Bradgate

My sister and I sat in a small side room. At least it was curtained to give the impression of an actual room, I think. The doctor was talking seriously, trying even to stop himself diverting the conversation to my sister rather than me.

The extent of his holistic approach was at an end with my sister’s inability to tick the boxes of the duty of care form straightforwardly though. What was clear is that I lacked capacity,

rocking in confusion that fermented into a kind of frenzy, standing up sitting down;

I was told that this meant I’d have to stay in this place. I remember wearing a pair of high heels, nice ones and thinking at least my feet were largely protected from the thick dust coating the soiled ground beneath them.

It seemed out of place yet integral to the clinical setting.

I’ve been told since this was all because I had tried to run away. I still can’t think where I ran- my recollection is limited to walking down Oxford street and suddenly plummeting into the basement of this sordid place. The dirt was overwhelming. Although I was splayed across the floor at one point (more likely several) marking (accidentally) a generously donated poetry book, of former mental patients, with my blood. Snakes had been buried in my subconscious since I returned from Australia, only a month before. So, somehow I was bitten in an attempt to rob a brown snake of its tooth so I could become T. S Eliot. It’s a funny thing but I’m still convinced the stain on that little yellow book lives on. There’s some significance of a little yellow book, tied into Dorian Gray and although I couldn’t truly remember it- this made me think

‘stranger things have happened haven’t they’.

I thought that this particular hallucination was private until the doctor asked me recently, ‘are you still seeing snakes?’. In fairness a snake did jump out the oven which I was prepared to do battle with with nothing but a fruit bowl however I believe that is what they call the

s e n s a t i o n a l i s m of mental illness.

In reality it’s pyjamas and being denied tweezers.

There wasn't a day and night in the same way- They bled into each other for most patients, and staff I imagine. But I volunteered to pick up butt ends with the - of my day. I stopped to pick up the saliva soaked ends of habit littering the ground carelessly. The other girls gave me looks each dive, as if my life had something better I was concealing in the binliner afforded me for a kind of 'treat' instead of the usual reprimands expected from the resident occupational therapist.

I carted round African sounding names under my arm with no digression. Creepily monitoring my emails for oxford MSc acceptance. It might have been out of place in among the colouring books, sheets printed off were the closest thing to pretension, they called it mindfulness. The latest developments of the ward were not without question. A woman dominated by swinging around- with an alarming precision- her catheter. I’ve since heard force feeding of medication isn’t an uncommon experience and so I am I suppose lucky all I was subjected to was theft, a jacket and Marc Jacobs dress I wasn’t meant to take with me in the first place. It was nevertheless unpleasant. ‘Too pretty’ the nurse, healthcare assistant? Extended to her friend- colleague, or is that a thing I read in Adichie?

No she definitely said ‘too pretty’, I somehow knew its meaning to be something about my white, my helplessness, undue privilege.

‘You go and take a shower now’

You shower now- I was concerned there were cameras. Still I was made to shower now. Strip off and shave my wooly legs in front of the crowds, loud, louder that impressed themselves inside my head with the vigour of ten thousand men.