Where in our Petite Heroine is now a Poet
A New Collection of Work. Written in the Dark. Secrets from the Soul.

Did you know that if you try to kill yourself, without success, and are brought back to consciousness, surprised and un-dead in the Alfred Hospital Emergency Room and not at God’s gate or the Devil’s home, you get a free stay-cation at their Psych ward. 

Seated in the chair placed at the foot of the hospital bed, a sweet, female Doctor of colour speaks gently. Slowly, deliberately, with the same caution used to approach an untamed wild horse. She introduces herself. The name is hard and ethnic. 

I am to be moved shortly to her ward, where she will take over my care and look after me. She is a Psychiatrist (of the Psychiatric ward variety). I am prodding custard silently with a plastic spoon in a coveted Emergency room bed. My dark eyes respond with wary scepticism. I’m listening.  

Her ward, well, it’s quiet and more comfortable, less fuss and noise. Do I know what day it is, by any chance? Can I tell her? The answer I give is not correct. I get the month wrong, too. The year I manage. Is that encouraging to everyone? Her melanated skin masks her age. It takes a lot of time to become a psychiatrist (whatever her age, add at least five years). I mention this not in admiration for the medical field of dermatology. But because I am evaluating her seniority and experience.

I cry quietly at the news (it’s not even crying, it’s wet drops out of my eyeballs). I know instinctively now is not the time to beg for mercy. It’s implied I do not have a choice. The circumstances of my admission have left no room for negotiation.

The precision of her words does not go unnoticed. The intentional softening is calculated. Casually unassuming. This means of delivery is intended to detract from the sharp, clean-cut guillotine of truth about to take my head. Rather than a clear declaration: “I am sending you to the psychiatric ward because you tried to kill yourself. State-mandated ‘duty of care’ means you just lost your privileges to decide what is best for you”. I am asked if I understand her pillow talk, seducing me away from the bad E.R. and into the safe corridors of asylum. Yes. I understand.

The excruciating dance around the truth tires me. The solemnity to break everything to me gently, like I am already in too many pieces, bores me. She need not worry, I’m already defeated by the fact that death cheated me and won. I nod my head, ‘continue’ the gesture speaks on behalf of my mouth. Tired of speaking.

The Psychiatrist’s black hair is cut into a non-threatening bob, thick and smooth, with no rogue frizz. She looks like a mother; the mismatching print of her clothes suggests so. I know from the fabric that they are expensive. The clothes are ill-fitting. 

I am feeling sorry for myself. The wires attached to sticky pads strategically placed on my skin connect back to a scramble of plugs hooked into a monitor. I’m bound to this bed, restricted from leaving the machine’s side. It beeps intermittently, congratulating my heart on its efforts. I am wearing tracksuit pants, my ex-bf’s large grey golf sweater and no bra. I wish to argue that if it were so intentional, my attempt to ‘take my own life’, I would not have chosen to die dressed like this. 

The coroner would have returned the clothes to my bereaved, puzzled Mother. Confirming to her that I must have been beyond despair to die with so little dignity. Or, so overconfident I would succeed in my endeavour, I didn’t care. Both lead to the same conclusion. No child of mine would take her final breath in tracksuit pants. She is right. This is the choice I am truly regretting.   

Wriggling my toes, my body lacks sensation from being sedentary for so long. The tips of my fingers are numb, and there are tiny, tiny pricks from the sharp jab of a fine-tip needle used for the blood glucose machine. I am Sleeping Beauty touching the spindle. Except, she did it to herself and only once and then got to rest for one hundred years. The takers pinch the sides of my Princess fingertips, my little puncture must give enough blood to soak a small white strip that is fed to a machine until it gives it’s satisfied beep. The results are reported to a higher power who seems to never be pleased. I am pricked over and over. 

When sensation returns to my fingertips, it hurts to touch the world (it will take a few days before I heal and can hold things without hesitation). I examine what looks like freckles or dark stars on the soft pad of my fingers. So, this is what they mean when they say ‘death by a thousand paper cuts’. The droplets that were coerced out of me bled the same colour as the colour I chose for my nails. The same colour I chose for the house roses that fateful week. When I picked both the blood red roses and the blood red nail polish, I intended the red to remind me of vengeance. A red to represent the blood of my enemies, scheming up ways to bathe in their blood. 

I’m not listening; I hear in the Psychiatrist’s tone that she is reassuring me. I want to interrupt and help the sweet dear for being so nice to me. Tell her the size of your clothing is wrong. Too big. She has chosen to size up, perhaps to hide her figure. My turn to be the assessor. I conclude it would be one of two reasons. She either feels her figure is too ‘sexy’ for her profession (well-tailored clothes accentuate good proportion and detract from authority). Or, it is the opposite, the clothes are a cover-up. Sheathing a few extra kilos on her frame. She has a slender face and no other indicators that reveal unwarranted weight gain. So, she wants to be taken seriously. Ok.

Oh, one more note for you, Psychiatrist. You nod too much when I talk, the universal signal that I am being heard. Not necessary. We both know I have no power here. The conversation ends. 

The nurses, adept at everything, enter and begin to undo me. First, they extract the needle; I am no longer tethered to the IV bag’s life-balancing solution. Next, the instruments used to monitor proof of life are unhooked. Things happen around me and to me. Efficiently. I am now small in the bed, marooned on a little island of white bedding. The ties that shackled me are gone; movement from here seems bad. Self-preservation is a natural biological response.

A fast-paced orderly appears. I am placed in a wheelchair, pre-empting my objection, I am told, even though they know I am capable of walking, it is hospital procedure that I am wheelchair-bound when whisked off to the Sanatorium. I see police standing by the bed of a man who looks bashed up and caved in. 

There is a very tall security guard, over six feet, outfitted in a hospital-issued navy sweater paired with matching navy pants, which also look hospital-issued. The accountants in finance are probably issued the same heavy-duty navy pants to wear to work.

The guard smiles a kind smile at me. The contrast of very white teeth gleams against the deep black skin of his Sudanese face. In Sudan, he was probably a specialised Doctor (a psychiatrist even). Standing at his full height, he is comfortable in a hospital setting; there is too much compassion towards the patients for him to be of real use as a security guard. He does have his height to assist in managing the ice junkies. Very big things find very small things endearing. It is just a fact, and a matter of understanding, you know this when you are one or the other. The middle or the average of height do not understand. 

Two blankets cover me. The whole hospital towers over me. My body weight has dropped to that of a twelve-year-old child’s. Thin and gaunt. Haunted and quiet. Walls, people, and movement blur past.

A nurse with strawberry blonde hair and scrubs that are printed with designs intended for paediatrics welcomes me to the Psychiatric Ward. I’m lucky because this part of the hospital is considered new. She perks up, talking about the facilities. The room she has for me is private and in the women’s only quarter. A wristband to open doors is slid over my hand and hangs loose from my wrist. I have become my own jailer. Each wrist is also adorned with a plastic hospital ID band. The nurses scan the QR code on the ID bracelets when they dispense medication. They are the same plastic wrist bands slapped on carelessly for gigs and music festivals. When you are young, wearing these wrist bands that do not snap but must be cut for as long as possible was the done thing. It was a signal that, yes, I went to a music event with drugs. I hate all of this.

Out of my new pals, who I think are mostly bi-polars, one is anorexic, the others, to me, remain mystery crazy, their disturbances categorised and labelled using the handy DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Don’t worry. Everyone here (the professionals who have read the handbook) knows what’s wrong with you, except you (even if you try to tell them). 

[INTERLUDE]

I half want the heartbreaker to be here. If not at the very least as a cosmic joke. The last time we spoke, perhaps five years between us now, actually more. He had just started at the Alfred as a freshly graduated social worker, you know. Saving people, other than himself. 

This is the story of the final meeting between The Heartbreaker and The Petite Heroine.

The Heartbreaker never failed to be handsome; you cannot forget it. I remember how easy it was to be lured back to him. It had been a year, maybe even two, before the calling came for us again. We would ban each other into silence periodically for years, and work on forgetting the heroin like sex. Or, at least I did. He moved across town (someplace I’d never go); distance, he could control that. He did not care to turn a street corner, caught by surprise and confronted by my happiness. And, I never ever want to run into him and his wife should he marry. When he marries.  

This will be our last reunion. I do not know why, but something breaks in both of us. The defeat of ‘not in this lifetime’ is clear. He didn’t feel right anymore. Covered in a bravado I was not interested in. Admittedly, I was still weak for those carved out Michael Angelo sculpted abs.

We are sitting, and he is looking at me. I am aware I am being evaluated as if I were one of his Tinder girls. Reeling off compliments in this peculiar way. 

You’re are… sexy, pretty, funny, smart and hot. 

Thanks. 

I dismiss this, not because I am humble, but because he has forgotten this about me. The way the words come out, I can see he is ticking boxes in his head. The, uh, grocery list of what William’s girlfriend must have and be.  You are handsome and I never forget that. I internally commend him on how well he has done to forget me so much of me. I see he is smitten, you always were with me. 

You are on a first date, and I am not. I hope he takes his shirt off to make this liveable.

“Bubbly”. He adds this word to the compliment list. And I want to punch him in the mouth and kiss the soul out of him. Time has informed his opinion. He confirms with confidence that our ending was the ending, and will always be our ending, because, according to the little book of mental disorders, I am BPD. How hopeful that you, the righteous social worker, of tolerance and belief in others, are so quick to write me off. I am forgiven because the handbook has permitted him to define me. Process me and forget me. 

Now, I remember what I forgot: he might never have failed to be handsome, but he also never failed to be just dumb enough for his opinions to be dismissed.

William does not appear during my sojourn at the psychiatric facility. I hope he is running away from himself in another state or country. I don’t care if he’s happy. That would imply emotion. To be severed from someone you held so dear and never speak to them again has always provided me the hope that I can get over anyone. 

[END INTERLUDE]

At this point, I have an unconfirmed diagnosis (BPD is not one). Special girl. They do not know if the insomnia was a product of acute PTSD or if the insomnia spurred my first major bipolar episode. So, did not sleeping from trauma make me try to kill myself? Or did I kill myself because not sleeping awakened my dormant bipolar? Outcame same. Still not dead. Fucking hell. We are just splitting hairs.

My father is very bipolar, and it is not uncommon for the children of bipolar parents to inherit certain characteristics of the “disease”. Meaning, I may have had bipolar traits, but not enough to land me on the official scale. I guess, until now. 

I wrote something else about my mandated repose. I was too medicated to write, read or do much other than ask for more valium, which, apart from being dispensed almost every four hours, the psychiatrists thoughtfully wrote me a ticket for a free ride. Valium PRN, music to the Benzo girl’s dreams- a small reward for my new dwellings and companions. The silver lining, the cushy cloud.

Since my release, I have become nocturnal and a poet. 

“You just wake up and decide you are a writer”, words a friend (the published author) once told me. “I woke up and wanted to be a crime writer, so I read as many crime books as I could and I wrote a book” (and won an award). In the spirit of following through on his newfound decision, he had business cards printed with his name and contact details. Below his name, “writer”. 

Shall we?

xx SJ