As promised, here is an update of what has
been going on in the strange old life that I inhabit. So, as many of you will
know, I am no longer an inpatient at Vincent Square. I am also no longer under
section. In fact, I am an outpatient, back home, and the closest to happy I can
remember being. It’s how this all came about that is the interesting part to my
tale. I suppose I better start where I last left off. I’d like to apologise in
advance for a rather ‘to the point’ account of this particular event, it’s
quite long winded, but I wanted to get the facts down so I can finally write
again as I enjoy, without causing too much confusion with any odd references.
Also, please bare in mind it is about 1:30am and I am on a flight back from
Ibiza!
I was at Vincent Square and pretty goddamn
miserable. I was struggling massively and the most exhausted I can remember
ever having been due to relentless upset and the ridiculous regime I was
putting my body through with the exercise. Then I had a ward round and to me,
it seemed as though it was pretty hopeless. The word ‘chronic’ was used and
although everyone agreed things were not working, there was no plan of how to
try and help me make them work, just that I needed to change my behavior’s.
Obviously, I was aware of this, just as you are aware that you ‘should’ get up
now, you ‘should’ get a better job, you ‘should’ do your homework. To me,
however, it felt like every time I got up, I fell. Every time I went for a job
interview, I failed and every sum and question in my homework was unanswerable.
I don’t really know how else to explain it, but I honestly didn’t feel I could
do anymore. I was so incredibly angry I cannot describe. I was angry that it
felt like no one was listening to me. I was angry I was under section and I
felt as if I was being held prisoner, tortured, but failing to have my jail
time cut at all and that I was being wholly blamed. I pointed out that I was
there for help to get better and if I could just stop my behaviour’s, well, I’d
be at home. This did not seem to be the right thing to say and it felt horribly
like being called to the headteacher’s office with all your teacher’s around
the table telling you basically you’re dumb, failing every subject and not
making progress. Even when you asked for extra tuition, more help, you were
told that nothing more could be done. I left feeling like a piece of shit. As
you can imagine, I’m quite sure, feeling, once again, like a failure, was not
at all conducive to recovery or even determination in my case. Slowly but
surely I could feel all sense of hope and vigor ebbing out of every single pore
of my body. I felt disconnected from me, as if I were watching all of these
horrible things being done to another. I was despondent, yet livid. Constantly
arguing with the staff and regime. I felt like a nuisance all the time, as if I
was in the way, as if all of the senior management hated me, I was too much to
handle, I was worried they thought I was the gobby posh girl. The nurses, on
the actual ward all the time, seemed to have much more of a grasp of me, but I
was convinced that the powers that were all loathed me. This, for me, was a
bloody nightmare. And it was with all this in mind and my head in absolute
turmoil that I did the most spontaneous and certifiably insane (baring in mind
I actually was certified nuts at this point, that is saying something) thing I
have ever done. I booked a flight, secretly, to Barcelona the next day. I had
3.5 hours leave for a dentist appointment. I packed a small bag, wrote a letter
for my fellow patients, telling them not to worry and I would contact them upon
arrival at my destination, and prepared myself for the event. I was absolutely
terrified. The prospect of doing something quite so against the rules, about
the reactions of all those I love and care for, hell, the reactions of all
those people who I don’t like, the prospect of all the trouble I was going to
cause, the idea of my parents being angry. The police being called. All of
that, but my desperation over came that all. I knew that I had to get out of
the country. Within the UK, the police would find me and just bring me straight
back, potentially in handcuffs. I’d seen this happen to others before and I
have to say that the prospect of being dragged back to a mental hospital in
handcuffs and a police van was just too much for my pride to handle. I wanted
time, on ground where I was not bound by law to do anything, not trapped by the
dictation of those whom I did not trust. I also knew I didn’t want to go
anywhere too cold (so Paris was out of the equation) and that I needed as
short-er flight time as possible. By my calculations, no one would be any the
wiser for the time it would take me to get to the airport, check in, get on my
plane, even take off. It would be around this time that my 3.5 hours leave
would be over and alarm bells would start ringing. In order to limit the stress
on all those wondering where the hell I was, I wanted to limit the time I was
out of contact. I also factored in that I needed to be somewhere I could make
sure I had access to things I could eat, I speak a bit of Spanish (we are
talking GCSE level, however, I have found that key phrases such as ‘skinny
milk’ and ‘without sugar’ have tattooed onto my mind over the past few years.)
For this reason, I booked accommodation with a kitchenette in a city I knew
there would be familiar food and shops and I could communicate to some degree.
So, I would like to think there was ‘method to my madness’. My best friend,
Thea, now says, whenever the story is regaled ‘May, if you were trying to prove
to them you’re not insane…that wasn’t your smartest move’. I still contradict
her by saying that I’m clearly competent and have some sense of self
preservation, or I’d have absconded to a mountain somewhere and not contacted
anyone. Starting a new life as a little Peruvian girl with a pet donkey. I even
took the little red cup that I had been taught to use to measure cereal and
milk in self-catering, so as to ensure I was equipped to eat. The only draw
back to this whole self-catering, breakfast plan was that, well…id only been
taught how to do breakfast myself. You do self-catering in careful slow stages
in hospital, learning to eat again is not a quick process, and learning to feed
yourself is even harder. If you think about the journey that lots of us had
taken, from being tube fed, to put on a yogurt diet, to softs etc, and before
all of that, rejecting food all together, teaching us to eat again was kind of
like teaching astro-physics to a load of novices with a serious aversion to
science. The lovely Occupational therapists spent a lot of time helping us in
groups of 2 or 3 learn to give our bodies what we needed. So, I had breakfast
down-pat. I bloody loved breakfast. I’d have got a bloody first class degree in
my ‘re-feeding breakfast skills’. But…I couldn’t actually do anything else yet.
I knew that this adventure was going to feature a lot of cereal and toast. But
you know what, I was cool with that. In my opinion, it was better than previous
holidays that had featured a whole lot of nothing, or, me trying to communicate
with an Egyptian man in our lovely hotel that I wanted only an egg white omelet
and that he could not use oil to cook it and then freaking out as he made it in
front of me, convinced there was oil left in the pan from the previous person’s
normal omelet. (How much do you all want to go on holiday with me right now?!)
Just before the plane took off, literally, as we were trundling down the runway
and all electronics should’ve been off (don’t be angry Easy Jet), I hit send on
an email I had prepared for my parents and another I had prepared for my fellow
patients. In both, I explained I was fine, but that I had run away, my reasons
for doing so, and the assurance I would be in contact when I got where I was
going. Apparently, upon getting the message, Finlay (a fellow crazy who I love
a lot) voiced his conviction to the others that I would definitely have left
the country. Everyone told him not to be ridiculous. However, Finlay knows me
well enough to know I don’t do things by halves. He also knew I was at breaking
point and how bloody desperate I was. If only they’d listened to Finlay….
