Chapter Three: The Princess & The Flea

I walk silently towards my “cell”, squinting at the hideously yellow fluorescent lighting.

I hear 3 abrupt knocks before my soon-to-be favourite nurse enters.

“Hi darling, I’m just here to do your observations” he smiles knowingly whilst wheeling over the the blood pressure machine. It is quickly clear that this man is possibly the most flamboyant gay I have ever met – he brings a smile to my face immediately. He sits on the end of my bed and asks me how I’m feeling. I glance at the ceiling as if to say “I’m thinking”, make a few croaking noises and burst into tears. Apparently I too am now non-verbal. For a writer, this is embarrassing.

“Oh, girl. I’ll get you some loraz, babe.”

After swallowing my tiny white tablet of peace, I reach for my favourite read, “For When You Are Engulfed In Flames” by David Sedaris. Soon I am snorting and absolutely pissing myself laughing at his deadpan take on the world, quite similar to my own.

It was there and then that I decided to write...well, all of this.

I text Dad asking him to bring me a notepad and pen. He obliges immediately – along with some artificially beautiful Aldi cordial that I am drinking as we speak and organic skincare. Perhaps my father does understand me after all.

Visiting hours are over, and Dad tells me that he will be back whenever I need him to be. I hug him and smell patchouli, my most hated scent—but now a comforting one.

“This bed is the spawn of Satan” I think, comparing myself to the Princess and the Pea. The universe decides to give me an ironic sweetener, if one can call it that, and tells me my head is itchy.

I pull a singular flea out of my long chocolate strands.

//

I soon learn that lorazepam can only do so much – even though I brought myself here to try and cope, I don’t want to. It is too hard. I am so scared.

I’ve been reading so many Tumblr-esque quotes about self care in the 24 hours that I have been in the psychiatric unit. I decide to give them a shot.

I listen to the songs that I fell in love to. I force myself to feel it all until I am shaking on the floor of this cold, sterile room, watering the ground as if it were my garden of heartbreak.

“I had no comforts before you. I was in the city of my dreams, starving, sleeping without sheets. The second I saw you my heart regained colour. My heart gained you. You took yourself away from me just as swiftly”.

“I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you”

“But also…love you?”

I hear a monotonous droning over the loudspeaker.

“Attention all staff, code grey, psychiatric unit”

I would soon learn that “code grey” was more so code for somebody “absolutely losing their shit”, as a nurse professionally put it. Although I wasn’t a fan of the way he said it – he was right.

I felt so afraid. Code greys were plentiful for my 9 days in the ward, some of them I witnessed first hand. Screaming, holes punched in walls, attempted drug smuggling.

Frightened, I go to the common area and sit with Ginnny, who is shakily slurping orange juice out of a plastic cup. Soon enough we are surrounded by the others, and I begin to learn their names and why they are here. Psychosis, deemed too unwell for prison, depression. The middle one made me slightly afraid, given that the last time I was in one of these places I was physically attacked. I decide to give everyone the benefit of the doubt – how could I not? I’m not superior to these people. We’re all unwell…

…however, there is a limit to my understanding.

Nigel, a short plump man with eyes like dinner plates takes an immediate liking to me, along with his room mate. The prison talk is nauseating. “Yeah man fuckin’ YEAH you know what it is brother, yeah sweet bro, love ya bro”.

Brother, I do not know what “it” is.

Einstein’s definition of insanity is repeating something over and over and expecting different results. I look at the desperate message I am about to send before imagining old Einy’s face in complete disapproval. I delete the message, lock my phone and toss it on the bed – but I still want the improbable ding. Even after everything, that’s still want I want.

Sad and lonely, I get the elevator downstairs for a cigarette. I sit on aforementioned singed mound of fake grass with my notebook and jot down what I see – nothing is uninteresting in this place. “Never a dull moment” is far too overused, but, in this case, it’s true.

An apparently fuming ginger man kicks a ‘Murican sized Slurpee across the ground, I think of volunteering at a cattery. I am also fairly sure I have stood in pee. I am very unsure as to whether it was my own.

The mental health nurses here are almost condescendingly beautiful. Sporting Irish accents, wild hair and veins filled with Chanel No.5, I can’t help but feeling like a bogan fucking swamp demon. Whilst the beautiful ladies who take care of me seem to have it all together, and are genuinely kind and giving of shits, I am sitting in 4 day old clothes, unshowered and strangely smelling of butter – I don’t want to see their beauty right now.

As torturing those with a mental illness is a prerequisite for the Australian healthcare system, I am forced to stay awake until 10:30pm to get my sleeping tablet. I notice a buff, not-to-be-fucked-with woman with a thin ginger fringe walking towards me, and I immediately know what she will say before she opens her mouth – it’s strange to be right but also wrong.

“Hey love, how are you going? I’m Morag” she says curtly yet sweetly (and, oddly, in an Australian accent) sitting beside me. “Morag, I’m going to take a wild guess here and assume you’re Scottish” I say in my “of fucking course” voice.

She winks at me and tells me that she hails from Edinburgh. I tell her of my Scot-infused past and she nods knowingly, before scoffing and chortling, eyebrows raised as if she were impressed. “You’re a brave woman, fucking with the Scots! You must have some fire in you” I smile and wink before asking her why the entirety of the United Kingdom work in this ward. She is also unsure.

Unexpected, but lovely. Being surrounded by the sounds of the Irish, the Welsh and the Scots was a nice change. Who needs to travel when you can just have a breakdown?