Chapter Two: Psychwardia!

Psychiatric facilities are strange places. Although quite exclusive, among us are people from all walks of life. The depressed, the clinically insane, the Scottish.

The initial ER visit is even more strange – how does one begin to explain their invisible situation to a preppy (and presumably horse-loving) triage nurse who is more acquainted with the idea of nausea than that of neurotransmitters?

“Hi! I wish to end my existence. No worries, I’ll hold!”

The second I am admitted I ring my father. A tumultuous relationship for many years, but a special one nonetheless. He immediately packs a bag and begins the twelve hour drive to Melbourne to rescue his little girl.

Being told that I have to spend tonight in Emergency as there are -typically- no beds in the psychiatry unit, I make mental notes of the horrors of different diseases. Dementia, addiction, cancer…

Saoirse is my nurse for the night. I tell her approximately 30 times that I am in love with her accent, and, as the night dies down, I hear her sadly speaking to her coworker about her deadbeat..whatever he is.

Me being drugged up and in a strange facility always calls for the uncalled-for.

I swing open the curtain and say “LOVE IS A LIE” before we all erupt in giggles and proceed to bitch. Apparently, no matter who you are, no matter the levels of serotonin in your brain, when you were born or where you are from, we all share the same common Lizzo-esque thought. Why are men great til’ they gotta be great?

“Fockin’ Brunswick artists loov. Ye cannae trust them. Let me guess, he needs to forrrrrcus on his creative journey?”

“Something like that” I smile sincerely. A grin amongst the storm.

An elderly man screams for Julie. Again…and again…and again. Nurses flurry around in a blur of blue, ignoring this man and his deteriorating mind. When I say screaming, I mean screaming. Not like in the horror movies, but the kind that I have lately been acquainted with myself. The agonised groan of loss, of pain, of sadness.

This man is essentially non-verbal, I’m told, but begs for Julie all night.

“Julie, where is my Julie? I just want my Julie”

You can’t help but cry. Even the fucking junkies screaming at nurses to up the oxycodone paused to shed a tear for this man. You can’t not when somebody is on the last legs of their life, even more so when they only want their love. Especially because, as I think harder, it becomes abundantly clear that Julie is no longer with us.

He sobs through the night. I join him from 4 beds over.

A clinical setting for the clinically unwell. Expected, yes. Appreciated? The jury’s out.

My room, number 27, is as spiced-up as flour, boasting a repulsive shade of sterile white and design that is either an intentional homage to the PTV logo, or designed by somebody as scattered as I. The key is a cerulean rubber wrist band. Park Hyatt, eat your heart out.

Depression, whilst certainly debilitating at times, has never been my main issue. I have told myself that, given the option by the Gods of Gackery, I would choose apathy and sadness over blinding panic at the drop of a hat.

What I never realised was that my depression, albeit awful, has always been mild. Until it wasn’t anymore.

I don’t know whether it’s my sheer desperation re: looking for “the answer” or having an astrology app that lays idle amongst my folders (solely because it doesn’t always tell me what I want to hear) — but as I laid sore and alone in the creaky ER bed, eavesdropping on whatever decipherable conversation I could pick, the planets made their way to me.

“An impulsive decision has affected the way you attach meaning to the world. There will be a chance opportunity that affects the way you articulate yourself. Now is a good time to listen to what others have to say. Resist cynicism and be courageous.”

Am I courageous? Or simply a lost lamb the fox in my head lives to feast upon? Am I too sweet, or is our world too sour?

I drag my feet along the speckled floor towards what I would soon after discharge refer to as “Partial Freedom” — a small courtyard with a few box planters dotted around (herbs within sewn completely incorrectly) as well as a basketball hoop and mound of singed fake grass. I turn to Mani, my nurse with a raised eyebrow, questioning the cigarette butts covering the ground.

“You’re allowed to smoke here” he says.

“Fuck yeah” I respond.

Making friends here isn’t hard, and, before I know it, I’m sharing a tailor with Gin – an older woman with quaking hands, dress that can only be described as “Costume Box Couture” and wiry hair the colour of a stale gingersnap.

She tells me not to do drugs. I nod thoughtfully as though she has not already reiterated this to me multiple times over the last half an hour.

I know Dad is here before he even enters the room. It’s strange how you can feel your loved ones, even if you’re not entirely sure that they are actually there.

The brave face is wiped off immediately. I run into his arms crying my heart out. He holds me up like when I was a little girl. I spy a student nurse trying to slyly un-fog her enormous glasses.

I can’t carry the weight of my mental illness alone anymore – and I have been trying to for far too long. The heartache, the hunger, the fear of the unknown…I need help. Why didn’t anyone know that before? Why can’t anybody hear me?

Lunch is presented to me, and the second I smell it I search for the closest bin to throw up in. A conglomerate of rubber (apparently but not so aptly named a “ham steak”) and lumpy white sauce sits in front of me whilst I mentally slap myself for not telling the staff I don’t eat pork. I give my little ham steak some silent love, thinking about the piglet it once was. I now really need to find a bin.

Outside (Partial Freedom) is my best friend in this ward. A place to lay, a place to sit and think, a place to be kissed on the face by meth addicts wanting a cigarette. The last part, not so true — and soon I am in a room with two nurses and a psychiatrist asking me if I want to press charges.

I don’t. I know I am too empathetic for my own good, but these people are unwell. The cookers have retained their child-like sense of love and gratitude, and I could never hate anyone for that. In fact, many of them self-admitted. I would soon learn their names and form bonds with them, finding out how their lives of abuse, crime and heavy drugs affected their lives.

One man, we’ll call him Kevin, told me that he has been trying to get into rehab for months, and admits himself back here voluntarily when he wants to drink.

I’m no stranger to alcoholism, and I tell him that, as we speak, my own Mother is currently in rehab. His eyes are kind and understanding with an undeniable tinge of sadness. He tells me he was arrested. Naturally, being the curious soul I am, I ask why.

Not only was Kevin arrested for stealing alcohol, but actually did fucking time for it. From what I gather, that “time” was filled with so much trauma all it made him want to do was reach for the bottle. And I do not blame him.

Let’s talk about Portugal.

Portugal have decriminalised all drugs, and have begun finally treating addiction as an illness as opposed to a choice, a crime, a want. Because that’s what it is. An illness both psychical and psychological. Sometimes even hereditary.

Before I became subject to dependance first hand, it was inbuilt into my head that drugs and constant drinking were, for lack of a better word, “bogan”…and that anyone at the hands of addiction chose to put themselves there.

This was until I was 15 and could not calm down – a panic attack for the ages. I stole Mum’s bottle of Bombay Sapphire and gagged with each sip until I felt the world soften, my breathing return to normal levels and a sense of peace flowering within my mind.

What would follow was almost two years of out of control drinking. I’m not sure that it ever “goes away”, per se, but I was an alcoholic. A teenage alcoholic, nonetheless. I would wake up, feel the fear pulsing through my veins and immediately reach for the 5L cask of red, constantly stocked in our home.

Oh man, it was fun. I would get blind and sing to Joy Division, dance, write, clean, plan trips, cry, laugh, feel interest towards things, plan my one-day life in Melbourne.

I never wanted this feeling to go away, and thus began my own version of “wake and bake”. Wake up, feel awful, drink for at least 12 hours and feel a false love for my life, pass out, repeat. And so the cycle continued.

What they don’t tell you is that alcohol counteracts many antidepressants – and after months upon months of utter alcoholic carnage, I wound up in Bega Hospital at 2am, slashes on my wrist and blood staining my fluffy cream pyjama pants.

I did not have another drink for well over a year.

As I write this, a raven black as ink sits on the arm of a jittery elderly man’s chair, chalky fingers cradling a saliva-drenched rollie. His eyes are equally pigmented and undeniably lifeless. Maybe the “black dog” isn’t the most apt descriptor anymore.