hsphaven

The other day I texted my friend to ask if her beach house was free for me to stay in again. This place has been my refuge. It is where I fled when my mental health team put a compulsory hospital order on me a few years ago because they thought I was manic and psychotic. I spent five weeks there and managed to heal without any medical intervention. I loved having space to myself where I didn’t have to say hello to anyone when I came in the door and could have a bath in the middle of the night without worrying about waking anyone. I loved wandering down to the beach which was at the end of the gravel road. I often had the beach all to myself. There was a bay that I liked to swim in as it was more sheltered. The place felt like a dream. In the beach house was the Footsteps poem and I truly felt that angels were looking out for me during my stay. I caught a taxi to the shops which were ten minutes away. There was a café which did great vegan pies, and a vintage clothing shop run by some kind locals who gave me a lift back to my house one day as I didn’t have a car. There was a trampoline in the back yard and over the fence was a vacant block of land which gave the place a country feel. I frequently saw rabbits, chickens and kangaroos. There wasn’t a lot of traffic as it was a regional area. I went back to the beach house again, but had a break down as the neighbour was making a lot of building noise. Still, the place had a lot of fond memories for me, and I have been wanting to go back and possibly live there as my friend rarely used it. But my friend told me that her daughter and daughter’s boyfriend are now living there permanently. Hearing this news, my world broke in two. This place was my escape and my refuge. I was devastated, and angry that some people are so privileged in life. Her daughter had been given a house by the sea and also has a partner, something which I have wanted for a long time but find myself unable to fulfil as I don’t tend to get those feelings for anyone. I’m lonely but at the same time I’m not able to let people get close to me. People have hurt me so much and now I am unable to relax around people. I am 31 and have never had a partner.

I had already been struggling. I am tormented by a buzzing sensation on my head which started years ago when I was given a drug called Effexor. My pulse pounds since my overdose months ago. Then there is my relentless depression, anxiety and sleep issues. I was with my disability worker when I received the news about the beach house and suddenly I collapsed into suicidal despair. I felt like sitting in my car in the garage when I got home and hoping the carbon monoxide would kill me.

My disability worker took me to the hospital. I agreed to go, but I was incredibly conflicted about it given all the trauma I’ve experienced from the mental health system. It was the end of my disability worker’s shift and he told the nurse in the waiting room that he had to go. He wanted to make sure they were going to watch me as he didn’t want to be liable if something happened to me. They said they would move me to a more visible spot when one became available, and in the meantime they would keep an eye on me. If I were to leave then action would be taken. My disability worker said I was in this now, but he though it was better than going home and following through which my suicide plan which he didn’t think would work anyway, leaving me even more fucked up and having to see more neurologists. He said the nurse was asking about the specifics of my plan and it sounded like there was more required to kill me than just leaving the engine running.

About ten minutes after my disability worker left, I walked out. I climbed up the mountain to a secluded side street and called for a taxi to take me to my friend’s place which was an hour’s away. I had seen my friend a few days ago when he was suicidal, and managed to pull him out of this dark place. I knew he understood, but I also didn’t want to drag him back down just after I’d picked him up. I had to wait about an hour for the taxi. I sat on the steps in my swimmers, as my disability worker and I had gone to the beach earlier that day. The sun had set and it was cold. Meanwhile the hospital and cops were trying to contact me. I put my phone on flight mode as I was worried they would track me, occasionally switching it back to see how far away the taxi was. Finally the taxi arrived and took me to my friend’s apartment in the city. I have always lived in the suburbs and had never seen a place like this. It was a massive multi story building on a busy road. All these people were crammed in there like sardines living completely isolated lives. I almost had a panic attack in the elevator on the way up, and when I got off I felt like the floor was moving.

My friend and I lived it up that night. The cops were looking for me, so we caught an uber to a police station near where my friend lived and I told them I was safe just to get them off my back. My friend and I then went swimming at St Kilda beach in the middle of the night, even though it’s winter. We then called for an uber to take us back to his place. We waited on the main road shivering and a car blasted their horn at us. Thankfully it didn’t take long for the uber to arrive. The driver was Indian and had Bollywood music playing. We cracked up laughing as it was all so random. I kept expecting to wake and find I had dreamt the whole night. When we climbed out of the uber we left the seats wet. I don’t think the uber driver realised we were wet. We had a shower at my friend’s place. Then just after midnight we went to Lord of the Fries and I blew a whole lot of money on food. I then bought a very expensive tooth brush at the petrol station as it only came in a pack, and we went to McDonalds. My friend bought 3 ice-creams and I bought a salad. We then went back to my friend’s apartment, ate, and finally went to bed. My friend slept on the couch and I slept in the bedroom. I couldn’t sleep in as my friend had to be out of there at 10am as he was moving. He has allergies/sick building syndrome and the apartment made him sick. He’s been homeless the past year, moving from place to place. We laughed and he told me he was going to suck me into his lifestyle. There was a strange appeal, though, about living it rough and nomadic. It was a bit like the life Lana Del Ray, my friend’s favourite singer, sings about in the song Ride.

I didn’t get much sleep at all that night. Just when I started drifting off I felt like I was being electrocuted and I jerked awake again. I felt a bit suffocated in the apartment and overwhelmed by the traffic noise. The apartment and bed sheets also stunk of artificial fragrance. I often get this kind of existential panic as I’m falling asleep. I feel like I’m dying and disintegrating. Often I confront something very dark in my subconscious mind. I don’t know if it’s some kind of trauma, or a dark entity, but it feels very demonic.

I was awake before my friend. It was 6am and the early morning traffic was terrible. I started to have a meltdown from the noise. Thankfully I had my mega earmuffs with me. I put some ear plugs in my ears and the earmuffs over the top, which blocked the traffic noise, though I wasn’t able to turn over. I wanted to check out my friend’s new apartment but I was too exhausted and it sounded like the new apartment was going to be noisy as well as it was also on a main road. So my friend called an uber for me to take me home (I don’t have an uber app or much internet at all on my phone because it is so old). I used his bathroom, and then was startled by a violently loud noise. The mental tap had fallen off and landed in the sink. Then just as the uber was arriving I realised I’d left the expensive desert I bought at Lord of the Fries in my friend’s fridge, which bugged me for some time. The night with my friend, while fun, was also very overwhelming, and I was keen to go home and sleep. My dad goes to his support group on Thursdays so I knew I’d have the house to myself when I got in which was exactly what I needed. When I got home I was extremely distressed as my tinnitus was worse. Thankfully it settled down though. I climbed into bed, but stunk of my friend’s apartment. No wonder my friend was sick there. I was sick from staying there too.

I kept getting the “shocks”. I took some temazepam, and fell asleep. A few hours later I woke up again. I was still so distraught about losing the beach house. I cried, and listened to extremely dark music such as “The Cutter’s Lullaby” again. That night, after my dad went to bed, I went into the garage, shut all the doors, sat in my car, turned the engine on and left the car door open. I wanted to die, but I got scared and called Lifeline. They immediately called the police. After about 20 minutes the police busted in and turned the car off. “Nooooo, noooo!” I screamed. I was hysterical. A part of me was glad they had arrived, but I was also very upset that they had broken the garage door and contraption my dad had built where the door opened with a remote. It added to my feelings of loss and sadness. Just about everything in my life was broken. The police woke my dad up, who had no idea how I’d been feeling the past many months. He thought I was doing well as I hadn’t been in hospital. All this rage came out of me and I screamed that I wanted to die. I tried to walk off. “I need some fucking space!” I yelled, but the police wouldn’t let me leave. They made me go inside the house. I went on about breaking the garage door and threw a pizza box sitting by the door.

“You’ll break even more stuff,” said the cop.

There was only one chair to sit on as the house is a mess. It was a bit embarrassing having people see the dysfunction Dad and I live in. Eventually an ambulance arrived, and I was taken to hospital. My anger, by this point, had dissipated. I was subdued and despondent. After months of avoiding the hospital system I surrendered. When we arrived at the hospital I sat crouched on the stretcher with my head in my knees and a few tears sliding down my cheeks. Then I almost fell asleep, but had to get up and move into a bed in a curtained area. The nurse gave me an oxygen mask to wear, which was a sensory nightmare. It was tight, noisy and smelt of medical plastic. “I don’t like it,” I said. She said I could just keep it near me so the oxygen blew into my mouth. The hissing noise irritated me to the point I took my blankets and lay on the floor further away from it.

The paramedics left and a security guard was stationed by my bed to prevent me from escaping. He actually seemed like a nice bloke and interested in my wellbeing. I had a headache and was given some panadol which I asked the nurse to cut into smaller pieces as the tablet is usually too big to swallow. I started taking the cut up pills but then one got caught in my throat and I vomited. The security guard told the nurses that I had vomited.

A few hours later at about 4am the dreaded psych person came to see me. It is the psych people I find most triggering. This woman was very short with me. She asked me to think about what I’d like from her and said she’d come back in 20 minutes. When she came back I had my earmuffs on and was so exhausted I was unresponsive.

“I know you can hear me,” she said, shaking my feet.

I said she can help me by finding a doctor overseas who would euthanise me. She seemed annoyed and told me that my only options were a 48 hour admission, to go home and be visited by the Crisis and Assessment Team (CAT), or to be sent home with nothing. She said she couldn’t help me with the buzzing sensation on my head and there was not much hospital can do for people who are chronically suicidal. She was still willing to give me a short admission though, which I ended up going with. When she left I noticed the security guard had left too. I picked up my bag and decided to walk out. I felt like these people didn’t give a shit about me. I then ran into the psych lady again. She stopped me from leaving.

“There’s nothing here for me!” I told her. “There’s no hope here!”

But she completely changed her tune. She told me she wanted me to stay, and thought a stay in hospital could be beneficial. I was moved beds closer to the nurse’s station so they could watch me. I got overwhelmed by people talking in the nurse’s station, and begged to be moved back to my previous bed. Initially the nurses wouldn’t let me.

“I can’t stay here, I’m severely autistic and will have a meltdown and it won’t be pretty!” I told them. “I won’t try to leave again. I only left because I thought she didn’t want me here.”

In the end they let me move back to my old bed. A little while later I was told that the only psych bed available was in a place called Upton House, a noisy, derelict psych ward I stayed at a few years ago. When I stayed there another patient threatened to kill me.

“Upton House is awful,” I told the male nurse. “I think I’d prefer to just go home.”

He said they wanted a psychiatrist to see me, that the place had been renovated and there was a private room available in a quiet spot. So I agreed to go.

I was strapped into a stretcher and transported to Upton House. When I got there, they scanned me with a metal detector, took my bag and led me to my room. I was horrified to find it was a double room.

“I was told I would be staying in a single room,” I said to the nurse. She told me it was wrong of that other nurse to promise me a single room.

I was incredibly raw and overwhelmed and desperately needed my own space. I told them I couldn’t stay if I had to share a room with someone else. They said I would be seeing the doctor soon and could discuss my discharge with them.

Something I was also horrified to find out when I got to Upton House was that the renovations hadn’t finished, and there was banging and all kinds of noise next to the rooms. Thankfully there was a discharge shortly after I arrived and I was given a single room, but I couldn’t be in my room as it was too noisy. I spent the day lying on the couch in the meeting room which was next to the common area. It wasn’t very private as the walls were glass windows. A big black cloud hung over me. I was exhausted from not sleeping for days. Sometimes I started drifting off, but I felt like I was dying and I couldn’t breathe. I’d wake up again wondering where the fuck I was. The meeting room was quieter than my bedroom but I could still hear people talking outside the room. This place was making me so much worse, and even though my admission was only going to be 48 hours I felt I couldn’t even last that long. I felt like I was going to die. The doctor saw me, and I told him I needed to leave. He said they were concerned about me and were going to put an assessment order on me which meant I had to stay there overnight and couldn’t leave until I was assessed by a doctor the next day.

I lay in the meeting room suffering. I’d then lose it, leave the room and start screaming, banging the walls outside and ripping off all the pamphlets. The security guard stood by the exit and a bunch of nurses stood round me.

“Let me out, let me out!!!!!” I screamed. “You’re killing me!!! You’re abusers!!!! Don’t touch me!!!!!!”

The nurses gave me some Seroquel, which didn’t do anything at all. I continued to lie in the meeting room a miserable heap on the couch. Then the OT came in and we did a stupid “safety plan”. I was in no state to do this. She suggested all these things that she thought would help: herbal tea, a shower, a stress ball, smelling essential oil, sucking on a lolly pop. It was clearly written by somebody who had no idea what it was like to be in so much distress. Shortly afterwards I was back out there screaming again.

“You have to let me out!!!!!!” I begged to one poor nurse walking past. She seemed a bit scared. Thankfully, there was one very kind nurse. She spoke to me kindly, took me back to the meeting room and empathised with me.

“I know this is a yuck environment to be in and you don’t want to be here,” she told me. “The plan is to discharge you tomorrow morning, so try to hang in there until then.”

I was given a lot of medication to try and calm me down. It took a few goes. I was given diazepam to sleep that night, and I finally slept. The renovations woke me up at 8am, but I had got enough sleep and was able to manage better knowing I would soon be discharged. I moved to the meeting room and was given some diazepam as the nurses didn’t want another screaming episode. I then fell asleep in there until the psychiatrist came in. We had a chat and she seemed willing to let me go home, but then we started talking about staying in a Prevention and Recovery Centre (PARC), a transition from hospital to home. I thought it might be a good idea at first. They contacted PARC and filled out the paper work. I then told my nurse that I was finding the idea really overwhelming. I am incredibly raw right now. I didn’t want to have to adjust to yet another new environment and be around other people. I didn’t want to sit and eat dinner with others, as they often do at PARC. I know you don’t have to join in on anything but I was also in no state to sort out my own dinner either. My nurse said she would pass on how I felt to the doctor. I haven’t heard from them since. I have since moved rooms to a room the nurse thought is further away from the renovation work and it looks like I will be staying here another night. I am actually starting to feel a lot better though and am even glad that I am here now. I just wish there was something the doctors could do about the buzzing sensation on my head and the issues that landed me in hospital in the first place.