need skills to start work and they will not teach you them all on the job. My mother says I'm 'lying' and that I 'don't know'.

They've sent me back to the hospital and I must stay for assessment for at least another six months. After that, I have another six months when the plan is to look for somewhere else for me to go other than my parents' house. The nurse says that my parents have other things to do. 'Plenty of other children who are now adults live with their parents', I say. But my mother looks at me blankly. My parents say that I need to go somewhere to have the care that I deserve. But I've had enough and I blame the system for taking so much time and not caring how long it takes. Nobody understands what I'm saying. Also, my mother says that hundreds of thousands of people have treatment like me. And they don't object to being in a hospital.

When I want to leave, they say that I do not have friends, cannot make friends, cannot hold a normal conversation and nor hold down any job. And even if I did get an easy job, I'd still need support and supervision. Nor can I run my own affairs let alone any other affairs. I must accept this all as part of my illness. Some nurses say that what I have is an illness like any other and I am here for treatment. They said that years ago they did not have the drugs to treat schizophrenia. As well, they find new drugs all the time and I must hope. One nurse told me resignedly that I have to put up with all that goes on in the hospital. Another nurse said that some hospitals are a lot worse than the one I am in and I should feel grateful I am not in one of these others.

"I do get pleasure from simple things," I said to my mother. "I like a pleasant afternoon..."

"That sounds pathetic," exclaimed my mother. "You used to do so much, go to the library and do all sorts of other things."

"Yes, I haven't been just recently. But I don't know why I haven't. Perhaps I should go again."

My mother nodded and said no more that day. I began going to the library in the hospital. The librarian grinned at me as I came in and we discussed my library card and things like that. I read and it felt good. It was a few years since I had read anything much at all. During school, I had really worked too hard. What was the expression I could recall as I had one of my chats with the librarian, 'People who only work don't enjoy anything at all'. Recently, I had begun to take a delight in remembering things. Some were from long ago, but I could see they were still relevant to me even now. I told the librarian these and other thoughts.

When I got back to the ward, the nurse said plainly that I was not to go to the library anymore because the librarian had complained about the way I spoke to her. I felt shocked and upset and said the library meant everything to me. Later, the nurse told me that they had heard what I had said and discussed it in a meeting. I could go back to the library only if I did not speak to the librarian.

About this time, I began saying to nurses and nursing assistants that some older patients were vegetables. To start with, the nurses ignored me when I said this. And then one exclaimed whether I had just noticed they were.

"Do you believe it won't happen to you?" the nurse said. "They were all like you once."

Shocked I asked her how I could prevent it.

"You need to leave here," she said quietly.

"Do you mean I need to have 'care in the community'?"

She did not reply.

I would believe that it wouldn't happen to me because now I feel good. And from my trips to the gym, I feel physically strong. One older patient said the reason was that the medication made you stupid and other older patients all said the same thing. For some reason, I believed them. A nurse told me not to say that medication made you stupid. But when I asked her why so many said it, she walked away. One nurse said that the reason they were as they were is that the first drugs for schizophrenia were not so good.

"I've been on some of those first drugs," I said.

But she walked away without answering further. When I said I'd had the same drugs for years without trying newer ones, they said that I didn't need newer drugs as I was well on the older ones. They tried patients on the older drugs first as they were cheaper. Another nurse said that I did not have the symptoms for the new drugs. And when I asked him how mine were different for the same illness, he asked me to leave the ward office. Another nurse explained that he meant I did not have the symptoms because the medication controlled them in me. But the old medication did not work so well for other patients who still had symptoms. This was what he had meant, he said exasperatedly.

Also, I read in an information booklet that the medication was like a drug used to stop mental distress before a surgical operation. I mentioned all this to the doctor.

"What is the difference in the brain between someone who is mentally ill and someone else?"

"There is no difference. The medication works the same for both and in the same place, the same way and no different."

"So, is the medication actually a sedative?"

He did not answer immediately and looked somewhat annoyed.

"What did you think it was?" he said exasperatedly.

He left when I asked for more explanation.

Why didn't they tell me this before? If I had known it had just such an effect, I would have avoided years of worrying about it. Explanations they gave were that the medication helped you because you were ill, but something about it made me worry and worry about it for years. As well, though, the tablets really do cause 'unwanted effects'. And these are the same as recognizable disabilities. But this is because no drug is perfect and you can live a long life before these things affect you. But how is there any point to being in hospital in the meantime? Also, you may have your medication adjusted so you take a small dose. The bad side effects are mainly in older patients on higher doses they told me. However, that did not stop me being on a high dose for years. Medication may cause slight problems now, such as stiffness, shaking hands or too much saliva. But then you can take side effect tablets. Wanting to pace around and gradual deterioration of mental and motor control is from agitation generally and lack of exercise. But seeing the unwanted effects of the medication when the nurse allowed me to look at what the drug book said also worried me.

In the evening, I watch the TV and find it a perfectly pleasant way of spending my time. As a cooling wind blows softly and brings a flower's sweet scent, I feel that everything is all right. I am getting the medical treatment I need. And I have no real worries. Perhaps, what I think when ill is abnormal for anyone. Also, I really had found the illness and these thoughts distressing.

A nurse when I am not so ill or upset says that it's normal to have some of my odd thoughts that I told him about, such as you're living in anarchy and things like that. He said it was quite common even. I wanted to ask more and I said how bad my thoughts felt to me. But he had said it was not so bad and his only comment was that it was 'nothing really' what I had said. Later when I saw him again and asked why he had not said more, he said that my worries had been unfounded and as he had already answered any questions I might have, he was unwilling to hear more. Then he said that I should talk about something else if I wanted to or otherwise, I could just leave it.

On one occasion, the nurse in charge of the ward asked me if there was anything that she could do... anything at all... would I like some medication... what else... I'm asking you to tell me... I don't know what I can do for you. I did not know what to suggest, the door shut and she was gone. Nor did I ever speak to her again, except once. She had asked me when I was going and I had said I was waiting for this and that. However, she didn't seem to understand that I could not leave even if I wanted to do so.

I could not leave, as I did not have the power over my own situation. This was when they locked the door and nothing you could do would persuade anyone to open it. Afterwards, I thought that I had been able to leave all along, but that someone had not told me I could do so. Perhaps, my mother had cried over the phone and said she didn't want to see me again until I was well enough. If someone was going to listen to me, it seems anyone would already have done so. But nobody had done so.

The nurse in charge said that what I had called 'my bad thoughts' and I had described as part of my illness, weren't, in fact, mental illness. And she knew because she was a nurse. I was, she said, angry with my parents and they would arrange 'family therapy' for my parents and me.

We sat in a room, my parents, two occupational therapists and me for a few weeks whilst the therapists read an article about schizophrenia. It had descriptions of twin studies and things like that. Also, they talked about how wonder drugs for mental illness had become available only as late as the 1950s. And the article said how this had drastically improved patients' lives. It had helped with both what was on their minds and the physical conditions they were in. They were not now strapped to commodes for 24 hours a day as they were in the past. Nor did they have straitjackets anymore or padded cells. Some patients who had not said a word for 20 years had spoken. And after a time, they realized that patients did not need a hospital, as they could function well in the community on their medication, hold down jobs and other things. The therapist looked up and we all nodded. Really, my parents and I were all a bit tearful if anything. I no longer felt angry with my parents and stopped shouting in my room. Another effect of this was that I did more activities than before. Probably this is because I was more relaxed. Or I was more relaxed, at least, during periods when before I would have been in a rage or working up to one.

If you are insane, they can detain you without your consent as the leaflet about your stay tells you. But if you are not ill as they tell me I might not be, I don't need to be here and I can leave. However, when I say I am not ill and want to leave, a nurse tells me to shut up about it. He says other nurses might become 'suspicious' if I said anything like I was not ill, but whatever he meant by this he wouldn't tell me. Another nurse I asked about it said that if doctors suspected you were not genuinely ill, it could affect your other treatment. They said that for wasting doctor's time, you might not get treatment for anything else and this was even for normal physical illnesses for which anyone would want treatment. You might have a serious illness and not get treatment. And it was not anyway just that you were a bit upset as a teenager as this had nothing to do with it. Nor was it that nobody had been able to tell you had said that when you first came into the hospital.

One doctor said the fact I was in front of her in a mental hospital showed that I should be here.

Here I was in a mental hospital with nothing wrong with me and my medical notes must explain that. I had not wanted to be here, had answered all their questions truthfully, explained what 'my bad thoughts' were many times and nobody had picked up that they weren't a mental illness. If they had done so, then they hadn't told me anything like that. The other alternative is that they hadn't understood things I said, as the right person hadn't heard it. A nurse said that unless I said it to a doctor, my treatment would not change and that anyway only the doctor could discharge me. She said as well that the nurses were not as qualified in the ways I thought they were and that things I said did not mean that much to them. Nor could my talking to nurses have much effect on how soon the hospital discharged me or what the doctor thought. But that was, in the end, all part of being in a mental hospital. Nobody was interested in doing anything fast. But they were interested in keeping your notes up to date and other things that were their jobs. So where is my life going if I take a little time to think about it?

"There are your books," said my old mother. "And few sane people read so much as you do, so you really are different and have something to offer."

You really could do things like reading lots and watching lots of TV in the hospital. Or at least you can when you move to live in the community or a halfway house. And the hospital feeds you and gives you a bed. But now it is time to leave and so just perhaps sit back and take it all in. You could do anything at all if you weren't in the hospital. The world is open to you when you are no longer ill. But nurses did assure me often I was ill. And you must believe them. Why give you all this? It is only for you to get better. You must do everything you can do to help yourself. And then you can go back to the normal world and your normal life when you are well again. On the ward, I was oblivious to those around me and if they were ill or not. This was because, as the nurses said, I was ill as well. And who would have put up with such behaviour as my own, but for the nurses seeing it as a sign of illness?

Although I told them that I was not getting angry with anyone, my reactions could be misinterpreted. And yet nothing in all that time happened to me. Also, when they offered medication, my outbursts would stop. This was because of taking away the cause, which were the florid symptoms of mental illness. Sometimes when I refused oral medication, they injected me. And when I came around, I would be perfectly calm and not feel resentful just as I had seen other people behaving after getting medication. However, they used the seclusion room when patients didn't calm down. Sometimes they gave injections in the seclusion room and sometimes they gave it on the ward in the Day Room or in a corridor. If a patient punched someone but was calm afterwards, the nurses might not send him or her to the seclusion room. An exception was if you attacked a member of staff as then they might both inject you and as well send you to the seclusion room. If it was just an argument about finishing cigarettes or keeping lighters at bedtime, then the nurses still injected you and sent you to seclusion. They gave up to four injections for each patient. Nobody bothered asking afterwards what the injections were. Much later, I met a nurse who said that they explained the injections to all the patients and he disbelieved this story.

A psychiatrist told me a bit about my drugs. She said the test dose, the largest safe dose and the medium dose. The psychiatrist said that now I knew a lot about my drug. And they had discussed whether you should know more and so they'd told me. I did not feel I knew anything more when they had said all this, but sometime after I felt it helpful to know if I was on a high dose or low dose. A high dose meant that you probably didn't need more. And a low dose probably meant you could easily have a bit more if you felt ill. This may have been wrong and does not understand the complexities. But if someone tells you something, you must store it and do something with it. The psychiatrist cringed when I said this was my understanding. And she held this 'cringe' to the desired dramatic effect and pleasure of the others in my case conference.

The doctor also said that I had done much better lately and someone had even said I should go to college.

"What was it?" she had said about the course I wanted to do, which brought more laughter from the conference room. And more again when she said, "Do they still do some basic number? Oh dear, oh dear, how do you think we are going to tell the college?"

A nurse suggested I should study by myself, with such books as might be available to me. She said that I could always change what I studied if I felt like it, but I wouldn't be able to do this if I went to college. It would also be possible to have a rest when I needed it. However, another nurse said later that I could do a course.

When we started class, I felt ill at the start of the lesson as I felt pressured and as well, I had some déjà vu of being back in school like when I was a child. But when I looked through my notes in the break and talked to the other students, I was relieved to find that the amount of learning did not seem that much. So, I did not feel as pressured as I had done. The teacher was friendly and told us about her plan for the year ahead. I attended regularly, took notes in class and listened to lessons. But I still occasionally lost concentration if not seriously that anyone would notice. Some of this loss of concentration was because I had some strange thoughts. Now having done the class some few weeks and not having got very much better about this, some other students did notice. The teacher, if she knew, didn't mention it to me. Really, she knew mentally ill people applied to do classes. But she trusted them not to show themselves up. Anyway, after nearly finishing the course, I stopped going. The playing up was in hand, but the class was a long way to go to regularly. And I didn't have a lift I had been promised. Also, I couldn't afford to buy the recommended books and I was caught out when asked questions. I had passed a few tests although I had not done much of the work. But I probably could have got the qualification if I had stayed until the end of the course. Perhaps, I might have tried to do a bit better. But I didn't stick with it and nor did I always cope that well.

I had gone back a few years later and started a class on another subject. In class, we would go to a lecture theatre where there was a big window on one side. I looked out at the town below where I could see the town's lights through this window. Really, I could not believe I was looking out the window as a child might at school. This was horrendous in a way. And I had to tell the teacher about the medication when he asked me why I was looking out of it. Or at least I think I did. But my memory runs a little cold at this. It was after all his lessons. As well, the other students wanted to do a course that would help them with the ambitions they had. Otherwise, it was nothing but entirely negative and not wanted by anyone.

A girl at the back of the class had spoken to me and I was able to have long chats with her on many occasions. But then, one day I felt I must pay attention to the lesson. I did when this was suddenly more important. And I thought that I needed to concentrate on doing the course and not on the girl. Thus, I lost a chance at some sorely lacking experience of the opposite sex. I had my youth and attractive girls might still have taken an interest in me. And even then, as the light in the afternoon sky faded and a bird flew up over my head on my walk back from the college, I knew that later I would miss not having more of such experiences. And I could have done so when still young. Now something was not right, I could not concentrate in class again and I felt that I was wasting time. I would often be late for lessons and then would blithely apologize as I entered the lesson. We would break at half time and I would not be able to think of anything to say. This was because I never spoke to anyone where I lived. Nobody I lived with could hold a normal conversation.

I began going to a bar I used to go to when I was 18 and that was barely 20 minutes' walk away from the college. Here I might meet some of my old friends down for a midweek drink. I left the college building and went to get a drink complete with my folders and some loose papers I had not filed yet. In the bar, I told one girl that I was doing science at college. But I could tell her precisely nothing about it having not revised anything. In the end, when she saw I was coming in when my lessons were not completed, she said that she didn't want to see me until later. I ignored her advice and lost her the same as anyone else who gave me a chance.

But I will take the reader back to my time under treatment in the new unit. And it was in this unit where I hoped to solve my problems, get well and go back into the community.

On one or two occasions, they put me in an area you usually only went to if you were violent. And they put you here with or without being in the seclusion room beforehand. The violence on my part was no more than a push, but it was enough for them to put me in arm locks and take me to this area. And now this meant my life would not be the same.

In this area, the furniture was plastic and foam. They played music. But it was on a continuous loop for any music you chose and they did not like changing it. You also had to ask the nurses to switch on the TV and as well ask them to change the channels. The nursing assistant pointed out something on the table. I went over and saw it was a mail order catalogue. Sitting down at the dining room table, I avidly read it as I felt I was supposed to do. And although they must have known it was an act, they expected it. The nurse came back and took a good look at my continued interest. Later, he politely asked me what I wanted for dinner. When it came, they gave me a plastic knife and fork with which to eat it. It was pointed out to me it was bedtime. They turned off the TV and radio and I went to my bed and slept until morning. After staying there a few days, they transferred me back to the main ward.

To go out into the garden or to sit in the sun on the ward was pleasant. And I idly watched the time pass. Occasionally, a patient would sit near to another patient and so a conversation started. It seemed to me that some patients would repeat the same things, the same stories word for word. However, you didn't have to talk to them if you felt you were bored with it.

What was it I thought now? My mind fancied I had emotional baggage to dump before I could cope. I thought the nurses might speak to me about it. And in a way, they did do this as you talked about anything at all you wanted when you saw them. You were bound to say anything on your mind. One time I said how I'd had a second wind that I had felt when finding something I read interesting. I talked about what I had read to a nurse and asked the nurses what they knew about the topic. It annoyed me, though, when I got my questions given back for me to answer myself. I would guess the answer to my own questions when in fact I had wanted a more knowledgeable answer or a factual one. This upset me for a bit. But then it occurred to me that the nurses might not know all the answers. And this relieved thoughts that were more disagreeable. Having said what I thought, I did not see how I could gain anything more by thinking or reading about the topics. This was because I had already answered all my questions myself even if I had answered them badly.

There was a library in the hospital and the nurse said I should go. I had decided to get some books on what I was thinking. When I got to the library, the library did not have many recent books and most books were very old. But I could also have other books from home as I could keep them safe. I do think that a book can sometimes tell you more than lots of people you might meet in person could tell you about anything. And particularly this was when I had so few friends. I thought that I needed social contact and would like to discuss something. The nurses who checked the rooms were reproachful when I read. I decided that they had to work and didn't have the time to read. And this was why they didn't like it. Otherwise, it was just the nurses were checking to see if I was still alive or not. But they were not checking to see what page I had reached of the latest novel. And nor are they looking to see how far someone can get to if they have a lazy afternoon to read when they are not doing much else.

About this time, however, they introduced more occupational therapy. A daily newspaper appeared on the ward. This was 'all right' as the new head of OT had discussed what the patients wanted, but also dealt with any qualms of the staff with their eventless shifts. And things generally began to improve.

The first OT sessions went well. Also, the nurses suggested that I go to the main OT department for more OT. When I went over to the main OT, it looked the same as any OT I had ever seen. It was, as usual, a large room with tables for doing art with paints and drawing materials spread out on them. Patients were busy doing or preparing their art for the day. When I asked what I should do, the OT showed me some magazines to use as inspiration. Also, the OT gave me a book on how to draw and paint as I said that I did not know how to use the materials.

One thing that was good about art groups was that they were a chance for you to try to behave normally. Doing some art that was a reasonable standard of art as well helped this no end.

Another thing I did was art therapy with an art therapist in a separate group. When I started, I must have seemed very angry. But the therapist directed me away from these angry and hostile thoughts or at least allowed me to get these angry thoughts off my chest.

Also, about this time, I started going out for lunch with the OT assistants. They were a female and good company. As I talked more from being in these sessions and as well, more with my parents and at home, my conversation started to improve tremendously. And I became a pleasanter, better person to know.

I started pottery and I went along on many bright sunny mornings and made a pot. My work was very good the pottery teacher said and because of this, she gave me some high-quality clay to try out. When I said I felt grateful for the opportunity to use the clay, she said flatly and critically that I deserved it.

# Chapter 6, More

Someone had come to see me for a short time before and after my case conference and offered me a place at their care home. I said that I did not want to visit, as I would prefer to find out anything when I got there and so I went almost immediately.

They took me in the hospital minibus with the nurse. The house was big, in a leafy residential street and looked like any of the other houses. A table in the hall had a visitor's book on it and some forms for residents if they wanted to complain. The carer from the home said that they could only see us after lunch. This was as the other carers were busy in the kitchen. I went with the nurse down to the shops and as I felt bored bought something to read.

I talked to other residents when I got back. They had already had their lunch and were sitting in the TV room. I had to go to the shops again to buy a snack as they had not made any more lunch for me and there was only enough for the existing residents. There is here a couple and they say that if they have sex, then the nurses just tell them off. Also, there is another girl keen to speak to me and it helps to pass the time. Mainly they talk about being 'in prison', 'not being ill', 'suffering terribly' and this 'from injections'. I could not see anything much wrong with their situation myself and took this as a reaction against only part of their circumstances. Later, I was to find that if they didn't feel well, they would accept medication offered to them. Or indeed, they'd ask for it. They no matter had short memories.

The nurse showed me my room and I unpacked my stuff. It was a tastefully furnished bedroom and I had a bed and bedside cabinet, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. Also, I had a normal household carpet unlike the hospital flooring I was used to having. They left me to unpack the rest of my stuff in my room once the carer had made a start helping me.

Afterwards, I went downstairs to have my supper. As I ate, I knew now I had my own room now after so long in hospital and I could go up to it after supper had finished. Today, I was able to have my own things and could shut the door against being ill or in a hospital. Really, I imagined I was in my own home like the one my parents had. But it probably was different from having your own house.

You could say something you had been thinking about to a nurse or other carer, but they were not so interested as the nurses in the hospital. One carer said she had her own friends outside of work and that was why she did not like talking to people in the home. You might talk about disturbing images in your head but that were not such a problem as they once were. If you did and they reported you to the manager, they might just send you right back to the hospital. Or sometimes, it was a bit embarrassing the things you might say as you still had poor social skills when you had been in the hospital for so long. Carers have other things going on for them in their lives other than work and they could feel peeved about the poor conversation from anyone. And this is even if you think they must have told them in training that you are ill and so cannot manage as well as normal. It appears nobody had said this to them.

A relative said, "What you have is an illness. It's tragic! Nobody, not the doctors, nobody you know and never your parents would have wished this on anyone. And least of all they'd have wished it on you. Mental hospitals exist for people like you so that you have some chance in life. You can wish all you want to for you not to have become ill. And your parents would give anything for you to lead a normal, happy life and not be the person you are now. We can see how tragic it is when we knew you before you were ill. But there is nothing anyone can do or could have ever done except have sent you to the hospital. And nobody you knew could have done anything different to help you. Nor could you have more than you do today and that is no matter what else you think of your having been in a hospital. And nor is there any help you didn't have. Nor at any time did you not have every help."

Do I believe this – perhaps? But sometimes I wish that they could have just hurried it up a bit. I would have liked to leave earlier but didn't. Nor did I like the suggestion that injections or tablets were sometimes a punishment. As well, I would have liked some explanations sooner, such as how the medication helped you with your illness. It seems a bit much to have been in hospital 20 years when there was not much wrong with you. Or not so much wrong with you that you couldn't have done more things for yourself if motivated by the hope of leaving hospital. Really, you could have made more effort to clean your room, bath regularly and do OT. Or you could 'do your own OT' as the nurses called reading or watching the TV. Then it is likely the hospital would have discharged you.

It comes late and the nurses tell us that it is bedtime and you must go to bed. At the local shops, I had bought a paper pad and I wrote a poem or two on it in my room before bed.

The next morning, I had slept so well that I woke an hour earlier than I usually did when I was in the hospital. Now as I dress, I see it as useless my life to do with mental illness. After breakfast, I went up again to my room and looked at the scribbling of the night before. I did not now really think it worth the time I had spent on it and a feeling of boredom came over me. But I couldn't help myself from feeling bored after doing so little for so long.

Yet I was still short of time and I was short of a lifetime of time. And I was short of time to do anything. This was however much time I had left to live a normal life where I could do what I wanted to do. 'Time will tell' as they say. I could waste it or not waste it. Or I could do anything.... But everything for the moment is still far into the future.

Now I had left the ward after so long, I did not want to mention hospital or the nurses again. That was in the past and I had talked enough about the hospital and about nurses for a lifetime. Yet just for something to do for a few hours before lunch, I could write about my experiences to pass the time and as well to mark the parting from my old life.

And I'd see what else I could do to pass the time as well. Then I might.... And then I might do this or that.... And then again, I might do something else or something different.... But then after all this, if there is still plenty of time... And as well, I might just have to see anyway....

THE END
