The Dark Threads (22 page)

The attendant immediately produced some keys and all but shoved us out of a small back exit a few yards from where we'd been standing. No one was going to be allowed to have a funny do in his museum. Outside in the street, we doubled up laughing. ‘Did you see the look on his face?' Marlene asked with a chuckle. ‘He couldn't let us out quick enough when I mentioned High Royds.'

Even the hospital parrot had a sense of humour. In part of the grounds surrounding the hospital there was a small aviary which housed, among other birds, Popsy the parrot whose party piece was to say ‘O be joyful' to the watching groups of depressed patients.

‘O be joyful,' Popsy said as Georgina stuck her face near the mesh to get a closer look.

‘Don't you “O be joyful” me,' Georgina said crossly.

‘O be joyful. O be joyful. O be joyful,' the parrot squawked, running backwards and forwards along its perch.

‘You horrible creature. I'll wring your neck if you don't shut up,' Georgina said, sounding as if she meant it, but then she turned to me with a smile. ‘Oh, listen to me arguing with a bloody parrot. I'm so miserable and bad-tempered today, I don't know what to do.'

‘What to do? What to do? O be joyful,' the parrot suggested.

We both laughed.

Mike was sending me long letters with news cuttings and pictures about life in New Zealand. He'd got a well-paid job with a car manufacturer, had never been so well off financially, was living it up at champagne parties and said it was really great out there. But reading between the lines I knew he was homesick. In some of his letters he begged me to join him, offering to pay my fare. He kept telling me he loved me and wanted to marry me.

And he didn't even know me.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I
IGNORED THEM FOR
a long time but, yes, they were there, these questions in the recesses of my mind, like tiny seeds hidden beneath the soil. Lately they had started growing, spreading their tendrils and thrusting their way up through the darkness to the surface. Despite my drowsiness, I was becoming increasingly critical of psychiatry. How could ‘helping' include abusing people's minds and bodies, inflicting pain and humiliation, indoctrinating people into believing themselves inadequate, while fostering a dependency on mental hospitals and drugs?

‘I'm sick of this hospital,' I blurted out the minute I was seated at Dr Copeland's desk on what proved to be the last occasion I would see him. ‘Is it part of the staff's training to view us as something less than human beings?'

‘I'm not doing that, am I? Why are you angry with me?'

‘It's not you,' I admitted. He was the one psychiatrist I knew who least deserved this kind of criticism. I twisted my fingers nervously. ‘It's not just one incident or one person,' I tried to explain. ‘It's your … your profession. Psychiatry!' I spat out the word vehemently. ‘There's something … something wrong with it,' I said, fumbling to find the right words from my half-formed thoughts.

Dr Copeland smiled. ‘Yes, and some of us would like to change things. But who or what has annoyed you?'

‘I've told you it's nobody in particular. It's lots of things.'

I searched my mind for examples, but could only launch into recounting bitterly my initiation into the mental hospital world on Thornville.

‘OK, so you had a bad experience on one of the wards, but don't judge the whole hospital by that.'

‘I'm not,' I said. ‘It's also what I've experienced over the years since, and what I've seen happening to other people. It's now as well, all the time, and it's not just … it's got something to do with … with the whole system.'

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I felt I was teetering on the brink of an important revelation but, having finally grasped a bit of truth, I couldn't digest or express it.

‘You're feeling angry today, Jean,' Dr Copeland observed, lighting a cigarette.

‘Yes, too right I am. Patient's symptoms took the form of anger today.' I gave a sarcastic laugh. ‘So why don't you increase my tablets or send me for ECT?' I wouldn't have dared say that to Dr Shaw. I could only say it to Dr Copeland because I could trust him not to do that.

I gazed at the sky through the window, feeling as though I was watching the clouds through prison bars.

‘I feel like smashing every window in this bloody hospital,' I said, suppressed anger crackling inside me and shooting off sparks.

‘Go ahead if it'll make you feel any better,' Dr Copeland muttered sleepily, ‘but then you'll have to pay for them.' He yawned and stretched.

‘You know something?' I went on heedlessly, my bottled-up emotions bobbing close to the surface. ‘If you're not mad when you first come into this hospital, you've little chance of not being after a while.'

‘That applies to the staff, too,' Dr Copeland replied.

We both sat silently for a while, then I said: ‘I really don't understand how I got myself into all this.'

Dr Copeland leant forward in his chair, resting his chin on his hand propped up by his elbow.

‘Jean, didn't you once tell me that it was
you
who first asked to see a psychiatrist?'

I nodded.

‘What exactly did you say to him?'

‘I told him I thought I was going insane.'

He sighed. ‘Asking to see a psychiatrist and telling him you think you're going insane.' He closed his eyes and ran his fingers across his forehead. ‘Jesus, what a clever thing to do! Like voluntarily putting your head on the chopping block, don't you think?'

‘With hindsight, yes,' I replied. ‘But I felt I needed help and asking to see a psychiatrist seemed a sensible thing to do.'

‘What kind of help did you expect?'

‘Not the so-called help I got,' I said, bitterly.

‘But what did you expect?'

‘I don't know. Maybe I wanted him to reassure me that I
wasn't
going insane. I needed someone to talk to and I was scared he wouldn't take me seriously.'

‘So you told him you thought you were going insane to make sure he'd sit up and listen to you? Sounds like you were playing a very dangerous game.'

I hung my head and thought about it carefully before answering.

‘No, that's not fair. It wasn't a game,' I said finally. ‘I'd been full of conflicts and confusion, and so dissatisfied with life, for a long time. I didn't know where to turn. Asking to see a psychiatrist was my cry for help. And did you know it takes courage to do that? But how, please tell me how, am I supposed to understand what happened next? Once inside, nothing made sense any more: strong drugs right away, too drowsy to think straight, then ECT only a few days later …' The words were rushing out now, hot and angry. ‘It all happened so quickly and I was sucked in too deep to get out. It was like … like being crushed with a steamroller. God, how I wish I'd never made that decision to see a psychiatrist, but I was a mixed-up teenager and I thought … I honestly thought I was being … sensible.'

I nearly choked on the word ‘sensible' as painful memories flooded my mind, drenching me in self-pity for having paid such a high price for being ‘sensible'. I was holding back so many tears and feelings now that they were rumbling in my stomach and causing painful contractions in my chest and throat.

‘I wonder what patients expect of us,' Dr Copeland said, stroking his chin. I thought I detected pity in his eyes when he said again, though very gently this time: ‘What did you expect?'

‘I don't know,' I said with a deep sigh as I managed to compose myself. ‘I just don't know.'

The consultation was over. I was leaving Dr Copeland's office when he called me back.

‘Can I give you some off-the-record advice?' he asked. He was looking down at his desk as if talking to that.

‘OK. I'm listening.'

‘Get away from this hospital. I know it's not easy, but can't you try to get a job and your own flat?' His tone was quiet, gentle, almost pleading. ‘You
can
see, Jean, can't you, why it's so important that you get right away from all this?' He paused, looked up at me and spoke louder, firmer, urgently. ‘For Christ's sake, Jean, get away from here. Before it's too late!'

Dr Copeland left the hospital and I heard from staff that he had given up psychiatry to become a GP. Dr Shaw informed me that I'd be seeing him more in future, an announcement which filled me with dismay. Sister Speight was replaced by a charge nurse called Tony, a pleasant young man in his late twenties. Georgina took a massive overdose and went into a coma. And so life (or whatever it should be called) at the hospital, went on.

After Dr Copeland left, I did make some attempt to ‘get away' before it was ‘too late', but felt trapped. I applied for jobs as a dental receptionist, a typist, and at a hairdresser's washing hair and sweeping up, but job-hunting seemed pointless. On application forms, or at interviews, how could I explain my long gap of unemployment, and my present situation? How could I get references? Who would want to employ a drugged mental patient?

I scanned the newspaper for accommodation but this, too, seemed beyond my reach. How could I support myself financially? Nikki, an acquaintance of Jackie, phoned me one evening. I'd never met Nikki but she explained she needed someone to share her flat and Jackie had told her I was looking for a place.

‘Well, I
was
, but I've stopped looking for now because … because I'm unemployed at the moment,' I explained.

‘Oh, I didn't realise you were between jobs, but never mind. We could meet for a coffee if you like and perhaps decide about sharing the flat for later. What kind of work do you do?'

‘Office work,' I replied, ‘but I haven't worked for some time.' I hesitated, then plunged in. ‘I'm a patient at a psychiatric day hospital.'

‘Oh!'

‘Didn't Jackie tell you?'

There was a long, awkward silence.

‘Oh, I … er, I see. No, I didn't know.'

Another long pause. There was no sign now of her initial friendliness. Her obvious unease was greater than I'd anticipated. I might as well have told her I'd got bubonic plague.

Before going to bed I looked at myself in the wardrobe mirror. I was not the fat girl I had been on my discharge from Thornville, for I had long since regained my slim, pre-hospital figure. But it was still a dull, heavy-lidded, pale, lifeless creature who stared back at me. Where had I gone? Somewhere in the cellars of my mind there was a dusty memory of how it had felt to be awake and alive. I remembered a girl on a swing in a park – it made me want to cry.

I sat on the bed and tipped my dosage of pills from their little plastic containers into my hand. Valium pills were yellow, amitriptyline were red, and the white ones were Melleril, and Kemedrin. Resisting a sudden urge to throw them on the floor, I forced them down my throat with a large gulp of water and winced. For a while now my pills had seemed to be sticking, causing a tight band of pain in my chest that hurt more each time I swallowed.

I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling while Brian's loud music from the record player downstairs battered my brain. My head felt heavy, groggy, and my stomach acknowledged the arrival of the latest pills with a queasy flutter. It was as if, after years of daily drug-taking, my mind and body were now pleading in unison, ‘No more. Oh, please no more.'

Existing on pills, going to the hospital, living with my family, being painfully shy, feeling constantly tired, lacking energy and motivation; all these things were getting me down. And now there was this disturbing, restless feeling reminding me that it was of the utmost importance to do something before it was too late. The problem was I'd no idea what this ‘something' should be. Leave home, get a flat, get a job, get away from the hospital … Yes, yes, yes, Dr Copeland. But how? I felt I'd lost the skills for ‘normal' living (if I'd ever had them).

I pulled the raggy, dirty bedcovers over my head, feeling too exhausted to have a wash or clean my teeth. I lay awkwardly in the lumpy, unmade bed, trying as always to avoid the spring that was protruding through the mattress, but it caught the seat of my pyjamas and ripped them when I tugged free. With my fingers stuck in my ears to block out the pounding music, I sought refuge in sleep. I wasn't feeling very well tonight. So what was new?

CHAPTER TWENTY

S
AVED BY THE BELL
. My alarm clock rescued me from a nightmare in which once again I was being held down firmly by white-coated men who were about to shoot electric currents into my brain. I leant over to stop it and lay back down. I still wasn't feeling well and may have been tempted to stay in bed if it hadn't been my brother's day off. I lay staring at the ceiling, with my arm stretched across my forehead, until I'd no time for breakfast. Then I got up, had a quick wash, pulled on my jeans and a T-shirt, swallowed a handful of pills and set off for the day hospital.

I felt sick during the bus journey so had to get off a few stops early. I walked the rest of the way and was still feeling a bit fragile when Tony greeted me with the news that my presence was required immediately at a Case Review Meeting. I'd never attended one but I knew from staff and patients something of what to expect. The room would be full of students and others, all sitting around me making notes, staring, observing my reactions to questions. Tony saw me pull a face and said kindly, ‘You'll be OK, it's nothing to worry about,' as he led me to the office upstairs.

‘Tell us about the church you used to go to,' Dr Shaw said while my audience stared.

How long ago it seemed since I'd gone to church with Jackie and sung hymns with a joyful heart before the shadows descended. How could they understand? Why should I try to explain?

Andy, the young friendly student nurse who was presently based at the day hospital, piped up, ‘You're all right about religion now. I know you can see it from both sides because I've heard you talk about it.'

I turned to Andy who was sitting behind me.

‘But it's seeing it from both sides like that which caused the conflicts,' I pointed out. ‘If I hadn't seen it from both sides, I'd have been able to either carry on being a Christian or become an atheist, depending on which side I could see it from.'

‘Turn round and talk to me,' Dr Shaw said firmly.

Dr Shaw's questions made me uncomfortable. As always, they were selective; for example, I wasn't asked about my father's adulterous affairs – not that I wanted to be.

‘Tell me about your mother's affair.'

‘Has your mother had affairs in the past?'

‘Has your mother slept with a lot of men?'

I supposed if I snapped at them to mind their own business, my anger would be seen as a symptom of illness. They can ask me anything, I thought, to write about in that manila file with my name on it, then use the partial truths and fictions it contains, all the distortions of their blinkered medical perspective, as proof of who knows what.
Stop it, Jean, that's a sick way to think
. They only wanted to help, so I should try to cooperate with them. But, Lord, I'd been co-operating for years and look where it had got me …

I tried to answer questions about my mother honestly, although I felt guilty and disloyal for doing so to these note-taking strangers. And I tried to talk about myself with an openness that rendered me vulnerable. I did this, even though seeing a psychiatrist in the first place to talk about myself now seemed the biggest mistake of my life.

My throat was parched. I couldn't swallow. Twice earlier I'd asked Dr Shaw if I could have a glass of water and each time he'd just smiled inanely and carried on with his questions as if my request wasn't worth acknowledging. Now my mouth was so dry I could hardly speak, my tongue got in the way of my words and I sounded as if I had a speech impediment. An excessively dry mouth was one of the side effects of my drugs, and I expect nervousness at having to speak in front of all these people was accentuating it. Tony stood up and left the room as I struggled on. After a short while, he returned with a glass of water for me. I was very grateful.

‘Do you hear voices?' Dr Shaw asked.

‘Not like what you mean. Not audible voices.'

‘Not audible voices? Well, what kind of voices do you hear?'

‘I don't hear voices, but I mean sometimes your own thoughts are like voices, aren't they? A kind of dialogue in your mind.'

‘Are they really?' he said, looking interested.

I wished I hadn't said that. Had it made me sound schizophrenic? I'd been taught at Sunday school to listen to the ‘still small voice' of conscience, the God-part inside us. After the loss of my religious beliefs I'd perceived this ‘voice' as a part of my thoughts, but I didn't mean a ‘voice' literally.

‘Everybody thinks that way at times, don't they?' I said nervously.

‘What way?'

‘That your thoughts are like voices inside you.'

A stony silence. Damn it, I was making it worse.

‘But I can't
hear
them. I only mean “voices” in a metaphorical sense,' I said in a hoarse voice that ended in a whisper.

It's no good trying to explain, I thought. He probably even thinks the pop song by the Paper Dolls titled ‘Something Here In My Heart (Keeps A-Tellin' Me No)' is about mental illness. I picked up my glass with a shaky hand and took a gulp of water. The note-takers were scribbling away and Dr Shaw was wearing his funny little smile. Train people to look for symptoms of illness and they'll find something sick about the desk and chairs if they expect to, I thought angrily. What a bunch of lemons!

‘Do you ever wonder if people can hear your thoughts?'

‘No, and sometimes it's a jolly good job they can't,' I replied with feeling.

A few chuckles rippled around the room diffusing the heavy atmosphere, but only for a moment.

It was
awful.
I felt as if I was being interrogated, found guilty of mental illness and the sentence was the destruction of my credibility and self-esteem. I can't take this much longer, they're pushing me over the edge, I thought, while another voice inside me (not an audible voice, you understand) was saying: No, you're wrong to think this way, Jean, they only want to help and now you're getting paranoid.

No, it wasn't me. This was enough to drive the sanest person crazy.

OK, I think they really might be only wanting to help, I decided finally, but the problem was that they were
so dangerously wrong.
And I was one of the casualties of this narrow-minded, medically orientated perspective, one who had been placed in grave danger because of their wrongness.

‘Why did you first see a psychiatrist?' Dr Shaw asked.

I needed more time to think that one out for myself. Was being caught up in conflicts and confusion about religion and life a medical problem? But life had seemed meaningless and empty; depression was a medical problem, wasn't it?

‘Come along, Jean. Would you like to try to tell us why?'

‘Because I thought … I thought I was depressed.'

‘You
thought
you were depressed? And weren't you?'

‘Well, yes, I suppose so in a way, but … but, no, not
really
,' I said.

‘You were depressed but you weren't? That doesn't make sense, does it?'

‘Yes it does,' I said defensively. ‘I mean … I mean I wasn't
fully
depressed.'

‘Oh? And have you ever been
fully
depressed?'

‘Yes. In Thornville Ward. I never knew depression before then. Not what I'd call depression now. I didn't even realise until then that it was possible to feel so …' My voice wavered.

‘Did going into hospital help you?'

Hadn't he heard what I'd just said? ‘How could it have helped? How could it have done anything other than make me worse? And that's all psychiatry has ever done for me,' I blurted out, as I glanced up accusingly at the others, then back at Dr Shaw. ‘You start treating people in ways that can be harmful, without knowing enough … without even knowing
anything
about the person you're treating. Without understanding a single thing …'

My voice trembled as I came close to tears. But I wouldn't cry in front of them. I wouldn't. The hurt turned to anger. Dr Shaw had a sort of I-know-how-you-feel-dear smile on his face and I was sure they'd heard all this before from many other poor, sick nerve cases. I suspected they believed these kind of criticisms came only from patients who lacked ‘insight'. Didn't it occur to them that hurt and angry, even confused or sick, patients could be right about some things? If only they would tear up their goddamn notepads, unshackle their minds from their training, forget about the textbooks they'd read and just
listen
and
hear
. Oh, wasn't there at least one person among them who could understand what was happening at this hospital and see that it was wrong?

I glanced at the sea of faces around me; all eyes were staring intently at me. There were about twelve people in the room, mostly males, seated around the desk where Dr Shaw sat facing me. I turned and looked at Andy sitting behind me. His fresh open face looked serious, thoughtful. I shifted my gaze to the person on his right and held it there for a moment. And then on to the next person, and the next. And the next. All the way round the room, looking steadily at each person in turn for a while. Nobody spoke. Most of them looked uncomfortable under my gaze and lowered their eyes, shuffled their feet or coughed nervously. I got a kind of fleeting, perverse pleasure out of this despite my growing anxiety that I was finally cracking up.

I rested my eyes longest on a young bearded man who I thought looked caring, as if trying to understand. And he didn't look away. But I realised that I was probably seeing him as I wanted to see him. Finally, I looked back at Dr Shaw, then down at the floor. Afraid and alone.

I was locked in a nightmare from which I couldn't awaken, trapped in a horror film and cast in the star part as victim. A role which would have to be played out right to the tragic finale. Or would it? Perhaps I could still say ‘NO!' and not allow it to happen. I must shatter the screen, make good my escape and rewrite the script.

‘Right, thank you, Jean,' Dr Shaw said, bringing the session to an end.

I remained seated a moment longer, thinking things out.

Dr Shaw coughed. ‘It's time for you to go now.'

Yes, it's time for me to go now, I thought. And please, dear God, don't let it be too late.

The room seemed thick with tension and deathly quiet as I stood up. Then Andy sprang to his feet, patted my shoulder and, smiling warmly, said, ‘See ya later, kiddo. Tarra.' I liked him for that.

‘Has anybody got any questions?' I heard Dr Shaw ask just after I closed the door on leaving.

Yes,
me.
I've got some questions, I thought. I've got so many questions that I've been ignoring for far too long.

The first thing I must do had suddenly become so obvious to me and I knew that this time I must see it through to the end. Were being drowsy, depressed, lacking in energy and motivation, symptoms of illness or side effects of drugs? It seemed that outlets for my feelings, whether through writing, talking, tears or whatever, had all been, to a large extent, blocked off by the drugs I'd taken for years. It couldn't be healthy, this pressing down of emotions. It was as if I'd packed them tightly into a bottle and pushed a cork in. What would happen if the cork shot out? Would feelings that had been contained for so long erupt like a volcano if released? Perhaps I really was sick and perhaps I did need the drugs, but I had to find out. Frozen in stone, buried before my time, what had I got to lose anyway? I decided to take the cork out myself.

The next morning, a Saturday, I went round the house opening drawers and cupboards, gathering together all the pills accumulated over the years through missing just one dose every so often, then I added these to my present supply, and emptied the whole lot down the toilet. But several flushes later, they were obstinately remaining at the bottom of the toilet bowl; miserable reminders of those years of my life that I wanted to flush away along with the pills.

I scooped out a soggy, yellow handful of Valium pills, but still couldn't flush the other pills away. Damn it! I fished out the rest and loaded them back into their plastic containers. There had recently been an advertising campaign urging people to get rid of old pills safely by taking them to a chemist. With this in mind, I set off out.

On my way back from the chemist, I had a strong urge to cut my hair. It was straight and very long, hanging loosely to my waist, and I'd worn it like that since I was about sixteen. Sure that I'd make a mess with the scissors myself, I called in at the local hairdresser's who said they could fit me in right away for a trim.

‘I want a lot cutting off,' I explained. ‘I'd like it to just below my ears.'

‘Oh, but you've got such lovely long hair. Are you sure you want so much cutting off?'

‘Yes. Quite sure.'

Snip, snip, snip … A part of me, formed over the years, fell away in seconds. The three other hairdressers and the girl who did the shampooing stopped what they were doing to silently stand and watch, though they couldn't have understood the solemnity of the occasion. Cutting off my hair had somehow got connected in my mind with cutting off my past; a kind of symbolic ritual. I don't know what gave me that idea. A character in Rosamond Lehmann's
Dusty Answer
has her long hair cut short for much the same reason, but I didn't read that novel until several years later.

Back outside, I breathed in the fresh air, blowing away the cobwebs in my brain. How strange it felt to toss my head and not feel the weight of long, thick hair. Change was in the air. I could feel it, breathe it, smell it and taste it on my lips. High in the sky the sun was peeping out from behind a grey cloud and, for the first time in how long, I felt exhilarated. No more drugs. After years of being a zombie, I was coming back to life again. It's like being reborn, I thought excitedly.

Lying in bed that night with no bottles of pills beside my bed for the first time in years, but feeling restless, unable to sleep, some of my earlier optimism about being reborn faded as I began to glimpse something of the struggle that lay ahead.