Bye bye 2013

Tuesday, 31th of December 2013. 12.53. Within 11 hours and a few minutes we say goodbye to a year which has been most unfortunate for me in some aspects, and fortunate in others. You’ll probably be up to date of my current situation – which is not that great – but there have been better times. I’ve made new friends. I finally graduated. I did some great extra-curricular courses during my last year as a student. I met kind-hearted people, or maintained the friendship with some other warm-hearted friends.

On the other hand, I lost my feathered friend, Chico, may he rest in peace. That was difficult. We nearly lost our grandma, who survived not one but three urgent and critical operations. The bond between me and my sister and brother-in-law became even more frozen than before. And, worst of all, I’m back in a psychiatric hospital for a longer period of time. I’m far away from my family, and tomorrow is New Year’s Day. I’ll be here, probably the day will pass by as any other day here at the ward, but it hurts, you know, it hurts, being far away from family and friends.

I think my greatest achievement by far this year was getting my Master’s degree Cum Laude. I was so proud, as were my parents. It’s a pity that not everyone I’d hoped for joined in the celebrations, but nearly all my best friends were at the drink, and that’s what counts. You know who you are :)

I also got to know some new friends and I’m glad I met them and that they support me, even in the difficult situation I’m in now. I appreciate it, I truly appreciate it, because I can’t count on my family to visit me now. Also during classes, I got to know new friends, which was awesome, especially those people I met at the Portuguese classes – teachers included. Although I don’t maintain contact with most of them anymore, there are still a few of them on my Facebook, and of course there’s my Brazilian Bro ;) Some people always stay in your heart, no matter how far or how close they are…

And then there was this difficult day: April 14^th, the day Chico died. He died on a Sunday morning, in my hands, in my bed, quite peacefully. We’d been together for 7 and a half years. I miss him so very much. I’m crying right now, because he was a truly loyal and fantastic friend. Miss you, buddy… Hope everything’s okay there up in budgy-heaven…

10 days later, however, a new budgy came into my life. That’s 8 months ago now, and although he’s still so young, he has to endure my absence due to the fact that I’m admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Now I have to cry even more… I wish we could be together tonight, then I had at least some sort of family close by. But no, it will be just me, myself and I. My mom just announced that she probably won’t be calling when the clock strikes 12. I don’t even know if I could do that myself, but I miss my family so very much. It’s been 11 weeks that I saw them for the last time. I hope Timo survives the firework, for there's always a lot of noise and animals get scared...

Furthermore, I’m grateful for all those years at Leiden University. I’ve learnt a lot, I’ve met such thorough and sympathetic professors and one of the best courses was definitely the Portuguese course I did this year. I enjoyed it so much that, if I were able to study, to concentrate, I’d be studying and improving my Portuguese right now. I definitely want to go to Brazil, if not in 2014, then later, we’ll see, preferably with my Brazilian Bro.

I’m feeling so sad right now, you can’t imagine. And there are still (too) many hours to go. I’m so afraid I’ll lose control like last week and end up in the isolation cell. Whenever these voices take over, they are so strong… My psychiatrist won’t support me when it comes to meds, which is, in my humble opinion, the reason why I’m still nowhere when it comes to getting and feeling better.

This year has kind of exhausted me. First, there was the MA thesis, which cost a lot of work, energy and perseverance. It hasn’t always been easy. Then my grandma got very ill, and at the same time my mom had to undergo a complicated back surgery. I tried to keep up with everything, I tried to do the household, to go to the hospital to see my grandma every day, to write my thesis and to concentrate on umpteen other things I had to do to finish university. I also had a relatively short period in which I wasn’t feeling too well when it comes to my mental health, and then Chico died… I think 2013 was definitely a bad year, although I can’t ignore the beautiful aspects named earlier. I do hope that 2014 will bring more peace, not only in my head where the voices are still present, but also in my family, in my life generally speaking and in the world.

Make the best of it, people, not only tonight when practically everybody is celebrating, but also for the rest of the year. Do something you’ve never done before. Finish that bloody thesis. Travel to someplace you’d never expected to go. Just enjoy. And for all those who are ill – including you, my blue friend – keep your heads up. Together we can do it. Together we can make it. Love you all…

Inverted freedom

Freedom means you can be, walk and do what or wherever you want. The opposite of freedom is un-freedom, although this word doesn’t actually exist according to the English dictionary, I think. Anyway, you could change it in imprisonment, confinement, or lock-up. Still, I prefer un-freedom.

I lost my freedom some 7 weeks ago. First I got an IBS (‘In Bewaring Stelling’), then, last week, I got an RM (‘Rechterlijke Machtiging’), which means that they can keep me here at the clinic for a maximum of 6 months. I’m not planning to stay that long, but until now, no improvement has been made. It have been hectic times: isolation cell, violence, impulsiveness, fighting, refusing to eat or drink… It hasn’t been easy so far. Today I got – for the second time – de-separated, which means that tonight, if everything goes well, I can sleep in a normal bed in my room at the closed ward.

When and if I behave better – that is, when I don’t end up in the isolation cell again – I’ll get certain freedoms, like going for a walk under a nurse’s supervision and later even alone. The hard thing now is that I’m scared. I’m afraid to go outside. I still want to escape from this ward, but I wouldn’t know what to do outside. All the stimuli, it would be too much. So escaping doesn’t have any sense right now.

In fact, yesterday, I wanted to sit on the balcony. I couldn’t keep it up for 5 lousy minutes. Too many stimuli, I guess. I got scared, I got angry because I got scared and I decided to go back inside. We have an inside garden that belongs to the ward. Many people go smoking there. It’s not that big, so you can’t play ball or something like that. The grass is even artificial. Still, I want to be able to sit in that garden without having the slightest notice of fear, otherwise, how the heck am I going to be able to go outside??

This is what I call inverted freedom. One day, they’ll give me the freedom to go outside, and I will refuse, that is, if things keep going like this. If I’m already afraid at the balcony and the garden is as attractive as mouldy cheese, I don’t see any good coming from this. I’m afraid some syndrome that will certainly have a name - which I don’t know - is taking place right here, right now, namely that after a long period of un-freedom or confinement, people get afraid of freedom, even when this is offered to them.

It’s a bit the same as what is happening right now. Call it psychosis, call it a fantasy world, but I’m sometimes in it, and then I’m pretty scared because it isn’t a beautiful fantasy world, but when I get out of it, I reconsider my options and observe that there’s nothing left but this boring closed ward of the hospital. Let me tell you about the fantasy world. It’s not a beautiful story, so consider yourself warned. It’s a story that starts with a riot here at the ward. The Snake Princess and the other three voices agreed that I have to be the leader of the riot. It starts in the Comfort Room: throwing chairs, shattering glass. Then the nurses’ office: broken glass everywhere, papers everywhere, chairs and computers destructed. As all the patients join in, we can easily take the nurses hostage. We put them all in line in the kitchen, hands behind their back. As we don’t have weapons, we’ll have to do with brute force. Then the leaders, including me, put everything on fire and we flee to the ward on the other side of the building, also a closed ward, to free our fellow patients over there. We act in the same way. As we have the keys from the nurses from our ward, we can get in easily. We set all the patients free and keep the nurses hostage. Then we set everything on fire. And then we flee. Unfortunately, the police have been warned, so we can’t really escape. It ends up in a bloodbath, many of us dead. None of the hostages survives the fire.

 

This is the fantasy world I live in right now, with the slight alteration that I won’t be the leader, however hard the voices are pushing me. Still, there are a lot of others who could be leaders. I’m afraid this will happen. I’m afraid that I’ll be considered a traitor because I put this on my blog. I’m afraid they’ll shoot me. Strange, isn’t it, wanting to die, but not wanting to be shot…

One day, I’ll get back my freedom. When is still the big question. I’ll first have to adapt to the garden, to the balcony, and only then to the outside, which means T-I-M-E, time I don’t have. I wanna get out of here as soon as possible!

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…