I find myself thinking of Fred from when I was at university eleven years ago. I was nineteen, fresh out of high school and soaking up all the different clubs the university had where I could finally meet my people. I found The Greens Club table and got talking with a tall, lanky guy with blond hair. It was the first time I had a real conversation. A conversation about the environment. A conversation about the state of the world. It was the first time I met someone who cared about the same things as me, something which I was bullied for in high school. Fred was thirty. He was studying business and wanted to open an organic healthfood store. He asked if he could give me a hug after our conversation. We hugged. I hoped I would see him again.

I joined The Greens club and started going to meetings. It turned out Fred lived ten minutes from me, so we started carpooling. When he’d drop me home we’d sit in his car in my driveway talking for over an hour. Then he started calling me and we’d hang out outside of the club. Fred drove me to the top of the mountain and we walked through the forest to some boulders at the very top. As a naïve, undiagnosed autistic and somebody who didn’t really know what sexual attraction was, for me the day was nothing more than a picnic with a new friend. But Fred had other ideas. Suddenly he started making out with me on the rocks. It felt like he was trying to consume my mouth. I didn’t know what to do or say.

“I don’t feel anything,” I finally said.

“How about this,” he said, and he kissed me again.

Your first kiss is meant to be a special, beautiful moment. For me, it was animalistic and I hated every bit of it.

We walked back holding hands. Fred had decided I was his new girlfriend. As a shy, unassertive teenager I didn’t know how to tell him his feelings were not shared. I did feel a connection with him, but it was not sexual. It was more intellectual.

I avoided Fred after the picnic. I caught up with another male friend. We went to the park next to uni, but then we awkwardly ran into Fred. I didn’t know how to act around him. After we parted ways I got a text from Fred. “Looks like our nice picnic wasn’t so nice afterall” he wrote. I cried as my friend and I sat under a large tree. I was just so overwhelmed and confused and hated upsetting people.

Fred and I patched things up. But it became apparent that Fred was on a quest. He wouldn’t accept that I had no feelings for him. He wanted me. All of me. He thought he could change me. In the car he’d put his hand on my thigh while driving. In my driveway he’d caress my legs, feeling my boxing shorts I’d wear underneath my skirt, a strange quirk of mine.

“You’d be more beautiful if you shaved,” he told me. “Still beautiful, though.”

When I went to his house we’d sit together on his bed and he’d put on a video about the 9/11 conspiracy. He’s then start touching me.

“You’re so stiff,” he’d tell me.

“What do you expect?” I snapped. “You’re hitting on an asexual.”

He sat me on his knee and told me our friendship was important to him and he would accept just being friends. But then the advances would begin again. Sometimes he’d smack my bottom, or tell me he wished he could have sex with me or lick my vagina. When I said I didn’t want to hold hands with him, he made me feel like that was a ridiculous request.

“We can’t even hold hands?” he aggressively responded.

We went to parks at night, just the two of us. One time he brought alcohol, probably hoping I would have sex with him if I was drunk.

On the way back from one Greens event, I told him I just wanted to go straight home. He stopped at a park to “talk” and then wanted to get into the back seat together.

In the end I lost faith that Fred would ever accept me for who I was: a non-binary neurosparkly unicorn who is on the asexual spectrum and mostly interested in girls. He wanted to change me. He violated me, then we’d make up. Sometimes he’d buy me gifts. He’d reel me in again and then the same pattern would continue. The resentment built up and, finally, I decided to cut all ties with him. I stopped carpooling with him, and caught the train home instead. As I left one Greens meeting with my friend he started shouting at me. I cried, because we had become close and I was so confused about everything. One day he decided to follow me back on the train so he could confront me. Thankfully I had another member with me most of the way home, and then my mum was waiting at the other end to pick me up. She was surprised to see me come out of the subway with Fred.

“Can we just have a few minutes?” Fred begged.

We moved away, but still within sight of my mum. Fred let off some steam. Mum told me afterwards it looked like he was towering over me and wanted to hit me. It wouldn’t have been the first time. A man bumped into Fred at the train station once and Fred beat him up. Fred then had to go to court.

The Greens Club broke apart. I stopped wanting to go to events. I arrived late to one, and missed our guest. The club was extremely angry at me for missing it. I apologised over email, addressing the email to the main organiser of the club who seemed most upset at me, and “others”. I think Fred was angry that I had not addressed it to him personally too, including him in “others” as though he was not special. I received an angry email back from Fred. He blamed me for everything. He told me I was messed up, treated him like shit, should see a psychologist, but that he will always love me.

I did end up seeing a psychologist. Fred was the catalyst. My psychologist was the first person who really took an interest in my life. She was the first person I told my story to, starting in childhood. What a perfect world she weaved for me, like being in a field of flowers. A safe, beautiful place where I was the victim, not the bully. Where I was not the horrible person Fred made me out to be. Where I was loved unconditionally, where I could crumble and not have to feel the crushing weight of shame bearing down on me. I loved having a pretend bestie, even if she was being paid to support me. If she wasn’t my therapist I would have dated her. But I couldn’t keep seeing her forever. I grieved long before the day came when we had to say goodbye. That depression I felt in high school came back, and it came back with a vengeance. I’d self-injure after each appointment. I could no longer study full time. I withdrew from everyone in my life. I could barely work, and ended up on social security. I swallowed many different pills and tried many different therapies, none which could even scrape the surface of my depression. This depression is with me to this day. Where would I be if I had never met Fred and started seeing a psychologist? Would I still be sitting here in a psychiatric hospital contemplating my suicide?

I don’t know why I still think about Fred. I think it is because that was the last time I was well. Or, better than I have been the last eleven years at least. I am not staying far from the university we met at either. I guess I just miss the days when I had things to get up for. When I got out and about more. I feel alone, and Fred makes me feel less alone as we valued similar things and had a similar outlook. He was the one who introduced me to New Dawn and Nexus, alternative magazines. I know Fred would never have got the vaccine either. I want to see Fred again. I even tried emailing him once but his email no longer works. I can not go back the way I came. I cannot get back what I’ve lost, but I don’t know the way forward either. In some ways it feels like my life has been on standstill all these years. Tonight I don’t feel myself. Or rather, I feel DIFFERENT within myself. Reckless. Rebellious. I want to do things that I never used to like. I want to live the youth that was stolen from me. Out of the blue I texted my gay friend who also went to The Greens club with me ten years ago. I told him I am in a psych hospital, that I missed our uni days. I asked him to take me to a gay club.

Sleep-

It has been hard finding a quiet room in this hospital. There only seems to be one ward that is quiet enough for me, but they usually keep this ward for people doing a certain program. For now I am stuck in a room in the main thoroughfare. I wake up to the cleaners vacuuming the floor, the rattling of people’s meals on wheels, and voices in the hallway. There is also a staff toilet outside my room so I hear the toilet flushing all day. I was thinking of discharging myself as the place was too noisy, but my doctor encouraged me to stay. He said he’d get me a bed in the unit I wanted. Yesterday the staff moved me to another room in the same unit but up the other end of the hallway. We thought it would be quieter (plus I wouldn’t have to share a bathroom with some random patient), but it was even worse. It was closer to the communal area where patients sit around in big groups talking loudly, laughing, yahooing and carrying on. It was also a smaller room. I felt suffocated. I could hear patients near me playing music and I felt too close to the communal area. I hate the patients in private hospitals even more than those in public hospitals because they act like they are on holidays or on school camp. Their issues are not as socially debilitating as mine. They talk on the phone a lot (which I can hear in my bedroom) and are rowdy. The place started to feel like school all over again, with people hanging out in big groups and their stupid timetable of “therapy” classes. I missed my old room, and felt sad when I’d automatically walk that way then realised I had a new room. I ended up having a melt down, crying and talking about how I want to end it all. I ended up being moved downstairs to the “Intensive Care Unit”, the place they put those patients at greatest risk of injuring themselves. It actually worked in my favour as the unit was a lot quieter. Here were people who were actually unwell so they weren’t living it up acting like they’re in a resort. I had a benzo blast that night, taking 2mg of Lorazepam, 20mg of Temazapam, and 10mg of Diazepam, plus my usual 5mg of Olanzapine. I just felt so awful I wanted to be knocked unconscious. It didn’t take me long to fall asleep and it was like being dead, until I was woken at 9am. I don’t remember having any dreams. I didn’t wake up in the night. I don’t remember being disturbed by any nurses checking on me with flashlights. Just blissful nothingness. I can’t remember the last time I slept so well. That morning I’d calmed down a lot and was moved back to my original room outside the staff toilet. They had given it to another patient but they moved that patient to a different room so I could move back in there, which was nice.