Live life the hard way

As I received so many positive and heartwarming reactions on my earlier posts that fall in the category "Borderline and me", I decided to open up once more about a topic that still, after all these years, affects me very deeply. It seems that you, dear reader, appreciate that openness, and I'm glad that people can get something positive out of it, no matter how bad it was then, in those horrible days... Today's topic: life in a psychiatric ward, and how easy it is to spend the rest of your life there instead of living your life the hard way...

As some of you may remember from an earlier post, I'm reading the entire Paulo Coelho collection and at the moment I'm finishing "Veronika decides to die". It's about a young woman who wanted to commit suicide, but it didn't work out as she had wanted - she'd taken an overdose but they found her too early - and now she is in a mental institution and has to cope with her life until she dies. Still, she doesn't want to die anymore, but because of the overdose she's taken, she's going to die anyway, albeit very slowly. 

I've been in quite a few psychiatric hospitals myself, in Belgium as well as in the Netherlands, and although every clinic is different, you always encounter the same kind of people, and if you were not depressed already, you'll become depressed after spending a few days in the clinic, not only because of the people, but also because every ward is kind of cheerless. Last February, I was once again admitted to a clinic in the Netherlands, and although - in my humble opinion - life in a psychiatric ward is better in the Netherlands than in Belgium, I'm so glad that I don't need it anymore. I'm better off at home. Still, sometimes it really is necessary for people to get the support of therapists and nurses, but I think it's better to limit the amount of time people spend in such a clinic. My psychiatrist was right when he wanted me out of there a.s.a.p. It's just that it's so easy to get used to life in a clinic. You don't even notice it yourself, but slowly, very slowly, you become a kind of robot: you wake up in the morning, have breakfast, start the day with the group you belong to, and then you start the program. You have lunch at a certain time, you have dinner at a certain time, you go to bed at a certain time... It's just that - for some reason - you feel safe. You are there with people who have similar experiences, similar feelings... And for some people - but luckily not all of them - life at the clinic is like a holiday: they get their food, have a bed, can go to the gym... They prefer not to live their life the hard way. I, however, made a different choice: I chose to look Life straight into its face!

I was 17 when I was admitted for the first time at a psychiatric hospital. It was not that bad, until I got admitted to a special clinic for youth psychiatry. There, all hell broke loose. Every time that I cut myself - which was like at least once a day - I had to spend three hours in the isolation cell, as a kind of punishment. I didn't agree with this policy of psychiatrist X, so I fought as if it were a matter of life and death. My reward for fighting for my right was the following: they fastened me on the bed in the isolation cell, and I was bound at my waist, hands and feet. I couldn't move and honestly, it hurt. I shed tears, and I cried for my mom, I cried for God, but no one came. I was left all alone and had to spend the entire day there. Sometimes I also had to spend the night there. Once an hour they came to look if I was still fastened to the bed, because the first few times, I was able to loosen the straps. When they found out, they fastened my wrists and ankles even more tightly. They also drugged me, but after a while I refused to take the meds they offered me, because they made me feel extremely drowsy. That's when I started receiving the injections, and I felt even more drowsy. But I was quite stubborn and fought to overcome the drowsyness. However, it didn't work out. I started counting the times they got to me like that - meaning: isolation cell with fixation - but lost count after 40 times. There was no use in counting anymore. 

It's quite painful to write down these memories, even after more than 10 years have passed since I ended up in an isolation cell for the last time. Since I've been living in the Netherlands, I haven't seen the interior of an isolation cell anymore. That's quite an achievement actually, because my behaviour hadn't changed that much in the beginning. Now, of course, I'm completely different. I haven't cut myself in over 4 years. But I can guarantee you, the nightmares of isolation cells keep coming back every once in a while. Also, when I thought I was cleverer than psychiatrist X and her team, I ran away from the clinic a few times. Still, I didn't know the environment very well, and I got easily lost. They came after me, or informed the police, and they eventually found me. Then the police captured me, and I once begged a police officer to let me go. I told him about my horrible experiences in the isolation cell. He told me it was my own fault and that I had to accept the consequences of my irrational behaviour. That's how things went back then. All the endless times I tried to run away from the clinic, all those times I dared Faith to kill me when I crossed the motorway close to the clinic... They come back at me now, and it all touches me very deeply. 


The strange thing is that, after a while, I got kind of used to the separations. I still fought back when they came with 6 full-grown men to catch me and put me in the isolation cell - with straps - but somehow I thought it was indeed my own fault. I thought that I deserved to be punished, for I was a bad person. I was completely brainwashed by psychiatrist X and her team. I now condemn the thoughts I had back then. I thought I was a bad person and that it was God Himself who was punishing me. I thought He acted by the hands of psychiatrist X. Now I know that I was far from right. I once asked one of the Dutch nurses that helped to save me and become a christian once again where God was when I was crying and yelling his name in the isolation cell. She told me the most beautiful thing I've ever heard about God. She said that He was sitting right next to my bed, and that He was crying along with me, for my pain also was His pain... 

Now I reminisce and I see that God was the one that was with me all the time. He gave me the strength to stop this ugly behaviour of cutting myself. He also was the one that opened my eyes: I'm not a psychiatric patient, no! I'm still receiving treatment, and I still have to take my meds on a daily basis, but this illness is not who I am. The person that cut herself died a couple of years ago. I'm a whole new person. I still struggle with my emotions, I still have to fight sometimes to avoid that I fall back, but I'm not alone in this, not anymore. In fact, I've never been alone, but only now I can see it, I can feel it, I can understand it. 

I'll never be able to forget what pyschiatrist X and her team did to me. Still, not all of them were bad. One nurse was so sweet that, if she was working while I was in the isolation cell, she brought me my teddy bear. She knew that I was horrified by everything that happened to me, but she couldn't go against the decisions of psychiatrist X, who was just too powerful. However, that nurse had a very human side in her, and she did have good intentions with me. I'm still thankful for everything that she did, but I can't justify each and every thing they did to me as a team, because they took away my youth, they took away my innocence by isolating and fixating me. A part in me has died because of this, a very shy, vulnerable part. It's really exceptional that I'm writing about these horrible experiences. I just hope that as for today, they don't do that anymore, but I'm afraid that right now, somewhere in this world, someone is suffering just like I suffered back then: in an isolation cell, fastened on the bed, crying, yelling... Afraid, angry, no, furious! And especially, helpless, and so alone, so alone...