October 11th:
Living with this illness was not something I thought I would ever have to do. Growing up I had so many dreams, so much to do. Not anymore… My identity is split, dissolved, no longer my own. I have no idea who I am anymore. What I want, what I need.
I thought things were good. I thought things were better but they are not. Life is not. Life is not fair anymore. My whole life has been stolen, taken away from me, I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know who to trust anymore, I can’t trust me, that’s for sure.
October 12th:
God only knows why I was made this. I believe there has to be a purpose, a mission. Maybe I am not broken, maybe I’m just the one that remainds all of their own madness.
My mind is a maze, I don’t even know how I got in there, let alone how to find my way out. The journey there is often thrilling and joyful, others is dark and painful. But I have no other way but to walk the path set in front of me, with its marvellous moments and its sorrows.
A difficult crossroad. I wasn’t sure of my purpose, all I wanted was to spend the rest of my life cross legged pondering the possibilities. I was made to stand up and chose. Choosing was impossible, the choice was crucial, the most basic, the purest of all: life or death. I was given a chance to see the living, the light, when my eyes had become so accustomed to the darkness.
Life is a puzzle, I’m not good at puzzles. I’m good at dreaming, at writing, at loving, with all mind, body and soul. I was born feeling the touch of all who loved me as it had been edged in my skin, every kiss a blessing, every hug a life in itself. That’s me, the odd, the one whose life is much more than life, it’s a choice you make because too much is at stake, too many people involved, too many lives affected.
October 14th:
Mirrors, interesting objects, if you can at all call them objects. I sit around the room and in all I see me, all that anger, shyness, pain, lust, quietness, inapproprietness, madness I just can’t let be. The mirror crashed. And it crashed hard. I became all, my reflection fragmented, broken, divided, not whole, not mine. I’ve come to this place to piece it together and I find the irony of it amusing. We are all in a room of broken mirrors. All reflecting off each other. All completely unaware of our own reflection in the other.
One week it’s been since I went in. I was mad apparently, I wish I could remember, it would probably make me laugh, it made everybody laugh and cry. Now, a week on, it feels easier, the mind is just that bit clearer, I can see them now. But I've started to judge, not fair, not fair at all. Maybe it is time I embrace those images I refuse to look at, that might be the place where the brightness comes from, not from the hiding and normalising and pretending and politeness. Maybe I work too hard at keeping it together, and then it all falls apart so quickly and yet so hard. It is time to scream, to run around naked, to swear, to not like those who annoy me. It is time to be free!!!
October 18th:
Dad told me he respected me deeply, he never thought I was this strong, that I could endure what I have endured and still survive it. Im not sure how I have survived it to be honest. The rollercoaster that is my life, my head has given me some of the most amazing moments of my life, the thrill, the euphoria, the joy, the love! Somebody once told me that being on E was like falling in love in the most profound and passionate way possible with the person next to you. For days, weeks and months of my life I have felt just like that, about everything. But as the saying goes everything that goes up must go down, and the higher you go, the steeper the drop. Is it worth it? I’m not sure.
Right now I couldn’t tell. The momentum has passed and im over the steep hill, I think, and eventhough I never want to be that low, the high was so amazing, sometimes that is the price you have to pay for such delight.
A week ago my answer might have been completely different, I would’ve probably said no, take me back a few weeks, even months, give me a chance to stop this, to not go up so high, to not feel so good that now I feel so bad. Take all that away, and give me peace, quiet and normal. I don’t want passion, I just want sensible.
Like they said, love on E is the most extreme. I only fall in love when I’m on a high. My head fights the urge to passion, the will to give it all away, but it always fails…I end up giving my heart away, flesh, blood and strength. Like the drug it gets me there I become it, and the down always has to come. They all love me that hard, that passionately, that completely, until they don’t, until the heart just can’t pump any faster, and it all comes crashing down. Blood flushes our cheeks, lights up our brains. Then pale.
Part of getting out of the downs is always getting over a love, or crushing someone’s heart.
The doubts eat me up, I will smoke myself to death I think. Well I cant drink in this place, sometimes I think we would all be so much better if we could. Just the one drink, and a cigarette… instead there is only cigarettes and mad women around me, I am a mad woman to them too. Who would blame them, I have been mad lately, madder than usual.
October 19th:
Most people seem to have gone out today, apart from those who cannot leave, I can't imagine what that is like. Couped up in here, no one coming to see me, no contact with the outside, depending entirely on the nurses and in other troubled women, feeling the weight of the world crushing you. Dad and sis left last night which means I cant go out. Every hour, minute and second spent in this place.
Going out cheered me up, breathing other air, seeing people getting on with their lives like this world doesn’t exist, unaware that they might have it in them, the power to lose it, to lose it all, and end up here. It cheers me up to pretend, even for an hour, that all is good, that im not here. I hope this week is my last in here. The last ever. I never want to come back to this place. I don’t think I could endure prison. I will be good. Even if pretending is my only weapon. Pretend this is not happening. I need to get out, to feel the sun. Im not a religious woman but god please grant me the strength and the quiet mind boring people have to get through this. AHHHHHH.
Harsh life the mad life. No control, no direction. And then reality breaks and what makes you mad is to see the label hanging from your neck. Why me? Living with this madness is such hard work. God only gives you what you can handle, they say, I'm not sure God got this one right. How do I live everyday, spend every hour with this monster inside? Sometimes is so much easier to give up. People talk about the future, about the things I have to look forward to, they haven’t got a clue what is like to live with this. I will pull through, I know. Somehow I know I will pull through, what scares me is the next time I fall.
October 21st:
The madhouse, J says that we could make more money than the big brother house. I can’t disagree. Put 12 women in a small space, nothing to do but think about our mistakes, the things that brought us here and those who are not mad become it. Nothing else to do but smoke, throw a tantrum, smoke, eat, smoke, try to sleep, smoke, stop the others from sleeping, smoke, smoke, smoke. I never thought I was a smoker, thank god I am, I couldn’t get through this without a smoke.
I remember my first week here, E, the completely “insane” one (who am I to judge right?) found it very amusing to upset me, she threw serving pans at me, flicked cigarettes at my face, moved me in my seat. I was too catatonic to even care, I can barely remember it to be honest. Those days are a big, fat blur, just a blib, but so strange. I was completely gone, eyes gone mad, hair greasy, same clothes for a few days, dirty, manic, couldn’t stay still, kept talking and calling people. Poor sis, what she must have thought, felt. To see me like that, so destroyed, so little, so odd. I think maybe
One day the fog lifted, and I became aware of the pain. That hole that was created with words, filled up with pain. Every single day since then I have spent it emptying it and finding something better, more useful to fill it up with. I still don’t know what that is, maybe these words, but I will find it. Mark my words, I will find it, and one day they will see me, no holes, just me, the one left behind.
H next door won't let me go to sleep. She has her days, sometimes she is so quiet you wonder if she is even there, but then suddenly she becomes a bigger than life pain in the ass. Loud, inconsiderate, annoying, disrespectful, pretenscious, wanna-be posh nightmare. She will just look at me and call me a twat. Will start shouting at everyone. Say random things, to random people. I don’t think she is mad. She just likes the freedom that being labelled mad gives her. I should feel pity, but pity is not a good feeling in this place. We are all in the same boat here, to feel pity for one is to feel it for myself. I wonder what brought her here, I wish I could ask her. But she is like a big wall of nothing, that façade she puts on is full of spikes, I don’t want to hurt myself. I will just make assumptions. Sometimes is better to imagine, the truth is often less glamorous and more simple than we think. As simple as a broken heart. The reasons we are all here are probably so simple they wouldn’t merit these words, but yet they caused enough damage to put us here. Whatever they are, they weigh a ton...
October 23rd:
I woke up in a hospital bed, not just any hospital, a psychiatric hospital. Finally life broke me. It was obvious it was going to happen, I had seen the signs for a while. A big part of my life I spent it like this, with a million feelings, all muddled up together, nothing making sense, all weighing down on me. I struggled through every hurdle, fought every problem, for the sake of normality. Appearances, the say, are not important, they are when you are like this. The art of pretense, to pretend you fit in, that your mind is like everyone else’s: stable.
October 25th:
Sketchy, broken memories, bled out wishes, uncertain future. I have become obsessed with drawing myself naked. I like to see my bones pushing through my skin, not much to account for, less of me to occupy this tenuous space. Seeing them is like bleeding, reliefs the pain, the black hole that appears in my stomach every time I think of it. It sucks life out of me and replaces it with thoughts of endings.
Walls, fences, secured doors, half hourly checks, meal times, meds time, bed time, up time. I want freedom! I want to jump and dance to the music in my head, drink until nothing is wrong anymore, until nothing is wrong with my world. Find a pretty boy to kiss and take home, to train. To undress and be touched, admired. To take control, to come. To lure them, black top, heels, skinny jeans, big eyes. To make them promise me the world, to see the world in rum coloured waves. To sweat, find new scents, have them on my bed. To wake up skin to skin in strange arms, with the hazy morning light coming through my window. I want it all back. This prison doesn’t suit me. There will be time in the future to be good, to not live life to its fullest, to the extremes, to the edges of all that is possible. There will be time later for all the boring, silly, pointless things that “normal” people do. Right now I just want to be free, I will just have to hide it, like Ive hidden everything else in my life.
I will end up here again, up and down it goes. I love the madness too much. The most fruitful people in history have loved it that much too. It is not the boring, homely types that are remembered, that fill the world with something more meaningful that a recipe. Ive stray too much for too long. Tried to play the homely type, that’s why no man has ever truly loved me, they see me, the real me, at the start and then I play the part, the part I think I have to fulfil, the woman role, the devotee. No more theatre I'm afraid, no more plays, no more scripts. No more imagined futures. Whatever comes, comes. I won't react anymore. I’ve crushed myself too much and it has to end. Embrace the girl you love. The mad one who pretended to be a boy just to annoy someone. The one who always tried to test the rules, push the boundaries. The one who was too curious. It’s not the puppy eyed, pony tailed girl everybody pictures. Remember! Short, boy cut hair, dirty denim, trainers, your red bike. That is the little girl you have to embrace! The girl you forgot, the girl who takes shit from no one. You were made to push boundaries, to create new things, to shake the world, not to settle for whatever falls in front of your feet. Embrace yourself!
That is the only way I want to live, not as a half dead, boring woman. Who smiles when she wants to scream, who will never upset the balance or anyone, who struggles through life because she has given it all away, the woman I became. The only way I want to live is as me. That is the only way I will like me, even if nobody else does.
October 26th:
Im tired of sad stories, we are all open books in here. There is no point in hiding our flaws. It’s all out in the open. I need the fakeness again, I need to hide this.
How do you maintain the pretence of a good society? You hide us away… medicate us… control us… prisons, schools, hospitals they are all but places to contain change, difference.
I heard her begging for her medication today, like Foucault’s take on the panopticon, we have learnt to self regulate ourselves, we have become our own jailers. We beg to have the drugs, the drugs that we believe make us human, normal, so that we can talk on the phone, or sleep, or eat, or not be angry, or sad, or depressed, or happy, the drugs that control us, the drugs that by force became habit, by habit they become nature.
The days of the mythical psych ward are long gone, now we are made to feel comfortable, safe. The lie has dressed itself in pretty clothes. That’s the way of our days, everything is possible if we make it attractive enough, even prison…
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