Make me or break me

The voices can make me or break me. This hospital can make me or break me. You can make me or break me. And in fact you’re doing a good job, all of you, in the sense of breaking me, that is. 

I’m back at level zero when it comes to the isolation room. Yesterday, everything went from bad to worse. I lost control over the voices, my percentages decreased from 40% to 35% to 20% to 15%. And then I went completely insane. Mad as hell, I went to the door – you know, the one which is always locked exclusively that one time when I accomplished to run away. Of course it was locked and I lost my nerve, and I think the four nurses around me lost their nerves too because they asked me to accompany them to the isolation room, nice and friendly. I wasn’t so nice and friendly, though. And in the isolation room, it came to a struggle which I lost – of course. So they broke me, because I was back to zero. Now I have half an hour, three times a day. If everything goes well, tomorrow that will be an hour.

But then there are the voices. Also they have recently been able to break me. They have increased exponentially, from 2 to 4 in barely 3 weeks’ time. Yesterday, after they put me in the isolation room, I lost complete control and the voices took over. I was so damned afraid, I banged on the walls, I shouted the nurses’ names and shouted for help… Finally, after what seemed like hours, someone came, but it took a long time.

As you may notice, this blog is also written in parts, as I’m only enjoying short periods of free time out of the isolation room. So now I can continue my story, actually not so very differently from what I last wrote, which means, in the same flow. I just came out of the isolation room, dead-frightened, because half an hour ago, I saw blood streaming from the walls. It came gushing out of the walls! I’m not kidding. However, I knew somehow it couldn’t be REAL real because as someone who has cut herself regularly, I know that with blood comes a certain smell, and that smell wasn’t there. Still, I was terrified, called for the nurses, but it seemed like hours before they came. It also took a while before I was calmed down completely and even longer before I was convinced that there was no longer pouring blood from the walls, but that’s ok. I’m back into reality, although I don’t know when the next hallucination is coming up, but they – as in ‘the voices’ – promised it would be something with snakes. I hope nothing out of the ordinary will happen tonight, I want to have a normal night’s sleep.

Well, it seems that this post will never have an ending. Now it’s December 26^th  and I started this on December 16^th and, guess what, I’m back in the isolation cell. No, not when I’m writing this of course, but in general. I have 1.5 hours out of it. It went all wrong again, and I’m in serious doubt whether I’m living more in the here and now – call it reality – or in my own dissociated world. You see, two days ago I ended up in the isolation cell after an action of aggression. I pulled some stuff off the wall, and it seems that more than one nurse had given me more than one warning, but… Debz thought it was a sick joke that at once they took her and dragged her to the isolation room… It wasn’t. I’ve been talking with the two nurses concerned, and I can only say that I’m happy for their openness and for their collaboration to think about how we could handle this were it to happen again.

Anyway, now I know how big my trauma of the isolation cell and the procedure an sich is. I couldn’t help it, but I screamed and I screamed. I couldn’t do anything else but screaming, you know. I felt helpless, hopeless, lost and forgotten. I screamed until I almost had no voice left. Now, I’m calm again, not that high in percentages, but more or less steady. Now I realise how much other people, certain situations and misunderstandings can break me…

What about making me? Couldn’t they do a small effort to make me, so to say? I mean, I’ve asked about individual sports, I’ve asked about individual creative therapy, both two weeks ago. Until now, still no answer on the question if there is such a possibility. In those two days I was in my room and out of the isolation cell, I made a drawing about my emotions. I want to relearn how to go outside. Sounds weird? Well, I can tell you this: I’m afraid to go outside. When I look out of the windows, I see a world that is strange to me. An unknown and untrustworthy world, although I recognise the buildings, the environment. So breaking out of this ward is not really on the top of my list anymore, were it not for the voices. They are clear: “Escape, get the train to Zwolle, stay there with some friends and wait for further instructions”,  or so says the Snake Princess.

What about the other voices? Well, I’m afraid that they only can break me. They have no intention whatsoever to help me build up a new life. It’s all about destruction, aggression and violence. They just want me to kill myself, but, preferably, first some other people too. Where is this peaceful Debz, that Debz that wouldn’t hurt a fly? I just can’t remember where I lost her. She’s changed so much, or she’s dead, or she’s badly hurt… I don’t know. I truly hope to find her back.

You know, sometimes I have this thing inside of me that wants to fight, even with competitors who far outreach my limits. I want to be punished, I want to lose the fight, or so it seems. I always think during a separation that I can win from the five or six people sitting and lying on me. Unfortunately, it has never turned out my way, but you might already have guessed that. It’s something like… revenge… Sweet revenge – beautiful title by the way for an upcoming blog – one day for all that has been done wrong to me. All the bullying at school, all the lack of emotional balance in my life, all the separations in psychiatric hospitals… It’s like I want to win, for once and for all, and maybe then that malevolent spirit will leave my body, leave my brain.

So, make me or break me. It’s up to you. Your personality can make me or break me. If you’re being nice to me, you can make me, if you’re ignoring me or treating me like scum, you’re breaking me. Think about it while you still can…