Free The Dark Threads by Jean Davison Page A

difficult, depressing job. I wondered if she had genuinely wanted to help people at the start of her career, only to become hardened and disillusioned over the years. What was this woman really like behind the stern mask? Her apology, if that’s what it was, stunned me and I didn’t know what to say. In my confusion, I mumbled, ‘Well, I’m sorry and I apologise too.’
    I left her office not knowing what I had apologised for.
    Sitting in the day room, I wondered if I should still try to discharge myself, despite Dr Sugden saying I wasn’t to have more ECT. I felt so low I must need help, I thought, though surely not the kind of ‘help’ offered here. But if I discharged myself, what then? Was she asleep or dead, the girl I’d been before, the girl who laughed and cried and loved the springtime? I think she could have made it. But not now. I’d be an invalid, dependent on my parents, and … oh God, am I really so sick? What’s happened to me?
    I was lost in a dark cemetery and too groggy to find my way out, too crushed to motivate myself. As if in some kind of hypnotic trance, I was waiting to be told where to go, what to do. I would stay at the hospital until such time as they decided to discharge me. Overcome with fatigue, I lay down on a grave and slept.

CASE NO. 10826
    There is really no improvement in this case at all, the girl seems abnormally introverted and withdrawn, is no longer interested in things and is lacking in spontaneity. There is emotional flattening and she herself says I have still got confused thoughts about right and wrong and I do not know who or what I am exactly.
    Dr Sugden

CHAPTER SIX
    I WASN ’ T GIVEN ANY more ECT but the heavy drugs treatment continued relentlessly. I, who was once reluctant to take even an aspirin for a headache, now swallowed an assortment of pills three times a day and, despite being almost too sleepy to stand by evening, a sleeping pill each night. From time to time my drugs were changed or given in different combinations though the dulling effects were the same. Pills of all shapes, colours and sizes. Pills with names such as Largactil, Melleril, Haloperidol, Stelazine, Concordin, Mogadon. Pills, pills and more pills. Stupefying drowsiness, dry mouth, shaking body, blurred vision, colossal weight gain, boils like Job’s on my chin, neck and chest. It was heavy-handed drugging to the point of brutality. And they called this help, not punishment.
    Dull, fogged-up, chemically altered brain, don’t give up on me, please. Keep on functioning so that I can think this out and make some kind of sense of it. Lord, I have no strength left to fight any more. I just want to sleep.
    But even while stoned on drugs that made me too tired to think clearly, I always remembered to walk away from the medication trolley with my hands unclenched.
    â€˜These came for you,’ a nurse said, handing me two envelopes when I got back from the OT block one lunchtime. I sat in the day room and opened them. Birthday cards? I’d forgotten.
    â€˜I want to die!’ shrieked Madeline, curling up on the floor into a ball of noisy tears. Two nurses promptly removed her to give her an injection.
    We weren’t supposed to show our feelings like that, and I never did. I was crying and dying inside but I just sat quietly. My tongue felt thick, my head fuzzy and I was trying to understand. Who am I now? My name is Jean. I’m a patient in a mental institution. It’s my birthday today. I’m nineteen years old and I wish I’d never been born.
    On the few occasions when Dr Prior talked to me in the Quiet Room, I continued to beg him to lower my medication, but he insisted that the high dosage of drugs was necessary.
    â€˜Do you still think about religion?’ he asked.
    â€˜Yes,’ I replied sleepily.
    â€˜You do? Oh dear,’ he said, tutting and shaking his head gravely as if thinking about religion was a crime.