Acknowlegements

I should like to thank:

Matildabonaparte
Undergraduate
R J Adams
Girlzoote
paige Turner (I don't recall having a twin sister (?) although I do vaguely remember being pushed around in a twin-buggy! But the other seat was empty!! What can this mean?
Your writing style seems vaguely familiar. Could we have met in another lifetime

Night

I am naked except for a black T-shirt, which is soaking wet. The reason it is wet is that I am standing in the pouring raid, in the middle of Liverpool. I am confused and frightened. It is night-time, and the few people who hurry by take no notice of me. Nevertheless, I am aware of my nakedness. But I don’t know what to do. I think I am on my way to the train-station, but I have left my brief-case at the university. I am afraid to go back to get it, but also afraid to go forward. I feel so vulnerable, and ashamed. How did I come to be in this place – LIKE THIS!

I continue to stand there. Rain plastering my hair; streaming down my face. Dripping off the T-shirt - which seems to have shrunk – onto my exposed genitals and thighs. Running down my legs and onto my bare feet, which are standing in a river of water, cascading down the pavement. Panic sets in. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

With a supreme effort of will, I force myself to wake up. Another nightmare – on the same theme. Of course, I understand the symbolism - I have a Diploma in 'Therapeutic Dreamwork’ – but I can’t stop the nightmares.

Praise the Lord and pass the Prozac

Praise the Lord and pass the Prozac


I am feeling pretty bad tonight. My head is tight – like it is in a vice (Americans read 'vise'). Unpleasant. And I feel shaky. I am not sure I can cope with Christmas.

But the show must go on. It will go on anyway, with or without me.

One of the difficulties with depression (a much over-worked word – couldn’t we find another?) is that it is difficult to tell whether what you are feeling is a natural response to events and situations, or whether it is exaggerated, unrealistic.
A psychiatrist used the analogy of a thermostat which is ‘on the blink’ so to speak: it is over sensitive and reacts alarmingly to quite minor changes in temperature.

I once had a car whose brake-fluid warning light used to suddenly come on after driving a few miles. When I took it to the garage, a mechanic said: oh just ignore it – it's a well known fault with this model!

Am I a model with a ‘well known fault’, which should just be ignored?

Kiss me goodnight, Father Christmas

Kiss me goodnight, Father Christmas


The twelve days of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas
My true love said to me:
I’m leaving you.

So I cancelled the rest and flew to Spain to celebrate.

Only kidding. But as Christmas approaches, panic rises. And I alternate between being ‘down’ and hyper. I used to use alcohol to get through difficult times. I can’t do that now – what with all the medication and stuff.

When I was little, on Christmas Eve, my mother used to fill a pillowcase with all my presents – no wonder it was difficult to get to sleep.
You can see how tense I am becoming, making silly jokes like that.

I wonder if they will let me home for Christmas. I can imagine us all seated round the refectory table: The lesbian, Sydney and pregnant wotsname, the Swedish tart, my brother Hector (he usually turns up – with or without wife) and Cecil (the vicar) – we invite him because his wife goes home to her mother’s for Christmas. I never knew they celebrated Christmas in Bangladesh. Usually Inspector Wetherby drops in, and somebody has to run him home in the squad car.
In the evening we all go down the ‘Jolly Pervert’ for Christmas Quiz Night. It was on such an occasion that I first sampled Anthea’s dumplings – she puts a late supper on for all the regulars.

Actually Christmas in here is quite good: A neurosurgeon performs a frontal lobotomy on the turkey and everyone does a party piece. It could be my chance to get to know nurse Greta better!! Anyway, if I stay, I shall report on the proceedings.

The 'Electrical Room' was quite depressing - which is strange since its main purpose is to cure depression.

What used to be called ‘electroconvulsive therapy’ has now been replaced by ‘electronarcosis’. The drama of the former (what Jean Thuillier called ‘The Convulsion Pantomime’): the rubber straps, the gag, the burly male nurses holding down the twisting, grimacing, threshing patient when the electrodes are applied to his temples – all gone now. With electronarcosis you are slumbering pleasantly, courtesy of a little thiopentone sodium (Pentothol), injected into a vein at the fold of the elbow. A mild formulation of curare is then injected through the same needle. The muscles relax and the body goes slack and limp. It is only then that the electrodes are applied.
The treatment is essentially the same but, as Thuillier says, the addition of a few props makes the all the difference. ‘… the treatment of depression… is no longer a tragic sequence, but rather a diversionary interlude’

Even so, I don’t think I want a dollop of it. And I tell the good doctor that although I believe in the treatment (and I genuinely do because I have talked to people who say their lives have been ‘given back to them’ by wiring them up to the national grid for a few seconds) I would prefer to stick to the tricyclates and the MAOIs – for the time being.

Dr Singh says to me: We’ve been reading those books again, haven’t we! Which is it this time ‘Once few over the cuckoo’s nest’?
You’re a bit out of date, I reply. As a matter of fact it is a book called ‘Ten Years that changed the face of mental illness’ by Jean Thuillier.
Oh, he says, and goes away – presumably to talk to old Foggatty.

Later, Greta came round with the tea trolley. You know, I am beginning to fancy her. Not in the same league as the Swedish tart as far as looks go - but there’s something about a uniform...

Don't ask me: I'm a stranger here myself

‘Prior to the twentieth century, persons suffering from mental illness were thought to be “alienated”, not only from the rest of society but from their own true natures’

(‘The Alienist’ – Caleb Carr)

I have always felt alienated (Perhaps everyone feels the same – they just don’t write about it)

Like I have wandered onto a movie set, and someone has just thrust a script into my hands. Everyone else is a professional – they know what they are doing. I am an untrained amateur – and sooner or later they are going to find me out.

I sit and study the people in here. Are they all alienated?

Take that untidy, shambling figure over there. What strange union created him; what animal lust, what fierce uncontrolled passion. Or was it loving tenderness, two souls uniting in sublime intimacy. Perhaps it was all of these.

(would it help to know, as Laing puts it, whether you were born out of a good fuck – or a bad fuck?)

But that apparition over there: what complex cocktail of blood runs through his veins; what unknown genetic forces combined to twist that double-helix, the DNA code – the blueprint for his life on this planet.

A white-coated figure has gone over to talk to him. But he doesn’t seem to be listening; he is lost in some reverie of his own…


Someone is tugging at my arm. Oh, it’s doctor Singh. How long has he been here. I didn’t notice him walk up to me… I must have been lost in thought.

This too will pass

This too will pass -
Said my brother, in Madras,
As he shovelled down a plate of curried prawns.
And you know, the guy was right –
In the middle of the night
He passed enough to fertilize two lawns.


I find people generally unsatisfactory – especially relatives. Take my brother Hector, for example. Actually I think he is only my half-brother –
but that is another story.

He is nothing like me: he is boorish, insensitive and hopeless at relationships.

Readers of these chronicles will recall that he came to stay for a few days, and had it off with the Swedish tart. Talk about abusing hospitality!

Anyway, he has sent me a postcard (the lesbian must have told him I was in here) and he says he is going to come and see me. He must want something. Well he needn’t bother.

I penned that little piece of doggerel verse after an unpleasant incident just before we left India. (My father moved us all out there after the scandal) I include it here only to indicate the sort of person my brother turned out to be.

Oh – I have just looked at that ‘Sisters Under The Duvet’ website! This is frightful! I must see if I can get an injunction to stop her.

The days go skipping by
Like children
On their way home from school

All too soon
They will grow into years
And leave
Without waving goodbye

The coin has many sides

Yes/No? Either/Or? Black/White? Good/Bad? Right/Wrong?

No, no, no.

Why should there be only two alternatives? We box ourselves in with this restrictive habit of thinking.

“There are two sides to every story” – Wrong! There are MANY sides to every story.

Do you envy those who see only in black and white? Decisions are easy for them. But they miss so much.

True, they will never end up in this place. This place is for those who see an infinity of meanings in “good morning”: Is the morning REALLY good? Good for who? You? Me? The human race? And anyway, what is “good”? That which is good for you might not be good for me. Are you saying the morning IS good? Or are you wishing that I have a good morning? In the latter case, why restrict your good wishes to the first part of the day – what about the afternoon? Don’t you CARE what sort of an afternoon I have?

Yes, you can go too far the other way. Perhaps that is what the “black/white” lot are afraid of: afraid to explore meaning; afraid to open up their minds to “dangerous” ideas, their hearts to “dangerous” emotions; afraid of tipping over the edge, into madness.

But when you ARE mad, there is nothing to be afraid of. The mind has already burst its boundaries; it can fly.

Dory Previn expresses something of what I mean:

"I have flown to star-stained heights
On bent and battered wings"

hdyiuiwmmmsiibb

Confusion grows. Each question spawns more questions. “Answers” turn out to be mirages, shimmering on the horizon of the mind, in the heat of the brain. They disappear as you approach them.