The First Time

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The first time stays with you; cemented in the crevices of your mind and plastered to the backs of your eyelids. Sometimes it's beneath darker shadows, or obscured with bright rays of sunlight. But it's always there. 

The click of the doors locking reverberated throughout the building in time with the beating of my heart. That click continues its cursed echo in my mind even today. 

You never forget the first time.  

~

It was 2007, I was 18 years old, and my first involuntary treatment order was enforced (Mental Health Act 2000) . Shame cloaked me and claustrophobia choked the air from my lungs as I realised I was, for lack of a better word, imprisoned; trapped against my will. All I wanted was to go home, but where was home?  I no longer knew.

~

"Bipolar robs you of that which is you. It can take from you the very core of your being and replace it with something that is completely opposite of who and what you truly are. Because my bipolar went untreated for so long, I spent many years looking in the mirror and seeing a person I did not recognise or understand. Not only did bipolar rob me of my sanity, but it robbed me of my ability to see beyond the space it dictated me to look. I no longer could tell reality from fantasy, and I walked in a world no longer my own." (Reyans 2012)

~

The High Dependency Unit (HDU): port of call to the patients at highest risk of suicide, the flight risks, and the least stable. Me; that was me. Nurses stripped me of my belt, my jewellery, and my dignity. For the first time in my life, it became real. I was sick. The bipolar diagnosis that I received in childhood was correct. And it hadn't gone away just because I'd denied its existence, and ceased treatment. Ignorance is not bliss.

HDU was a terrifying experience. I rarely left my bed for an entire week, so low had my depression plunged me. I didn't shower; I didn't eat. Nurses brought me orange juice to take my medications with and I when I wasn't taking my meds, I slept like the dead.  

~

For the most part, psychiatric hospitals aren't like they are portrayed in movies and television shows. HDU and the solitary confinement rooms located within it, however, are exceptions to this rule. On either of the general wards, patients rarely wail like banshees, are they found rocking in straight jackets. In reality, mental health patients are simply broken souls; everyday humans with troubled minds and often traumatic pasts. The ones who judge would do well to consider how differently they might feel, should their own children struggle with mental illness at some point in their lives. None are immune. All the love in the world and all the parenting books you can buy will not correct a chemical imbalance in the brain without medical intervention. The more you shame a child (or adult) and encourage their battles to be swept under the rug to save face, the more weight is added to already heavily burdened shoulders. I beg you, do not do this to your children. End the stigma; be their voice and their champion.

~  

Being admitted into the mental health system with my surname was like diving into shark infested waters while dripping blood. The legend of my father was folklore to patients, nurses, and psychiatrists alike. The ghost of him walked those halls and his name rolled off tongues almost daily. 

It forced me to confront the demons of my past and I needed that first-hand insight. It allowed me to see things from a perspective I may never have had the privilege of acknowledging, had I not found myself in a similar predicament to my father. Nevertheless, I was blessed in a way he was not. I was granted the opportunity to confront my illness and actively take accountability, before I had innocent children to unwittingly expose to the ruthlessness that is untreated bipolar disorder.
  
Treatment is everything when children are involved. It is not negotiable. You take your damn medication and you attend all of the specialist appointments, whether they are convenient or not. If you cannot do it for you, do it for your children. They need us well.

~

You never forget the first time. The sadness; the emptiness. Your soul is stripped bare in the name of help. Help which you are usually blind to in terms of benefit. But I refuse to spend another second locked in torment. This is my story, ugly parts and all.  

It is true, I feel the memory of my first psychiatric hospitalisation tangibly. But that is all it is now—a memory; the recollection of a lost little girl on the first step to finding herself, and the whisper of a young woman, stumbling blindly through life, unaware that some day she would tell the world about these struggles.  

I'm still mad, you're probably mad too, we're all definitely mad in my family. This is our Wonderland, no longer haunted by the ghosts of its past. Each ghost has a story to tell and all stories are important. ❤





References:


Mental Health Act. (2000).  Queensland Government Legislation. Retrieved from https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/pdf/inforce/2010-07-01/act-2000-016.


Reyans, A. (2012). Letters From a Bipolar Mother: Chronicles of a Fractured Life. Alyreyans Press.



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