hsphaven

“You build me up, you break me down. My heart it pounds, yeah you got me. With my hands up, you got me now, you got that sound, yeah you got me.” Ke$ha – TiK ToK

It is the first time I’ve been able to blog since my last post a week or so ago. It’s felt like the longest week of my life. I feel like I could write a whole book on this week alone. The disturbing saga continues, without resolution, like a piano with endless keys which just get lower and lower.

The psych ward only gave me two nights, even though I asked for longer. They wanted to dump me in a facility called PARC, a non-clinical mental health facility, which people stay in for a week as a “step down” from hospital, or a “step up” from home to prevent a hospital admission. But there were questions about my medical stability. I was barely eating and the hospital wanted to do a blood sugar level test which involves pricking your finger but I was scared of the test so refused it. The nurses said they’d come back in half an hour. I then got in the shower when they came to the door to avoid getting the test done. I was so traumatised in general- by life, by the way they just wanted me out when I was acutely unwell- that I became mute. I am still speculating on what is causing my muteness, which I will discuss later, but whatever it was, I just couldn’t will myself to speak. The day of my discharge one of the doctors came in and told me PARC wouldn’t take me if I wouldn’t speak. I felt like she thought I was being manipulative and could blackmail me into talking. I brought up The Shutdown Dissociation Scale research paper on my phone and showed it to her. One of the symptoms is muteness. There is some more great information about the different responses to trauma on this page.

“We don’t follow that here,” the doctor said.

She said if I didn’t go to PARC they’d just be sending me home. I couldn’t believe it.

“So you’re just going to send me home in this state?” I wrote to her, with gestures of disbelief. “This is discrimination against people with disabilities.”

Becoming non-verbal is common in autism when we become overwhelmed, as is shown in the series Heartbreak High, with one of the autistic characters, Quinni, becoming mute for a while after her horrible girlfriend put her through hell.

“I’ll get your discharge papers ready,” the doctor told me. “Have a good day!”

I couldn’t believe how negligent and cruel these hospitals were. That interaction was the final assault. I felt I had to get out of that horrible place immediately and on my own terms. I packed up my bags and darted for the exit screaming. I kept kicking the locked doors. I even grabbed a chair from the dining area and tried to smash the window in the door, but the glass was too thick. I think a “code” was called and people came to the scene, including the doctor who had just triggered all this. She acted all nice like a two-faced beast. None of them were very helpful; they just wanted to move me to another room to shut me up. I heard men speaking about me in the background. I felt completely powerless and hopeless. I already felt like I had no control over anything in my life. I continued screaming until I had nothing left in me. I then just lay on the floor with my eyes shut, moaning, my arms and hands tingly, completely destroyed. I was just left there. I felt like I had been raped. Eventually another patient came up to me. She was actually more helpful than any of the staff. She held my hand and told the staff someone had hurt me on the ward, but what she didn’t know was that it was actually a doctor, a person who is meant to help you. She kept telling me to tell the doctors and nurses about it. Like the staff she tried to get me to move into the “sensory room”, a room with toys and things designed to help people calm down. But what people don’t understand is that when you are so traumatised you can go into “collapse-mode” where you can’t get up or move.

My dad arrived to pick me up. Somehow people got me off the floor. We sat in a meeting room with two of the nurses. My dad said he refused to take me home in this state. The nurses said if we didn’t leave they would call security to force us out.

“We will charge you for assault if you do that,” my dad said. “We will film it and go to the media about this.”

The nurses claimed I had not been engaging with them. They also said the psych ward wasn’t the place for people with Borderline Personality Disorder or autism. Seems like we have no were to go when we are in crisis.

In the end I agreed to leave. I said nothing to my dad either, I was so dejected. I didn’t give a fuck about anything anymore. Not long after we got home I wandered up the road and in front of oncoming cars. Someone called the police. My dad found me. He said he knew something was wrong when he saw I left my pink robe with the strawberry hood behind which I always wear. He got me off the road and I lay in a ditch unresponsive and stuck in the one position. A few kind members of the public tried to help, offering me blankets as it was a cold day. I ignored them. A cop car eventually arrived and my dad told them that I had just been discharged from hospital and there is no help. He said the cops could call an ambulance but I’d just be taken back to the hospital again then turfed out, back trying to kill myself again and using up police and ambulance resources as the hospital won’t do anything. The cycle does not end. The police seemed to understand, wished him all the best with finding an alternative system of support, and left.

My disability worker, a kind guy in his early 30s whose family is from Mauritius and who is also vegan, shortly arrived.

“Fuck, you are in a bad way,” he said when he saw me sitting in the passenger seat of my dad’s car. My dad told him to take me out somewhere nice. He took me to a nearby park. I then got in the lake, still wearing my blue hospital pyjamas, and tried to drown myself (I am reminded of Florence + The Machine’s “What The Water Gave Me” which is inspired by the English writer Virginia Woolf who drowned herself). My disability worker said he’d have to call emergency services. I swam to an island in the middle of the lake. I wished I had of stayed there or ran away but eventually I returned to my disability worker. I lay on the grass drenched and shivering.

“You’d be best taking those off but I don’t feel comfortable removing them myself,” my disability worker said respectfully. Instead he put my coat around me.

“Your friends have arrived,” he told me. An old woman from the SES came this time. She was very kind to me and hugged me to keep me warm.

“I don’t get many hugs,” she said. “Isn’t this the best.”

The police also came.

The ambulance eventually reached us. It was not easy as it was a secluded park. Apparently they had to get special permission from the park ranger to open the gates to tracks that allowed bigger vehicles to access the park. The park is my special, secret spot I go to get away from everything. I sometimes wear my bright pink native American headdress there. I didn’t know how I felt about the police and an ambulance being there. I felt like my spot had been invaded. I felt torn between the tribal, esoteric world my soul is from, and Western medicine.

The ambulance wanted to take me back to the same hospital that had caused all this. I wanted help, but I knew they didn’t give a shit about me there. I didn’t want to be abandoned by them again. I didn’t want to go through all this again. So I tried to climb out of the ambulance as it was driving, with no top on as they’d taken it off as it was wet. I just wanted to run off into the wilderness. The paramedic sitting in the back with me asked the driver to pull over. He then drew up some medicine in a needle. I was absolutely terrified by this point. Thankfully he didn’t end up giving it to me. A female cop sat behind me and stroked my hair and this simple act calmed me down.

I started freaking out again once we arrived at the hospital, especially when the psych people came to see me. There were two of them. They went away and then my disability worker arrived with a bag of belongings my dad had packed for me. I told him to give most of them back to my dad. This was because I was planning on absconding as soon as I got the chance and didn’t want to lug all this with me, though I didn’t tell him that. It was nice of him to come see me as his shift with me was over and he usually goes home at 5pm. He knows me well and was able to communicate what I wanted to the nurse as I was still mute. I calmed down with him and we laughed at how bad the patty they served me for dinner was. It was all they’d been giving me.

“They’re on a patty frenzy,” I wrote to him. “It’s like eating rubber ay?”

The psych people came back.

“How can we help you?” the lady asked me.

“Here we go again,” I thought. “Acting like they want to help me and then refusing to satisfy my requests.” I’ve concluded you can never be honest with these people. My disability worker and I told them to speak with my dad, who was out in the waiting room. We both didn’t really like the woman much. She seemed cold and hardened. That is when I decided to make my escape. I had told my disability worker that I felt like leaving. He seemed to get it, but also had a duty of care to keep me there. I headed to the ambulance bay and he followed me.

“You’re really going to do this?” he said, seeming both awed and shocked by my gutsiness.

“Where’s the green exit button????” I asked him, freaking out because I couldn’t find it at first. I then found it, and made a bee line, darting down the road and through the side streets in bare feet. My disability worker followed me.

“I need money to get out of here,” I told him.

“I’m not your friend, remember?” he told me. He called his boss and the police as he had to, even though I knew he also empathised with my plight. I hid in someone’s yard behind their fence. My dad texted me saying he heard I had gone missing and he actually liked the psych lady, feeling she understood the trauma the system inflicts on me. A little later I spotted him wandering down the street looking for me. I held my breath and prayed he didn’t find me. He then turned around and left.

It was nightfall and I had barely any battery left on my phone. I didn’t have my wallet on me, just my phone and ear muffs, which I can’t function in the world without as I am so sensitive to noise. I managed to text a good friend and he came to meet me in an uber as he doesn’t drive. We then got out of there. The police had been calling me and I asked my friend to call them and tell them I was safe. He told them that I was ok and was with him. They told him I was a “missing person”.

“There’s a reason she has been brought to the hospital,” the cop said. It was nice he was concerned about me, as he should be, but he didn’t know what these places were like. In the end he agreed to back off.

My friend and I got a chai from a place that was open late. I noticed I had bruises all over my knees. Afterwards I asked if he could get an uber to take me home. I was tired and had exacerbated an old foot injury, probably from running around in no shoes, or tripping over tree roots in the lake. I thought the police were going to leave me alone now, but when we returned to my house at 10:30pm, they rocked up.

“You shouldn’t be here Zoe,” the cop said. “You have been put on a treatment order.”

They called an ambulance. I don’t know how I felt about all this. I was angry, I was scared and I was also a bit relieved. I thought maybe they actually gave a shit about me this time given they bothered to follow up on me. But mostly I was angry. I was exhausted and needed to sleep and knew that probably wasn’t going to happen in the hospital. I felt like my friends and I could do a better job at caring for me than these cunts at hospital. I felt like grabbing the cop’s gun and shooting myself in the head. My dad shortly arrived home.

“Thank you for finding my daughter,” he said to them.

I went inside and painted my face and put on my bright pink native American feathered headdress just to fuck with them and hang onto some semblance of who I am. The cops watched me and said it was strange but “at least she’s not hurting herself”. I shortly decided to take the headdress off as I didn’t want it to get damaged or lose it.

When the ambulance arrived, I refused to get in. My dad tried to lift me up off the ground but couldn’t. The paramedics are usually really lovely, but these men were brutal. They threatened to put me in restraints. I had all these men standing around me. It was fucked up to say the least. I felt like screaming but I didn’t want my dad or my friend to see me like that. My friend already seemed quite uncomfortable. He suggested I go voluntarily, and I listened to him. I got in the ambulance and he got in with me. I thought I’d be a pain in the ass for these cunts so we blasted Olivia Roderigo’s “obsessed”, ethnicelectronic party music, “TiK ToK” by Ke$ha, “Resist” by Midnight Oil, and Nine Inch Nail’s “Burn” during the trip to hospital and also in the hospital. We were giggling as though drunk. I almost got out of my stretcher and started dancing but was stopped.

We were moved to a curtained area that had another bed, so my friend and I both got a bed each. He said the bed was better than any other bed he’s been in, just having spent a year homeless. He is allergic to bedding and many other things but likes the white hospital blankets so I told him to steal one. We found a small laptop in the back of the stretcher and opened it up. It belonged to one of the paramedics, with a lame profile picture of him on the screen. He shortly came in and took it off us.

We continued to blast music from our phones.

“Do you know where you’re going?” the paramedic said. I thought he was being a cunt, telling me that I would be going to the psych ward and the fun and games would soon be over.

“We’re just bored,” my friend said.

A woman came in and gave me a piece of paper saying I was on an “assessment order”. I was relieved; this was better than being on a “treatment order”, like the cops and paramedics had said.

We were moved again to another area when the paramedics left and took away the stretcher.

“I’ve been demoted to a chair,” my friend said.

I laughed and called him my doctor, all still through writing as I still couldn’t speak. I told him he could have the bed.

“No way,” he said.

My friend hung around the entire night. The nurse gave me some sleeping pills and my friend went on a food run and left me to sleep. In the morning we were seen by two male shrinks. As usual, they just sent me home. I was already packing up my stuff. I had a bit of a final stab at them through writing, telling them they were all demonic at the hospital, that I knew exactly who they were and I wanted nothing more to do with them. I’ve lost the piece of paper and can’t remember everything I said. But I do remember my final note to them:

“I wasn’t completely honest with you. I am still suicidal. But who gives a shit”

Later that day I texted my psychotherapist saying that I was thinking of killing myself. He called me immediately but of course I couldn’t answer as I was mute.

“You know I need to call an ambulance,” he texted me. He quite possibly saved my life as I was so scared I took off in my car before I had the chance to organise the tent and other stuff needed for my suicide attempt. I drove to the train tracks, sat there for a while texting Lifeline, then drove to the same park I tried to drown myself at. To my surprise my parents were there. Apparently my psychotherapist had told them I might go there. I left straight away, speeding up the hill and turning up a side street to get away from them. I parked at on oval. I had a sleeping bag in my back seat which I carried to a bushy slope next to the oval and curled up in. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone. It wasn’t the safest spot, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

My dad texted me saying he was sorry he tried to lift me into the ambulance the other night. He thought they cared, but has now given up on them and is furious with what they put me through. I asked him if there were any cops or ambulance at the house but he said there wasn’t. I returned home later that night, took some diazepam and was about to go to bed when my dad knocked on my door saying he’d got a call from the police and they were coming to the house as they needed to sight me. He said he wouldn’t let them take me back to hospital. I left the house and walked down the road to the river. I sat there for a bit, then returned to the house. I stood there in the dark and watched a cop speak to my dad at the door. Finally they noticed I was there. The cop asked if I was planning on killing myself. I just wrote that I wanted to sleep. He accepted my answer and they left.

The next day I met up with a delightful autistic fairy, starseed and artist my age who could easily be my twin. I haven’t known her all that long but I’m quickly realising she is somebody I can trust, though it was still not enough to get me to talk. I gave her some bracelets I’d made especially for her with words that are meaningful to her.

“She knows you well,” her disability worker, who she brought with her, commented.

My friend also had a present for me: some crystals. We sat at a park bench and chatted. She said she knew a kid who was mute. Suddenly one day they came out with a word and it was the F word. At one point it was just me and her disability worker. The worker told me she used to have a friend but one day something very traumatic happened to this lady and she suddenly stopped speaking. The worker lost touch with the lady and doesn’t know if she ever started speaking again. Tears welled in my eyes when I heard this story and to know this is a real thing and I am not alone.

I had a lovely day with my friend and had no idea things were going to turn so horrid again that evening. I went for a walk with my psychotherapist, again at this same park I tried to drown myself at. When we got to the second lake, which was the lake I tried to drown myself in, I just stood there.

“What’s going on, Zoe?” my psychotherapist asked.

I was breathing fast. I managed to text him that I had tried to drown myself in this lake. I then turned around and started walking back quickly. I then started running. I don’t know what came over me. I started scrambling through the bush and then found a private spot where I lay down. I then couldn’t get up, even when I had mozzies having a dinner out of me. I could hear my therapist calling out telling me to come out. He sounded annoyed, but I realise now he just had never dealt with this before and didn’t know what to do. I managed to text him.

“Hiding,” I said.

He said “ok”. I still couldn’t get up. He texted me saying it was getting late and he wanted to go home.

“Leave me here,” I texted back.

“I’m not going to leave you,” he said. “If you don’t come out by 8:30pm I will call the police to come find you.”

Eventually I lost the ability to even text. I remember having all these “voices” in my head having an argument.

“Get up,” one was saying. “You don’t want to end up back in hospital again do you?”

Still I couldn’t get up. Something had just completely taken over me. I remember crawling to a fallen tree branch and holding onto it moaning like I was in agony. Moaning like the night I was on ayahuasca, like when I get my period, and like when I was left on the floor of the hospital. I suspect I am being taken into some kind of trauma but I have never quite been able to figure out what. I both wanted authorities to find me but I didn’t. I was paralysed. Eventually I heard the police traipsing through the bush near me. I lay super still, but they spotted me.

“Found her!” a man said. Something about it reminded me of the vampire hunt in Vampire Diaries when the authorities found Anna and killed her.

They came over and tried to speak with me but I wouldn’t answer. I had my eyes shut as though in some kind of trance.

“She’s non-responsive like last time,” I heard one of the cops say.

They wondered if I had hit my head but I shook my head. They kept trying to make me get up but I couldn’t.

“She’s not complying,” I heard another man say. “You have to use more force with her.”

They ended up carrying me through the rugged terrain over fallen branches, through thick weeds and over a small valley where a river used to be. It was a real struggle and I was afraid they were going to drop me. I had my eyes shut the entire time so didn’t see where we were going but I knew the terrain. My black studded leggings were coming off, exposing my underwear. I think I heard one of the male cops instruct his team to drag me if it put them at risk carrying me out.

I felt them put me down on some flat grass. They checked me for any leeches, which seemed to indicate they cared about me, except then they decided to handcuff me with my hands behind my back! I started screaming at the top of my lungs, still with my eyes shut. I was not a fucking criminal, I was a vulnerable woman with Complex PTSD and they were only making it worse.

“Do you think she will need to be sedated?” I heard a female cop ask. It reminded me of the part in Rabbit Proof Fence where aboriginal mothers were lining up to see their children who were taken away from them and when one was crying, the authority figure said to another authority figure “she seems agitated”, genuinely confused why. No shit! I couldn’t believe these people’s nerve and stupidity. I didn’t need to be sedated. I needed them to remove their fucking handcuffs. Apparently the female cop was the same cop who came when I tried to drown myself in the lake. This was her second trip to this park in two days. She was new to the area and was getting to see the local scenery at least. She told the other cops she had travelled in the ambulance with me and the paramedic almost had to sedate me as I was trying to jump out of the ambulance.

The cops made fun of the local wizard.

“I don’t think he likes us very much,” a cop said. “Thinks we have bad chakras.”

I don’t blame him.

My parents were called.

“Don’t be alarmed, but we put your daughter in handcuffs as she was behaving extremely erratically,” one of the cops told my dad. My dad didn’t know what the hell had happened that evening and to be honest, neither did I. We were meant to be going to the beach the next day. He touched me to try and comfort me but I shrugged away. It was frustrating not being able to communicate what I needed and who I wanted around me.

After what felt like an eternity of suffering, the ambulance arrived. I was led over to the ambulance as good as blind folded as I still had my eyes shut. The police removed the handcuffs and I got into the ambulance. No one really knew whether to take me to hospital or not. One cop said he’d be happy to just send me home with my dad. I didn’t want to go home, but neither did I really want to go to hospital. Another cop said I should get checked out at the hospital, especially given I had become non-verbal for so long. I heard a group of them chatting outside the ambulance. My therapist was still there and my parents were there. A man asked if I was seeing a psychiatrist but my parents said no. He asked whether the hospital would give me any medication but my parents said basically they did nothing. And because they wouldn’t do anything to help me and just kicked me out all the time, the cops and paramedics were left to deal with me all the time and I gathered they were getting sick of it. I heard my dad say that I had been given the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder and it is the wrong diagnosis.

I started to be able to communicate with the paramedic by shaking or nodding my head and then by writing. He asked me if I was having suicidal thoughts that day, and, perhaps, I made the mistake of saying yes. He then said he would need to take me to the hospital.

“Are you willing to go to the hospital voluntarily?” he asked me.

I shook my head.

“Then we will need to take you involuntarily,” he said.

Somehow I managed to hold myself together during the billionth trip to hospital that week. I wrote notes to the paramedic, telling him about the different “people” or “voices” in my head and what they were saying to me. But when we arrived at the hospital I started to freak out. A cop grabbed me to stop me from running away.

“This is all their fault!” I scribbled furiously to the female paramedic. “They make me want to die!”

She acknowledged the system was broken. She said they just needed to keep me safe and told me that I would just be there overnight and then sent home the next day. Of course, that is what they always do. I couldn’t stand to go through this again.

When I was given a bed and I knew the paramedics were leaving I had a complete break down. I started screaming and crying. Around this time a woman named “Sarah” came to see me. I couldn’t see her. She was just a blurry figure, like everyone is these days, but I figured she was the psych cunt. She said she’d met me before. I didn’t remember her. They tried to get me onto the bed and put the rail up but I was so distressed.

“Would you feel less trapped if I put the rail down?” I heard a kind female say.

I then crawled onto the floor and reached for the monitor cords. I felt like strangling myself with them. Sarah yelled at me, so I started screaming even more. I held one of the paramedic’s hand and we managed to get me back onto the bed.

“All the best,” he said, and then left.

I cried and wailed. I couldn’t believe I was back there again. I was aware of Sarah and some others whispering in the background. Everyone kept saying they were here to help me, but I shook my head as I knew it was a pack of lies. My nurse was actually quite nice. I told her that her psych colleagues were trying to kill me and make me suffer.

“I know it can feel like that but I won’t let that happen,” she said. “I will stay with you when they come to talk with you.”

“There’s nothing you can do to stop them,” I told her.

My dad came to see me. I told him to leave. He handed me my earmuffs. I thanked him at least.

“I feel like a bitch,” I told the nurse.

“It’s ok, he knows you’re just having a hard time,” she said.

She tried to get me to take some medication.

“What’s the point of taking meds when I’m being assaulted?” I told her. It all felt like that drug-induced psychosis I had where I believed I was being raped and meanwhile everyone was telling me “it’s ok, it’s ok, calm down”.

“It’s not ok!” I remember telling them in the midst of my psychosis. Obviously!

“No one’s hurting you, you are safe here,” the nurse said, but I kept telling her “the assault is coming”. She relayed all this to a man at the computer typing notes. I must have sounded completely insane.

Eventually the nurse managed to get me to take two tablets of diazepam. She kindly offered to put them in my mouth for me as my hands were a bit tingly again, which she said was because I was breathing rapidly. She also offered to make me a milo. I told her I was vegan. She offered to make it with almond milk.

“I shouldn’t,” I wrote. “They [eating disorder voices] don’t want me to have one.”

“Do YOU want one, though?” she asked.

“Kind of,” I said. I used to love milo as a child. So she made me one.

She was a kind nurse and I shortly stopped crying, but I was still not happy about being there.

“The bad people have got me,” I texted my psychotherapist.

“I’m sorry Zoe, I had no choice,” he replied. It was kind of him to reply at 12:30am. I found out the police instructed him not to take me to that park anymore because they didn’t want to spend money on a helicopter to find me if I went missing again.

I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to escape, especially as I was right outside the nurse’s station. But that was my plan. I waited until my nurse left me alone, and then at 1:30am I casually walked out through the ambulance bay again. I then ran and ran through the dead of night, even with an injured foot. My phone’s battery was about to die. I texted the same friend who rescued me last time I absconded and asked him to help me again, but I didn’t hear back. I took off up some side streets and then found a nice secluded bushy hill which led to the train tracks. I followed the street to the very end and found a walking track which ran parallel to the train tracks and was surrounded by bush, a good place to hide if I had to. My plan was to follow the tracks to the train station which I believed had a bus which ran over the mountain to another one of my friend’s houses. As I approached the station, though, the road came to a dead end, blocked by a construction site. There was a large fence blocking my way. I managed to crawl under the fence and wandered through the construction site until I got to another fence. This time the gap underneath was even narrower, but because I’d lost so much weight I managed to climb under still (though my bum got stuck at one point). There were so many bus terminals and I couldn’t find the one I was after. It was a seedy spot at night with a group of teenage boys hanging about. I was scared, I had no wallet to pay for a taxi, I couldn’t speak, the police had started calling and looking for me (my dad texted me to say they’d come to the house) and my phone’s battery was about to die. I spotted a woman at the station desk and wrote a message on my phone asking if she could charge my phone, but she said she didn’t have a charger for it. I asked her which bus terminal took me to my friend’s suburb but she said she’d never heard of that suburb before. She didn’t seem interested in helping me and told me to go ask one of the staff wearing yellow jackets. So I did, and I was told the bus wasn’t running.

I had no idea where to go or what to do. I started heading for a McDonalds, one of the few places open, to see if they would charge my phone. I made sure I stayed away from the main streets. With what little battery I had left on my phone, I called my friend, whose house I wanted to go to, three times. She once said that she would always be there for me, even in the middle of the night, and if I called her three times she would wake up. She finally answered. I then hung up and texted her saying I was mute (something she understands as her partner has Dissociative Identity Disorder and goes mute) and asking if she could pick me up. She said that she couldn’t as she was alone with her baby and her partner had gone missing again. I didn’t understand why she couldn’t put the baby in the car and come get me. I then texted another good friend of mine and thank god she answered. She was still awake for some reason, maybe because it was full moon. She called an uber for me to take me to my other friend’s house. She saved my life.

I spent the rest of the night on the couch on my friend’s back porch. It was freezing but a tranquil spot in the mountains. I saw a mysterious blue flash of light in the sky around 4:30am, which apparently other people saw too. I caught up with my friend later that morning once she was up. It had been a while since I’d spoken with her and it was really nice to see her again. We both agreed it wasn’t safe for me to stay there as she was one of my closest friends and my parents would probably start calling her. I think she’s even down in my hospital files as an emergency contact. She was actually about to call the police as her partner had been missing for days.

“They probably think this is missing person central!” I joked with her.

She gave me something to eat, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and $18 cash. She also charged my phone. I went into her bathroom to brush my teeth and when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror I looked like something out of a horror movie. I had black bags under my eyes from not sleeping. My friend left me alone to rest while she went out. I didn’t sleep as I could hear chain saws and every time I heard a car come past I was terrified it was the cops.

I contacted the farm in the country I used to do working holidays at (also the farm I took the ayahuasca at) asking if I could come stay again. I said I was running from bad people and I think I may have mentioned the hospital and police. I knew they didn’t like hospitals or police either so would understand. The lady who runs the farm, Margaret, takes in a lot of lost souls and her heart went out to me. She said she would help and told me the name of a particular station to meet me at. I had to be there by 3pm. I didn’t know how I was going to get to a train station, and one where the police wouldn’t find me.  I texted my autistic fairy friend I saw the previous day who hates the mental health system as well and she organsied an uber to take me to a train station near the city centre, which I had to pass through to get to the farm. It was expensive but she said I could pay her back later. My friend who I was staying with came home and I told her I was leaving. We hugged good bye, making her teary, and I left.

The trip to the farm went smoothly. I put my hand over my heart when the uber driver dropped me at the station near the city centre to express how grateful I was to him. I had enough money to buy a Myki train card and leave the city. The young Sri Lankan lady at the service desk was very helpful in directing me and she was so kind to me when I couldn’t speak. My city’s weather is even moodier than me. Unlike the previous day, it was now 32 degrees. I looked ridiculous wearing a black puffer jacket and leggings when everyone else were wearing shorts and dresses.

It felt so good to leave everything behind and watch the scenery change from suburbia to open, empty paddocks. On the way I got a text from my dad which was a message he sent to my mum:

“Hi Mary,

Zoe has “absconded” from [hospital name] at 1:30am earlier this morning.

I have sadly come to the conclusion that [organisation] unwittingly assault our daughter by traumatising her.

The whole “duty of care” (Mental Health Act) acts to effectively assault Zoe.

You heard Zoe screaming out in pain last night at [name of park], when Police handcuffed Zoe.

Every body unwittingly assaults our daughter – it breaks my heart because they will eventually kill our daughter by their ignorance.

Unless, … we pray to God, …. And fight the whole fucking lot of them.

“Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57).”

I replied:

“I love you Dad. Victory has indeed prevailed. I got away. I took back my power. I want to let you know I am in a safe place now where they can’t hurt me.”

My therapist also contacted me asking where I was as the police said I was missing again.

“Well tell the police to fuck off,” I texted back. “Didn’t you hear me screaming yesterday with them? Why didn’t you do anything? They basically assaulted me and made an already traumatised person even more traumatised. Then they had the nerve to think I needed sedating. I didn’t need sedating. I needed them to remove their fucking handcuffs! I’m not a fucking murderer, I’m a vulnerable woman with c-ptsd. I’m done. I’m not telling anyone where I am now, but I am ok.

All this fuss to get me to hospital, just so a horrid deranged psych person has the satisfaction of turfing me out again in an acute state. That is what happens time and time again. They waste police resources, they waste ambulance services. They just want to be the ones with the power and call the shots. Well not this time. I took back my power. Fuck them all”

Margaret’s ute was easy to find as I heard all her roosters crowing in the back. It was a sweltering hot day and she had been at a market in this town. There was a cop car in the town, but no cops came after me. I put my phone on flight mode once I got in Margaret’s car, and left it off or on flight mode so the police couldn’t track me. We then drove to Margaret’s farm which was about 40 minutes away. Sadly one of the chooks died on the way. While it worked in my favour, I think it was cruel to drag her chooks off to a market on such a hot day.

I arrived at the farm with only the clothes on my black from when I absconded: a black bondage dress with a red fishnet top underneath and black bra, my black jacket, and my black studded leggings. My nice black leggings were all ripped from my crazy adventures, but hey I guess it went with the distressed look. I had my earmuffs and a pair of earplugs the hospital had given me, my Myki card, the tooth paste and bamboo tooth brush my friend gave me which made my mouth bleed, and some remaining cash in my pocket. That was all.

I usually stayed in a church the family had built at the bottom of the property. It is a beautiful piece of architecture with arched windows. But a group were having an event there that night, so I slept in the back of their ute. Margaret’s partner set up a camping mattress and draped a mosquito net over the back. There were still lots of bugs which kept me awake, but finally I managed to cover them with a sheet and get rid of them. After that I slept surprisingly soundly. Margaret gave me an old ipad she had which I actually started this blog post on (though unfortunately I couldn’t transfer it to my emails or anything, so just had to take photos of what I wrote with my phone). I spent the next day writing in the back of the ute with the pitter-patter of rain on the roof. It was so tranquil, but when I get into something I find it hard to stop, and my neck started to hurt from leaning over the ipad all day.

Margaret fed me the kind of food people never get in the city. It was all made on her farm or from friends in the area. She gave me peanut butter she made herself. She had delicious vegan nut cheese, and scrumptious, healthy vegan desserts. She made herbal tea from the herbs in her garden, and on that first boiling day there she gave me homemade lemon squash. She cooked omelettes made from the eggs on her farm, which I didn’t mind eating as I knew she looked after her chickens well. Unfortunately I didn’t really make the most of it as I wasn’t very hungry. I was barely eating from my ordeal.

I met some of the new people staying on Margaret’s farm, such as Lily, an older woman who worked as a waitress in the nearby historic town. Margaret introduced me to her as we walked down to the church one evening. Lily lived in an old bus, like most of the others. Margaret told Lily I had been in hospital. It was a cool evening and Lily could tell I was cold so offered me a jacket. She was a sweet woman who also found my foot brace which I was really upset to lose one day. Margeret’s son, who was my age, said “g’day” to me when I sat at the table in the house. They were all so kind and welcoming to me, though no one ever heard me speak. The guys were also very respectful of my space. One day one of the guys came down to the church to put a lock on the back door of the linen room for me as it didn’t shut properly. “Lets fix this door,” I heard him say to the dog. He didn’t know I was actually sleeping in that room that morning, as there was a blow fly in the main room and it was a bit quieter (the dogs were all barking a lot the previous night).

“Shit, sorry,” he said when he opened the door and found me in bed there.

The guys also didn’t use the toilet block when they saw someone else was in it. Margaret said it was so safe there I didn’t even really need to lock the church at all.

It was hard not being able to text anyone.

“Is it too much to ask you to buy me a new phone?” I asked Margaret one day. She said she couldn’t afford it. She called someone and asked if they had a spare old phone I could use, but they didn’t.

I managed to help a little bit on the farm. Margaret gave me some pale pink shirts and loose beige cargo pants, which kept slipping off me as they were too big. I did the dishes once, pathetically tried to help them net their apple tree on a 35 degree day, and removed the plastic tape from bits of cardboard they had collected which they would later cover the soil with. I felt like I had crossed a veil between two completely different worlds. I went from a hospital full of chemicals to a place which didn’t even believe in sunscreen. It was basically a commune of people with similar values (e.g. unvaccinated) working together harmoniously. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was a burden. I had to write everything down to Margaret, which she always had to put her glasses on to read.

I slept in my clothes or just my underwear as I had no pyjamas, which I actually didn’t mind. It was kind of fun roughing it and living a minimalist lifestyle. But eventually I needed to wash my underwear. I hand washed them with soap and then they were wet so I left them outside to dry. I didn’t like sleeping without anything covering my bum, so put the pants or my leggings back on without underwear.

I thought I’d sleep even better in the church, but I started getting weird dreams. In one, I turned into a goat or something. I also got what I believe were flashbacks to that agonising night on the ayahuasca when that group came down from NSW and held a ceremony. One afternoon I crawled into bed as I was exhausted. I started hearing music and other noises. I then went into a strange altered stare of consciousness where I felt like I was having a seizure or something and thought Margaret was there helping me. Just as I came out of it Lily knocked on the church door. She found me on the floor and asked if I was ok. I asked about the music and whether Margaret was just here but she said no it had been quiet. I told her I didn’t know what was real and what was a dream anymore. She recognised that I was a sensitive person and thought I might be dehydrated.

Margaret had asked Lily to get me as she had got a text from my dad. I had contacted him from Margaret’s phone. Being a softie who cannot stand the suffering of any living being, I had texted him asking him to water my plants back home as it was so hot. I then asked him if the police were still searching for me. He said they had come to the house yesterday again and just wanted to know I was not going to hurt myself or anyone else. Margaret ended up calling my dad. She introduced herself, said she was looking after me and said a lot of my problems could be fixed by drinking more water. I should never have let her call him. I did not feel good about that phone call immediately. I went back down to the church and cried and was about to go for a walk when THREE police cars rocked up at the property. Who the hell do they think I am? I ran into the church and tried to lock the doors but they still got in.

“We just want to talk to you,” a cop said. “We’re only here to help you and make sure you’re ok.”

I managed to hold it together. I waved and sat down at the table with them, now dressed up in farm clothes as opposed to my gothic attire. My hair was messy and knotted as I had no hair brush.

“Don’t be alarmed by my muteness, but I am autistic and not speaking right now,” I wrote to the cop. We had a bit of a chat. I told him that these people on the farm were looking after me and I was doing a lot better. Meanwhile Margaret was speaking with the other cops outside.

The cops determined I was fine and left. They all seemed pretty nice, and the cop I spoke with left me a card with his name and number.

I was relieved they didn’t drag me off to hospital again, but was devastated that my secret spot was no longer secret. I knew I’d never be able to hide here again. I was actually planning on presenting to a police station the next day just so they could sight me and didn’t come to the property. I was left wondering who had betrayed me. I found out the cops had tracked me to the town where Margaret picked me up. They had been contacting everyone I apparently called the night I left the hospital. They even rocked up at one of my friend’s houses, the one who came to the hospital with me that other time. This friend since told me that he can’t have this happening again. He’s just moved back in with his judgy mum and I’m guessing he doesn’t want his mum to wonder what kind of shady characters her son is involved with and kick him out, leaving him with no where to go again. I’m not sure. Apparently some of my friends told the cops I could be at this weird farm up near Castlemaine. But it was the phone call to my dad that did it. My dad swore he didn’t say anything to the police. They must have tracked the call, even when it was not from my own phone. I couldn’t believe the extent they would go to just to know where I was. I had already told my dad that I was safe.

At least I could use my phone again. I was finally able to text my friends again. I messaged one friend, but was afraid to talk about the ayahuasca thing over text as I worried the cops would read my texts next and I’d get them all into trouble. I still was loyal towards them. I said I was wrong about the group being a cult and shouldn’t have doubted them. My friend said I was very “erratic, paranoid and dissociated”, and she still wasn’t sure about the people I was staying with as my DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) symptoms had spiked. I didn’t disagree with her there. Over the past few weeks I have really been considering the possibility that I might have DID or something like it. DID is caused by trauma which starts at an early age. The most helpful insights about my mutism actually came from an online group for people with DID (or, “Dissociative Identity” is probably a better term, as many members of the community don’t consider it a “disorder” and don’t want to “integrate”). Below are some of the replies I got from members:

“It is perfectly ok not to speak. Until your system is ready. They are sending you a msg that they are scared or frustrated or angry and it is a coping mechanism.

Just know you are loved, we love you, you are capable, and soon you will be in a place safe enough for your system to talk again.

I would start by trying to figure out who in your system is mandating this and then just ask them with compassion what do they need.

Our system has done this for years when we would get triggered by life crisis. Through T we discovered it was our gatekeeper, who has bad cptsd, and it was his way of saying I am not recognising the world around me and if I don’t talk to them they can’t come in. Through love and patience and educating him we helped him find new coping mechanisms that were not detrimental to us.”

“I had selective mutism as a child and that was part of the reason I was court ordered into therapy. The child psychologist apparently used hypnosis to get me to speak. Other people have tried making me angry but when I was diagnosed with MPD at 16 I actually flipped over the shrink’s desk and it got me kicked out of therapy so I started using anger as a way of avoiding speaking rather than speaking in anger. One thing that happens to me when I have a thought that I want to verbalise but can’t is I will literally choke and not be able to get the words out. Sometimes I lose my words completely so that my thoughts become pictures that I can’t describe with language. I think it is a defence mechanism designed to keep secrets so I just keep the secrets and don’t try to speak when it happens. Writing or typing gets past speaking though so that has been a problem at times.”

“Hi, I think I relate to your feelings. I’m only 18 months into my DID diagnosis. I think I have a child alter that is non verbal. She knows how to speak but she also knows there’s no point speaking because no one will listen. She’s tried and tried to say what was happening but no one would listen. I haven’t answered my phone for at least two years.

My last week I have spent being mute. But the last few weeks I have been able to speak. I am grateful to you for writing your question. If you hadn’t have posted your request for information, I wouldn’t have been able to recognise what has been happening within my system.

All the best 😊”

The best way I can describe it is it’s like having a community inside of you that is in lock down now and has closed the gates.

When I turned on my phone again I found my voicemail box was full. I went through all the messages. I had a message from the police or someone saying to someone else “she CAN talk” (obviously they heard my voicemail message from back when I was speaking). I also had a message from my psychotherapist explaining why he didn’t help me when I was screaming that day with the police, which I have since forgiven him for.

That night, after the police left, I was angry. I sat up late pacing around the church listening to the radio that Margaret and her partner lent me. Sometimes I danced. Sometimes I cried. I tried to sleep but I couldn’t sleep all night and just got nightmares about looking into a mirror and seeing a different reflection, and running away from the place with nothing on me. I texted Margaret saying I was pretty rattled by the police visit, had got no rest all night and asked if she could just leave me alone to rest that next day. She said she would.

I didn’t expect the next day to unfold as it did, but on some level maybe I did have a feeling. I remember at one point BEGGING that alter/side of me/whatever it is “please don’t fuck this up, please don’t fuck this up, we have it good here, we’ve got the police off our backs now, we can start a new life here, please don’t get them involved again.” But that day, I completely lost the plot. My phone’s battery was dying and I didn’t have a charger. I texted Margaret saying my phone’s battery was about to die and asking if I could come up to the house and look for a charger. I always had to ask her as she had a fucking guard dog that bit people.

“I’m down street,” she wrote back. “Be home soon. Will text”

“Ok thanks,” I wrote back. “Come to the church if I don’t answer as the battery’s 1%”

I waited and waited for hours and she never came. I was having a complete freak out. The darkness had caught up with me. As I’ve written before, I seem to have some major trauma around being in trouble but being completely alone and trapped with help unreachable or non-existent. I was getting sick of being so dependent and isolated. I was sick of having no phone, no internet, no car, no money, not being able to speak, not being able to communicate and people not understanding my needs, no mental health support, no medication, which I’m not a fan of anyway but sometimes I do need something to calm down and sleep. All my usual coping mechanisms had been ripped away. I just listened to the radio for hours, scribbling down the lyrics that resonated with me so I could track down the songs.

“Government lies. I just wanna die. A fist full of pills.”

“After violence comes the silence. With their bombs. In your head, in your head, they are fighting”

“Running out of medicine. No worse than it’s ever been. Screaming for me baby like you’re gonna die. You are so tortured when you sleep plagued by all your memories. I can smell your sickness. I know all your secrets.”

I listened to one program where they were talking about microplastics and how they have got into our oceans, rivers, antarctic fish and even brains. It made me so sad, depressed and hate this world so much I wanted to die.

Hours later I checked my phone and found it had one last breath left in it before it died. I saw a message from Margaret saying she was home and her dog was in the bathroom. I couldn’t believe it. I had TOLD her my battery was about to die. I had ASKED her to see me in person. Why would no one listen to me?! I felt like she was just leaving me isolated. I even started wondering if she ENJOYED keeping me isolated like some sick psychopathic psycho. I wondered whether the whole place was a fucking cult like in my dreams and like some of my friends thought. Suddenly someone who seemed like they were on my side felt malignant. That is what’s been happening all the time lately. I’ve been splitting on everyone. I have dreams about someone helping me and then they hurt me. I have dreams about someone hurting me and then they help me. I don’t know what to believe or who to trust.

I stormed up to the house. The hill just about killed me. I tried to contain my anger. I went straight to the chargers and frantically tried to find one that would fit my phone. I found one that seemed to fit.

“It’s charging, see” Margaret said.

I really needed some privacy and asked if I could take the charger back down to the church. She said I could. But when I got down there it didn’t want to charge anymore and I couldn’t turn the phone on. For a period of time I can’t remember what happened. I descended into such a distressing place. My mind was spinning so fast everything became a blur. I scribbled a furious message to Margaret saying that my phone still won’t charge, that I wanted to fucking kill myself or cut myself with a knife, that ayahuasca was a dangerous plant, that it nearly killed me right here on her farm like it killed that man at another ceremony and she shouldn’t let people come to her place and do that. I went back up to the house to try and charge my phone again but it wouldn’t charge there either. Margaret was out again. I remember pacing around the house crying and screaming and holding a pair of scissors which I wanted to cut myself with. All the dogs were barking and no one was home. Finally Margaret arrived home and found me like this. She seemed annoyed.

“You can’t just walk into someone’s house without their permission,” she told me.

I handed her the note. She tried to find another charger.

“I shouldn’t have to do this,” she said.

She didn’t understand why I was so upset.

“I have PTSD,” I managed to write to her.

“I don’t know what that is!” she said, and threw the notebook on the table.

She told me basically I needed to just pull myself together. She gave me an ice-cream, thinking that would fix everything. I just needed a hug and for her to tell me she would buy me a charger.

I asked her to call my dad and get him to pick me up. This is the man who I dreamt molested me as a kid (who knows if it’s true), who I love yet push away, hate touching me and have never understood why as he is an empathetic person like me and I know he will do anything for me. Yet he was all I had. But Margaret couldn’t find her phone. She said she’d have to go back to the shops to try and find it.

By this point my mind was completely unravelling. As I write this I have no idea what I did while she went looking for her phone, but one minute I was up at the house and the next minute we were down in the church together. She was annoyed about what I wrote to her about the ayahuasca.

“Don’t you tell me what to do!” she snarled at me. She went on a big guilt trip about how Lore, the man who ran these ceremonies, has lost his farm and everything now, that she is barely keeping her own farm afloat and something about having to burn the church down, so what do I have to complain about. I could barely follow anything she was saying I was so distraught. She had found her phone and was trying to call my dad but he wouldn’t pick up. I handed her the card the cop who visited us the previous day gave me and asked her to call him.

“What do you want me to call him for?” she asked me, totally perplexed.

She was probably thinking “what the fuck does this girl even want? One minute she’s saying she wants to be alone, the next minute she’s freaking out about being alone. She tells me she’s running from the cops and now she’s asking me to call them back!”

She still called the number on the card for me but it wouldn’t ring.

I was crying.

“I wish I could cry!” Margaret said.

While Margaret nourished me physically, she seemed to know absolutely nothing about mental health, what to say to someone having a crisis, or even how to recognise someone in crisis. She reminded me of my mum. Suddenly she became the villain and I decided to run away from her next. I left in exactly the same attire I arrived in: my black bondage dress, red fishnet top, studded leggings and black jacket. I found myself taking off down the dirt road towards the highway with my earmuffs and dead phone in my hand. “Don’t do this, don’t do this”, I kept trying to tell this person or thing that had hijacked me. But she was dead set on what she was going to do. We got to the main road, and she walked out in front of some oncoming cars speeding down the highway. I was so out of it, so out of my fucking mind, that I didn’t really see any of it. One car beeped at us. I found myself on the other side of the road and I bent down and cried what tears I had left in me.

A couple of cars stopped. A man and a lady got out. The man, I realise now, was pretty shaken, but they were both really kind to me. The lady got me into the front seat of her car which was full of McDonalds rubbish. I hugged her and held her hand. I managed to write her a note saying that I had PTSD. She said she got it as she was a disability worker and had mental health issues herself. She asked if I meant to walk in front of traffic. I didn’t really know what to say, but she knew. She asked if I’d like her to call an ambulance, and I agreed. I needed help, and hospital seemed like the lesser of two evils now. I hoped the country hospital might be better than the city hospital.

I heard her call emergency services and ask them to hurry up as she had a toddler in the back seat and couldn’t stay on the side of the road forever. It was another stinking hot day. They couldn’t identify me, until the police arrived and said they knew me, that they had just visited me yesterday and that I was staying with Margaret. They then contacted Margaret. I started screaming as she felt like the bad guy now. Margaret shortly arrived at the scene and the cops suggested I get in her car, but I refused. I couldn’t see anything as I had my eyes shut again. I felt a cop push me and then I just lay on the ground by the side of the road and stayed there. I realised I had been like Gracie in Rabbit Proof Fence– a movie I started watching at Margaret’s as I could relate to fleeing from oppression- who trusted the wrong person and was caught again.

I overheard the conversations going on around me. The police were chatting with Margaret, who told them I was barely eating or drinking and that she had to tip toe around me because I was so sensitive to noise. The police had got word from my past life in the city that I had an extensive mental health history there. One of the cops said I had “Bipolar” or “Borderline Personality Disorder”. I believe this was all in front of Margaret. I think by this point she was starting to think I really was insane and belonged in a nut house. The cops told Margaret she needs to stop taking in people like me. Apparently she has a way of finding them and there have been others. The cops kept making reference to a man called “Sky Walker” who used to stay on the farm and was in trouble with the police. They gossiped about the others on the farm. There was Evan, who was also on the disability pension but was quiet and kept out of trouble. He was an artist and contributed to the farm by refurbishing things and decorating the garden. Then they spoke about Lily, but they all agreed Lily was fine.

I overheard one cop say he has no respect for people who try to end it by jumping in front of cars or trains because it hurts other people in the process. I couldn’t believe how judgmental they were. They did not understand that you are not thinking like this when you do these things. You are distressed, desperate and out of your fucking mind.

A cop tried to get me to drink some water, but I couldn’t get up off the ground or even sit up. He tried to put it in my hand but I struggled to even hold the bottle. He then took it back and my hand remained frozen in that same position. I was in an infantile state. He had to pour the water into my mouth.

The sun was hot and I wanted to hide under my jacket but the cops took it off and then I was stuck in the one position for at least ten minutes, unable to put it back over me again. I realise now after having done some research that I was probably experiencing “catatonia”. Some of the signs of catatonia, according to this source, are: not responding to other people or your environment, holding your body in an unusual position, catalepsy (staying in a position another person puts you in), waxy flexibility, acting upset or irritable, repeated movements and even mutism. There is a lot more information on this page. Catatonia is usually thought to be part of schizophrenia, but it is also common in many other conditions, including autism.

An ambulance was on its way, but I was already losing hope that they’d be any different. The cops said that they took a man who was suicidal to hospital once and then the hospital discharged him and he hung himself.

“He should have been kept there for a very long time,” the cop said.

After an hour of lying on the ground in the heat with the cops around me, the ambulance finally arrived. The paramedic squeezed my finger to see how alert I was. It did feel painful and I started screaming and crying. I was still conscious and breathing. I could still feel my body and hear things around me, but I was also very out of it, couldn’t engage with people and had lost my usual sense of self-consciousness. Margaret, the paramedics and the police tried to lift me up into the ambulance. They managed to get me in and I was taken to the nearest hospital which was about half an hour away. My vitals were ok, except for when the female paramedic sitting next to me wanted to do a blood sugar test. My heart rate then spiked as I was terrified of that test.

“Have you eaten anything today?” she asked.

I said I had, just to avoid getting the test, but all I had eaten was a teaspoon of Margaret’s sugar-free, vegan ice-cream.

I moaned and struggled to even write at first. My writing was minimal and incomprehensible. I actually believe now that I had become a bit delirious, which, according to the Mayo Clinic, can also cause withdrawal from one’s surroundings, calling out, moaning and making other sounds, and sleep and emotional disturbances. Eventually I wrote on a piece of paper that I had dissociative identity. I was truly beginning to believe that was what I was dealing with.

“Help me,” I also wrote.

Once we got to the hospital I started communicating better with the male paramedic. I managed to share more about what had happened that day. He was validating and a good listener and I calmed down talking with him. He asked if I felt safe going back to Margaret’s, but I didn’t want to go back there. They said my dad was on his way but neither did I want to go home with him.

“There is much I want to say about all these people but can’t,” I wrote.

Even then I felt like I said too much and was unfairly bad mouthing them. The paramedic said the hospital could organise some other accommodation for me. He assured me that the psych people at this hospital were good and encouraged me to be open with them.

A man from the psych department arrived. I took an immediate disliking to him. I got the urge to run, but was still in a bit of a collapsed state. The paramedics left me with him. He was with a young woman of some other nationality and they asked me to sit down with them in a curtained area that had a few chairs. I barely managed to sit upright in a chair. I was holding a glass of water but didn’t know where to put it and the two of them just stared at me.

The man started by asking me my age and birthday.

“I am many different ages,” I said.

I told him I believed I had DID. He was one of the first people I had ever opened up to about this.

“That’s not what’s in your notes,” he told me.

It hurt me that he didn’t believe me and seemed to think I was making it all up. I felt invalidated and shut down and I quickly started getting distressed again.

“Well the notes are wrong!” I said.

I quickly realised we were not getting anywhere. I realised he had read all the bullshit the hospital in the city had written about me and had already decided I was just another annoying BPD bitch. Even if I left the city I still couldn’t get away from this label and all the prejudice it carried. I knew I wasn’t going to get a bed and they were just going to kick me out like everyone did. So, once again I decided to abandon them before they abandoned me. I tried to get the hell out of there, but I struggled to get going. I fell to the floor, crawled out into the hallway and started screaming. I felt so helpless. They told me to stop as I was disturbing the other patients next to me. They showed no warmth. No kindness. No concern. Their hearts were cold as stone. To them I was just throwing a tantrum.

The man asked me which of them I wanted to speak to. Again, both were rotten. It was like having to chose between Liberal and Labor.

I couldn’t get up off the ground.

“Let us out!” I scribbled furiously.

I was disoriented, could barely see anything and tried crawling away.

“The exit is that direction,” the man told me.

Suddenly I managed to get up and I ran for my life. They didn’t even try to stop me; I figured they wanted me gone. I saw a door closing and managed to slip through it before it shut. I felt the silver buckles and clips of my black bondage dress catch in the door on the way out. I then ran through the emergency department waiting room and out the front entrance as everyone stared at me wondering what the fuck went on in there.

I was crying and had no idea where to go or what to do. I was lucky the kind paramedics who brought me to the hospital were still outside. They found me and asked what happened.

“They didn’t believe me when I started sharing,” I wrote to the man. “They’re all the same.”

He said he was hoping they’d be better and was sorry that happened. I sat on the nature strip crying and hugged him. He called my dad from his phone to see where he was at. My dad was 10 minutes away. The paramedic told him I had left the hospital.

“Don’t leave her alone,” my dad warned them, but the paramedic said he couldn’t stay with me as he had more calls to attend to.

“She’s been speaking with us and I think she’s calmed down,” the paramedic told my dad. The paramedic asked me to wait in the waiting room for my dad. He walked me back in there and I held his hand to thank him before he left. I then sat there and cried in front of everyone. There was an elderly man next to me who asked me what was wrong.

“The hospital won’t help me,” I wrote to him.

“Why not?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I wrote. “I guess they don’t think I’m actually sick.”

“Well that’s fucked up!” the man said. He went to the reception desk and told them to help me. It doesn’t take a professional to recognsie someone who needs help.

The sun had set. My dad soon arrived and we left. I sat on the nature strip with him and wrote to him. I was already devastated and couldn’t deal with anything. He then told me he’d washed my sheets and my special rabbit butterfly doona cover, which I didn’t want washing. He didn’t even use my natural laundry liquid but his shitty chemical powder which irritates me. That was the last straw. I found it thoughtless and disrespectful of my space. I felt so alone, helpless, misunderstood, violated, and trapped with people who I did not want to be around. No one really got me and I had no where to go. It was awful being dependent on the very people who hurt me, having to keep all these secrets and not knowing who was my friend and who was my enemy. Fuck everything! So out of sheer despair I walked in front of cars again. I stood there in the middle of the road in front of one as they put on their breaks and came to a stand still. My dad then moved me to the median strip and I screamed. We were then approached by a guy called “Tom” who apparently was a nurse at the hospital and had just finished his shift. He asked if everything was ok.

“No, it’s not,” my dad said. “My daughter’s trying to throw herself in front of cars!”

Tom said to come back to the hospital.

“Will you let Tom take you back to the hospital?” my dad asked me.

I agreed. Tom hooked his arm around my right arm and my dad took me by my left and they led me back to the hospital. It was like having both an angel and a devil on my shoulders. I hated my dad touching me, but I felt very comforted by Tom. I just needed some human touch from a caring nurse like him who recognised a sick person when they saw one. We got back to the hospital and he let reception know I was there.

“Did you tell them she was trying to jump in front of cars?” my dad asked him.

I don’t think Tom did.

Tom was like a brief candle light in the darkness.  When he left my world turned pitch black again and I completely lost it, screaming and crying in front of everyone. I hid in a corner and screamed. My dad said we needed some urgent help. The male psych cunt came back. He told my dad that I chose to leave and they had assessed me as fine to go.

“Do you think she has the capacity to make that decision?” my dad said. “What is wrong with you guys??? She almost killed a pregnant woman, her toddler and a man who swerved and nearly crashed trying not to hit her when she walked in front of them on the road. She needs to be sectioned and sedated!”

The psych man finally said we could come back in and speak with one of the doctors. I agreed, and we returned to the same spot we sat before in a curtained area of the emergency department. I sat there pressing my foot into the floor and rubbing it up and down. I was given 10mg of diazepam, which I did need, and would have taken much earlier if I had some on me. A chubby woman named Julie then came in, who was apparently a psychiatric registrar, meaning she was still in the process of completing her psychiatry training. Yet she was not like any other psychiatrist I had ever met. She said she never read the notes previously written about people. She wanted to start from scratch, completely unprejudiced. We talked a bit about my autism, and she even shared with me that she was neurodivergent herself and had ADD. She asked about school, and my dad said I was bullied.

“Have you heard of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria?” she asked me.

I had. It was a term we used in the neurodivergent community and most psychiatrists know nothing about it. Rejection sensitive dysphoria is when you experience severe emotional pain when feeling rejected or like you’ve failed. As Cleveland Clinic writes, “This condition is linked to ADHD and experts suspect it happens due to differences in brain structure. Those differences mean your brain can’t regulate rejection-related emotions and behaviors, making them much more intense.” I also suspect it is related to a history of being rejected which is something many neurodivergent people have experienced. Rejection sensitive dysphoria can make people perfectionists and people pleasers to avoid the trauma of rejection.

Julie asked about my responses to medications such as antidepressants. It sounded like she agreed with the bipolar diagnosis. She also said what I had been experiencing was trauma-induced psychosis, “derealisation” and “depersonalisation”. I didn’t even share everything that had been happening. I think she was just an intuitive person and her lived experience made her a better psychiatrist.

The two psych people who had been total assholes to me before completely changed their tune. I even wondered if they were the same people. The man offered my dad a coffee. I guess they humbled themselves. They realised there was more to me than a disordered personality. Julie did not consider BPD even once.

I told Julie I liked her.

“I like you too!” she said. “I want to work with you!”

Unfortunately, Julie said there were no beds available that night. She said we could stay in the waiting area that night but it would be overstimulating and I’d get no sleep, so would be better off going home, then coming back the next day. It was a bit disappointing. If she really felt I needed a bed, surely she would make it happen? She had to leave abruptly as she got an urgent call from the psych ward. I was sent away with a script for ten tablets of diazepam and ten tablets of temazepam. My dad and I raced to the pharmacy before they closed at 11pm and managed to get them in time. My dad also bought me a charger for my phone from a service station.

Margaret apparently told my dad that he could stay at her’s that night, which was kind of her. So we went back there and crashed. I slept in the back linin room and my dad slept in the main hall. I had the best sleep I’d had in a very long time that night.

The previous day felt like a fucked up dream and I was sure Margaret must hate me now, though my dad reassured me that she didn’t. My dad told Margaret that I was back. Apparently she was shocked the hospital turned me away. She thought they would do more to help me. My dad raved about Julie and asked if I could live on the farm so I could keep seeing her. He saw me smile for the first time with her and said he’s never seen a psychiatrist “get” me so quickly. Margaret said she was happy for me to live there, but her partner was not.

“That’s mean of him,” I wrote to my dad, and couldn’t stop crying. Margaret’s partner was initially all for hiding me from the police, but he seems to have cooled on this nut house run away now. Dad explained that they are probably just burnt out from their own struggles and then taking in so many people with problems.

“Yes, and I’m the worst of them all,” I told him.

Dad told me Margaret had a good heart and was a willful woman who usually got her way. He believed that he and Margaret could change Margaret’s partner’s mind. He gave them $700 for their hospitality and to prove I am not a burden. Hopefully the money will help them build more fences to keep the foxes from killing their chickens.

My dad said he texted the paramedic who helped me to tell him that I ended up seeing Julie, the psychiatrist at the hospital, and she was great. The paramedic even texted back to say he was very happy for me and hopes my mental health now starts to improve.

That next day Dad and I went into town. I had a hot chocolate from a café which Margaret recommended to my dad. Dad had a homemade sausage roll, which he said was one of the best sausage rolls he’d ever had. My dad told the waitress I wasn’t speaking, and she was so accepting of me, saying “that’s totally fine”. We then drove 30 or so minutes to the hospital again hoping to see Julie. Unfortunately she is not a regular employee there and doesn’t have a private practice. We were told there was no way we could continue seeing her. It was like being teased with a delicious chocolate which we could never buy again. We sat in the emergency department waiting room for at least 45 minutes as my dad told the psych person how great Julie was and how we had to track her down and see her again. It sounded like we were obsessed with the woman. The man we spoke to wouldn’t pass on a message to her for us, but did let slip her surname, and said if we got her notes through Freedom of Information her surname would be there and then we could search her on the AHPRA website, the regulatory body for psychiatrists. He didn’t do anything else to help us. Dad thought that Julie said to come back and speak to her boss, but this man said there was no psychiatrist there I could speak with. He said just to call CATT (Crisis Assessment and Treatment Team) or 000 if I have another crisis.

“I can’t afford to have another crisis,” I wrote to him. “Someone might actually die next.”

After the hospital we went to the supermarket to buy some socks and other things. I only had one pair of socks the entire time I was at Margaret’s and my shoes and socks were beginning to wreak. By this point I was ready to collapse. We then went looking for a vegan meal. We found a restaurant on Google but it took us a while to find it as it was hidden down an alleyway. I lay on the couch, not giving a shit what people thought of me. I ended up asking my dad to get the rest of the meal take away as I had to leave.

I really needed to be alone in silence after this whole ordeal. It was hard spending the next two days with my dad around. I felt as fragile as butterfly wings, like I was tip toeing on a tightrope and even the smallest gust of wind could blow me off and cause me to have a screaming fit again wherever I was. When we got back from town I sat on the small wooden pier by the dam, but then lost it when my dad, who was sitting not that far from me, made a phone call. I stormed off but just as I left the property a clip fell off my dress. I spent half an hour trying to find it because it distresses me when I lose anything. I couldn’t find it and then it was too dark to see properly. Dogs were barking and there were some other noise in the area and I couldn’t cope. I was foul, angry company. I just wanted to scream at my dad to fuck off. I scribbled to him once to leave me alone, but sometimes I just had to get away from him so took off without saying anything. I felt like a horrible person as my dad was just trying to help me. After two days he said he wanted to return to the city. He suggested going into Castlemaine first and getting a meal. I remembered one place that had good vegan lasagna. I asked my dad to call them on my phone but my phone is fucked and won’t make calls anymore. He then tried from his phone but they wouldn’t answer. It was all too much. I ended up having another meltdown and took off down the street. The restaurant then texted back to say they no longer have the lasagna.

“They just texted back and said they don’t have lasagna anymore,” I texted to my dad. “I can’t stand to go to the shops anyway. It just about killed me the trip to Bendigo yesterday, sitting in the ED all that time and then looking for food afterwards. I am having an autistic meltdown now and desperately need my own space. Maybe you should just leave me here I don’t know if I’ll survive the trip back.”

I sat by the side of the road with bull ants crawling around me and then saw my dad drive right past me. I just about started crying again as I felt like I had pushed him to his limits and he was abandoning me now. All I did was push and pull people. I returned to the church and was going to take some diazepam but couldn’t find my bag.

“Ok,” my dad texted back. “But where are you?”

“Back at the church you drive right past me! Did you take my bag of stuff???? My pills are in there I need them!”

He returned to the church with my bag of stuff. He said we really needed to go. I took some diazepam so I could survive the trip home with him in the car. I was going to lie in the back but there were heavy tools and mess everywhere, the seats were down and I couldn’t push them up again, which made me start screaming again. On top of that I couldn’t find my phone. Finally I managed to push the seats up, found my phone and we headed home, with me lying in the back the entire trip back.

I felt so defeated being back in the city. When we got home my dad said he was going to call my mum to come up and help. He didn’t seem to get me at all. I didn’t want my mum around. I didn’t want him around. I just wanted to be left alone. I couldn’t escape in my car as my dad’s car was blocking the driveway and I didn’t even know where the keys were so I took off down the street. All the neighbour’s dogs were barking and I just about started screaming again. I already missed the space and quiet of the country. I missed not having to sleep in a suffocating box to get away from noise. I missed waking up to nothing but the lul of birds. There were no chain saws and no electric leaf blowers like there frequently is here. Often I can’t even sit in my yard here without being assaulted by noise. I told my mum that I didn’t need her help. She said she wanted to drop off some juice and food, which I appreciated as I probably was dehydrated and it was too much to go to the shops. I asked her to just drop them at dad’s house. I returned to the house and saw my mum briefly. I didn’t want to see her and it was too much to even nod or write. I think I do have an extreme case of “pathological demand avoidance” right now, as another autistic friend suggested.

I’ve come back to all the shit I left behind. I am a hoarder and there is mess everywhere. The table tennis table, which my dad recently cleared, is now covered in parcels from my shopping addiction which was out of control. I don’t even give a shit about these things anymore and have left them all unopened. The good thing about being away without money was that it put an end to my shopping. Hopefully it stays that way and my bank account can recover. I did want to open the badge supplies I ordered as I want to turn my autistic fairy friend’s artwork into badges. She designs mandalas and they will look amazing as badges. We are both excited about the project. I want to sell them and give her most of the profits. She is an underrated artist and I’m hoping the badges will give her some publicity. She has spent her entire life homeless without electricity or water and has started a campaign to try and get the government to connect her to the grid. But of all the parcels that have arrived, I couldn’t find the badge supplies. This triggered another break down yesterday. I thought it might be sitting at the post office but my dad was out and I couldn’t find my car keys.

“Where’s my fucking keys?” I texted him.

“Your “fucking keys” are in my top draw,” he texted back.

“Thank you,” I said. “Now where’s my fucking bag that was in the boot??? I wish you’d leave things in the same place and state I left them!”

“Sorry! Do you mean the “Myer’s bag near the kitchen table? I am at Warrandyte with Phillip- so can’t look in my car, for an hour”

“No the bag I left in the boot of MY car that I left at Peter’s [my psychotherapist] when I was taken to hospital. It has my wallet in it.”

When I didn’t hear back I wrote more and more hysterical messages.

“Where is it? I’m sick of this shit. You trying to fucking kill me. I can’t deal with this.”

I then finally found it in the back seat, which was a relief.

“Everything is so damn fucking hard,” I told my dad. “Of all those fucking parcels delivered the one I want is not there, so I have to go to the post office to see if it’s there.”

I went to the post office in the heat and in my pyjamas. I showed them the text saying there was a parcel there for me.

“Surname, please?” the man at the counter said.

He was confused when I didn’t answer and started texting on my phone. I typed my surname and showed it to him. He then found the parcel. Thankfully the badge supplies were there.

“Thank you so much,” I wrote.

“You’re welcome,” the man said, with the thumbs up.

After masking for decades, my mask is finally starting to crack. I have become a lot less self-conscious, caring less about social norms. But members of the public have been very kind and accepting of me for the most part.

My sleep has changed a lot since being on the farm. Last night I couldn’t sleep, then got a few hours before waking up around 9am (which is extremely early for me). As I wake up I am disoriented. I don’t know where I am. I am nauseous and when I first got home from the country I had diarrhea. I am also SO hungry now, and really miss the food on Margaret’s farm.

I didn’t see Margaret before I left. When she came to the church that final day to see my dad I was in my underwear and took off into the back room. I felt so embarrassed. I did send her a text when I left.

“Margaret I’m so sorry all I’ve done is brought you guys trouble. I am so embarrassed. Thank you for your hospitality. The ice-cream, homemade lemonade and other things you make are amazing. I really do love it here and I would like to come back soon if you will have me. I think if I have some more belongings on me I will be better. Hugs from Zoe”

I have not heard back.