hsphaven

Part 1. Fleeing the city to live with mice

My time away in the country just got worse and worse by the minute. I couldn’t get rid of the mice in the caravan which would keep me awake all night. My friend and I carried a mattress down from her house one night and I slept in the annex, a room adjoining the caravan, but the little shits were in there as well. They kept running through the room all night. I was so exhausted I couldn’t even get up.

I resorted to traditional snap traps that actually kill the mice; they were still better than the commercial bait companies use which drive the mice away from the house and they die a horrible death. An owl then eats them and gets poisoned. One morning one of the snap traps caught a mouse. I was pretty shaken and felt horrible. It seemed to suffer, trying to get out before it finally died. I was terrified to look at it and just left it there for a while. I told myself that this is life, that animals kill each other all the time in nature, that I should just toughen up, toss it outside and let another animal enjoy it for dinner. But still, I’d rather not kill another animal if I don’t have to. That’s why I’m vegan. I don’t believe I need to eat meat, and some horrible things go on in the animal industry that I just don’t want to support. 

Shortly after the mouse was killed, another came to visit, examining the remains of its friend. I didn’t understand why life hated me so much. I was doing everything right to improve my sleep and health. I was up during the morning and got some daylight, I ate healthy, I got a bit of exercise when I could, I wasn’t on screens at night (and couldn’t, even if I wanted to, as I had no power). It wasn’t fair. It felt like some kind of conspiracy to keep me unwell and suffering.

I’d also run out of toilet paper, so was using dirty pieces. I preferred this than going into my friend’s house to get some from her laundry and then ending up trapped in endless chatter.

I became so exhausted I could barely do anything. The election was coming up and my disability support worker was going to take me to vote. I would then “have to try figure out who is the lesser scumbag of all the scumbags wanting to run the country”, as I wrote to my physio. I really didn’t know what he made of me, saying nothing in person and then swearing and documenting every minute detail of my life over email. My disability worker texted me that morning asking me how I was. I told him about the rodents. 

“Don’t bring your ratty friends with you today,” he texted me.

“Hahaha, well they could do with an outing as well,” I texted back. “All they do is hang in the caravan all day and night.”

I was half an hour late to meet my support worker. I had to walk to the gate, which is quite a walk, and unlock it. I wasn’t able to do it earlier as I was so exhausted. Thankfully he was still there.

“I was worried the rats had eaten you alive or something!” he said.

He didn’t get my text saying I was on my way as he had no reception. I’m lucky I still got a bit of reception. I’m with Telstra and invested in a good phone when the 3G network closed. I originally didn’t want to part with my prehistoric phone which barely got internet and had a lower SAR/radiation level than most phones. I was so glad I had my new phone.

On the way to the gate my friend was texting me asking us to pick up her rubbish and take it into town. I was already late, sleep deprived and had nothing left in me so ignored it. I knew if we picked it up she would corner us in her endless chatter again (which isn’t even a back and forth conversation) and use up MY support hours. We already struggled to get everything I needed to do done. We went to vote first.

“Is anyone here not local,” a man asked. We headed over there and I was able to skip the queue. It also brought me a strange sense of joy being a “foreigner”. This was who I was: an outsider. This is who I’ve been all my life. I found a sense of identity and belonging in not belonging anywhere.

My friend continued to text me with more requests while we were out. It was staring to piss me off, especially as I’d told her I was already exhausted because I hadn’t slept. I was annoyed that I was the one expected to help her. It would have been nice if she had of opened the gate for me. My city worker, Sofie, seemed to take an immediate disliking to my friend. Sofie has a sharp reading of people and worried my friend would turn me into a her “little slave”. She wasn’t far off.

I can’t deal with anything. Shops always kill me. Then I was exposed to a few loud noises, such as my worker’s ringtone which he had on maximum volume as he’s old and deaf. The ringtone was like those vintage phone rings, “BRRRRRR, BRRRRRR”. I was annoyed he hadn’t already turned it down because he knew about my noise sensitivity and it clearly distressed me last time I was with him too. I just about lost my shit in public and was lucky I didn’t end up in the regional hospital, though maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing as there definitely wouldn’t be any rats in such a sterile environment. My tinnitus got the loudest it had ever been while I said some nasty things about my friend on the way home.

“She says she has fatigue,” I said. “It’s probably from talking all day. I don’t know how she has the energy to talk to people all day but then tells me to check her letterbox all the time as she’s too tired.”

“Maybe that’s why her EX husband is now an EX,” my worker said.

“Yes. He’s the one who needs a gate!” I said. “I’ll stop being nasty now. I’m just totally fucked.”

“Yes I can see it in your face,” he said.

My worker kindly offered to come look at the caravan in a few days time and see if he could find where all the mice were getting in. He said the problem’s not going to go away until we could find where they were getting in and seal it.

The power, which relied on the sun, was out when I got back. The days were getting cloudier as winter approached and the power was starting to go out earlier in the day. I turned my phone off and crawled into bed. I didn’t even bother changing into my PJs. I needed SILENCE and NO HUMAN CONTACT. Thankfully the rodents were a bit quieter. I did hear something in the caravan, so got up to check. One of the non-kill traps had caught another mouse. I walked a little way down the driveway and released it. I had trouble finding the caravan on the way back as it was totally dark. I had to listen for the frogs, which told me I was near as the dam was opposite the caravan.

I ended up spending seven hours in bed, but I wasn’t actually asleep. I was scared and hypervigilant. I heard a strange noise outside which I wasn’t sure was an animal or human. I was terrified my friend would rock up at the caravan and invade my space, which would have been the final straw. I was in this weird altered state of consciousness, kept wondering if I was even alive and whether the spirit of the mouse I had killed that morning was still in the caravan haunting me. My brain was turning to mush. At 1am I managed to get up, brush my teeth, and take some diazepam, but it didn’t t make me feel any better. I then got up again, boiled some water on the gas stove and made a hot water bottle as it was bloody freezing, even with two doonas. When I did finally fall asleep I had some really weird dreams…. my mind trying to process and make sense of stuff that cannot be made sense of, I guess. In one dream, I was at some kind of apartment where a group of people were having a party at night. I went outside and saw my psychotherapist, who pressed his balls against my body. I then met somebody who I shared a deep connection with. I wasn’t sure if they were a boy or girl.

“Do I know you?” I asked them.

They said I did. They told me their name, but I can’t remember it anymore. We then went to some train tracks and they tried to kill themselves. I encouraged them to get off the tracks. We went to the shops and picked up more lost teenagers. We then had a meal together in the Thai restaurant.

In the second dream, I went back to the farm I stayed at when fleeing the hospital several months back. The farm I had a break down at, walked in front of traffic and was taken to the local hospital. They didn’t want me back after that. There was a kid there who wondered why I always came to stay there.

“Why do you stay here?” he said in a voice that sounded like he regarded me as a pest or parasite.

“I guess because I have no where else to go,” I told him, hoping for sympathy.

A mouse then woke me up at 5am. It ran across the room, past my bed, and into the back section where my friend had dumped a whole lot of crap behind a curtain. It then started climbing up what looked like a wooden bed end, having a field day. For creatures that were so small they made an awful racket! I moved one of the traps there and then moved back into the caravan (I was still sleeping in the annex). I had left the new sleeping bag I’d bought with my disability worker outside to air and forgot to bring it in. The nice flannel lining was a bit damp, and I was concerned how I would dry it without any sun, a hairdryer or heating. I crawled back into my old sleeping bag with feathers that were falling out everywhere and making me cough. I left a trail of features behind wherever I went with it, and the place was starting to look like somebody had a serious pillow fight in there. I didn’t have enough power to run a vacuum cleaner to clean up and was too worn out anyway. I was sick of the daily grind, but that was the least of my problems.

At around 8am the bloody mouse woke me again when the rat trap caught it. It was one of the non-kill traps, a long plastic box with an elevated end. You place the food at the end. When the mouse enters and finds the food, the box tilts, triggering the door at the other end to close. It is a pretty neat invention. However, it woke me when it caught one. I’d hear it thumping up and down like a see-saw. I still continued to use these traps, which were starting to work better, rather than the snap traps. I found some square sheets of carpet in the caravan which I tried putting under the traps to muffle the sound.

With all the rodents descending on me while asleep, it felt like a living horror movie. I became paranoid that every little sound I heard was another mouse. I started to become desperate, thinking of getting somebody to bring my car down from the city and sleeping in my car. Sleeping had become fucking terrifying, even before the mice. I felt like I was dying and kept having all these horrible dreams. I started to freak out about the kind of stuff I’d been sending people, like my physio. My emails were getting darker and darker as my mind closed in on me, the weather turned colder, and I lost the ability to sleep at all.

“Everything feels so dark,” I wrote to my physio. “Even during the day. I feel nauseous, breathless, weak, am shaking, feel weird like I’m gonna pass out or something and can’t clean up or do anything. I try to sleep but I can’t, even though the rodents aren’t as bad during the day. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m being subject to demonic attacks. It’s like Satan has got into my head, especially at night.”

“Its also possible you have a respiratory infection or UTI given your living conditions,” my physio wrote back. “Sounds like it’s horrible, you were better off than this at home. Maybe go home, maybe go to the doctors and see if some antibiotics might be necessary? Do you have a fever? Would explain being freezing, although it is getting colder at night. There are more mundane explanations for feeling as shit as you do that don’t involve demonic attacks.”

“Great, now I’ve already lost power for the day,” I continued to vent. “I’ll try leave you alone now. I think I’ll start harassing Lani next with what battery I have left on my phone. She can hear all about Satan, the rats and the feathers from my sleeping bag that have got all over my clothes, the bedding, the floor, the air, even the porch. The caravan may as well have a door greeting saying “welcome to slaughterville”, the most grotesque caravan you will ever step foot in. In here you will find both live and dead rats, more feathers, as well as huntsmen, white tails, bullants, cockroaches. Grab a cup from the dishwashing tub that has been sitting there for a week, have a cup of tea and make yourself at home.

I don’t even really need a sign. When I got here there were already animal skulls on display, tied to the solar panels and sitting along the deck. There’s also a pile of toilet paper in the fern jungle outside the caravan, which is where I pee.”

I wrote another email:

“Oh and don’t forget, relax on the porch to the tranquil sound of gun shots as more animals die around you”

Out where I was staying in the country, there was no insulation from reality. I was exposed to the elements and some nights were so cold I was scared I was going to die from hypothermia. I was exposed to death. The area was heavily exploited for resources and I saw exactly where our oil, energy and gas came from. My disability worker took me to the beach one time and pointed out some big ugly things in the ocean which he said sucked gas out of the floor. He said he used to work at one of them at night. I could see them even with my poor eyesight. We watched a surfer who looked like a speck amongst the big waves. It made me realise how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things, how vulnerable we are, that death can swallow us up like the ocean, one day here, the next gone. At night when I went outside I saw an eerie, orange glow in the distance. I thought it was a bushfire at first but my friend said it was actually a gas power plant. My disability worker told me they burn gas to release it so the power plant doesn’t explode basically. I knew this stuff went on but seeing it for real kinda scarred me. Big companies have even been touching the land right next to my friend’s property. She said the gas exploration there caused a fire once which almost destroyed a neighbour’s house. Even worse is fracking, which used to be banned but there has been a push to lift the ban. I have not been following whether it has been lifted as I find it too depressing.

I think reality was actually making me mad.

I continued to get horrific nightmares. One night I dreamt I lost control of my movement and started getting these horrific seizure-like things, a bit like in Stranger Things where The Upside Down monster would make people’s limbs become all disjointed. It was like some kind of dark witchcraft. In the dream I found out I had contracted the strange disease my friend’s dog had which killed it. All I knew was that there was something terribly wrong with me and no doctor could figure out what it was. I told this to my physio, who probably thinks I’m a total hypochondriac.

My disability worker organised for somebody to come seal the caravan from the mice. No thanks to my friend. She’d buggered off to the city to see Lee Harris and didn’t even leave the gate unlocked for the worker to come in, as I asked her to. I was stuck in bed too sick to walk there. Then while in bed somebody rocked up, muttered something to themselves and then sped off on what sounded like a motorised buggy. I didn’t know who the hell it was and it just fed into my terrified and paranoid headspace. It turned out to be my friend dropping off the instructions to the tent she leant me as she left in her car with the broken exhaust. She also came to check the inverter voltage, which she was fixated on. Shortly before she left she cracked the shits at me for leaving my fridge off when it was a sunny day and it should have been on. I thought I had switched the powerpoint on as I rushed out the door to meet a disability worker, but when I got home I found the fridge was still off as I had only half pressed the switch. My friend started hounding me about it when my worker and I dropped off her shopping which we had collected when we went into town. I told my friend we would only be dropping it off and picking up her tent, but then she came out and told me she’d left the instructions inside. I wondered if it was a deliberate attempt to manipulate me into staying there with her. She then started stressing about the fridge.

“We need to talk about your power system,” she told me, ironically depleting MY energy in the process.

“It will have to wait,” I tried to tell her. “We can sort it out over text.”

She then started chatting with the worker, who was already late back. Workers have to allow 15 minutes just to drive down the driveway it is so long. My friend was driving me mental. She was asking me to check my voltage every few hours, which was ridiculous. I came to her place needing space, I didn’t want to feel like I had to report to somebody every few hours. I could barely even get out of bed anyway. Thankfully my disability worker also came with the handyman and knew where the key to the gate was, unlocked it and let him and the handyman in.

Despite the handyman’s best efforts to seal the caravan, another mouse got in that night. I couldn’t believe it. It felt like some sick, cruel joke. I ended up sleeping in my friend’s house that night. At least she left the door unlocked. I probably would have died of hypothermia if I didn’t sleep up there; I really wasn’t at all prepared for how cold it was. Everyone commented how cold it was, even in the city, and I felt the cold more than most as I was so thin. I think I have lost even more weight while away. I worried it would be cold in her house as well. I didn’t know if it had heating, but at least it had a warm shower. I honestly didn’t know if I’d make it through the night and thought I might have to contact emergency services. I carried my sleeping bag up in the dark, leaving a trail of feathers behind me. It actually worked out well that my friend had gone to the city as I enjoyed having the house to myself. I still didn’t sleep well, though. I got my period. No wonder I’d been feeling so dreadful. It was another layer of hell I really didn’t need. I kept waking up all night with excruciating pain, with severe bloating, breathless, nauseous or from more nightmares. I was worried I’d be cold still but sometimes I was cold and other times I was too hot. My stomach also felt really gassy and it was all trapped in there. I felt like a baby that needed burping. It was the most distressing feeling ever, and is not usually something I get with my period. I felt like I was regressing to a child or something… wetting my pants at badminton, tummy issues, all the nightmares, running away, the selective mutism, which is considered a childhood disorder. But it’s not really selective mutism as there’s not a single person I speak to.

I needed to know when my friend was coming home, because that was when I planned to leave and had to arrange transport back as I didn’t have a car. I couldn’t live with her in her house, nor in that bloody caravan. The tent wasn’t a good option either as it was so cold and I needed some insulation from the shooters. But after harassing me the entire time I was there, my friend then disappeared off the radar and wouldn’t answer my messages. It was a bit scary being out there all alone with no transport. If there was a bushfire, as there often was around there, I’d be screwed. If I had a medical emergency I’d be screwed too. My friend knew how sick I’d been and I was angry she left me there alone without any emergency contacts and was unreachable. She left me there tripping out in an altered state where I didn’t know if I was awake or dreaming. I was so sleep deprived my dream and waking world had started to blur.  I honestly thought she might come back and find me passed out on the bathroom floor or something. I wished I WOULD pass out and not have to deal with life anymore. I wrote my physio some more emails. I told him I would be returning to the city soon and wanted an appointment.

“I just wanna lie down and pass out now,” I wrote to him, and lay on her deck in the sun.

It turned out my friend had left her phone behind. She started texting me from a friend’s number, and said she’d be back late that night. I made the most of my time there alone, picking up her book “Listening When Parts Speak” by Tamala Floyd. Floyd talks about parts expressing themselves through illness and physical pain, and “managers” using physical ailments to keep the person’s “exiles” out of awareness.

When I checked my emails later than afternoon, I hadn’t heard back from my physio. It sent me into a total tailspin. I was freaking out and wanted to bawl my eyes out.

“Do you want to be rid of me just like Gill now???” I wrote to him. “I can’t go through this again”

“It’s been 5 months and I have never heard from Damien still!” I wrote in a second email.

“There’s nothing to live for,” I wrote in a third. “Nothing for me here, nothing for me back in the city. I just spend my entire life trying to flee horrid situations. Suicide is my only friend now”

“Why the fuck he just say out of no where he wants to cut back our sessions and I bet you’re gonna say the same and Lani won’t tell me anything unt Sunday,” I wrote in a forth email.

I then got a text from another number which was not in my contacts saying they were close. I thought it was my friend getting back early, which just tipped me over the edge. There was no way I could deal with her while in the emotional state I was in.

“Having this total break down here in the middle of the bush,” I wrote to my physio. “My friends nearly back, I have to get out of here. Meanwhile the handyman waiting at the locked gate. He’s back to try seal the caravan from the fucking liitle shits AGAIN.”

That gate was starting to become a real pain, keeping the wrong people out.

I grabbed all my stuff from my friend’s house and took off back to the caravan. I contacted my city disability worker asking her to pick me up. She asked me to contact her organisation and also my disability support coordinator. So I lost it with her next:

“Fucking kill myself,” I wrote to my physio.

The handyman then arrived in his car just as I was almost at the caravan. I dumped my stuff outside and took off into the bushland as I just couldn’t deal with people at all. I then realised it was him who had texted me saying he was close. I breathed a sigh of relief. I had the following text exchange with him:

My city support worker said she knew what it was like to be alone, and organised it all for me in the end. I calmed down and offered the handyman tea afterwards, even though I needed the time to relax alone. He seemed like a very nice man. We then heard something in the walls of the caravan. We realised the mice were actually living in the wall cavities. They had claimed the caravan as their own. I wasn’t too disappointed as I had already given up on it and accepted that the mice won. I planned to go back to the city until I could rent another caravan. My support worker in the country had a mate who ran a caravan business and said there’d be one available in a week, though I still worried the mice would take a shine to the new one.

My city disability worker arrived around 9pm.It was very big of her to drive me all the way back to the city so late; I knew we would be getting back after midnight. I have found such wonderful disability support workers both in the country and city. I met her at the gate as she couldn’t find the key and was too scared to keep looking as the animal noises were creeping her out. We then went back to the caravan and I threw some stuff in her car. I left a few things behind as I was in no state to pack and thought I’d probably be back anyway. We locked the gate, which somebody had tied balloons to. People would ask about the balloons.

“It’s probably the mice alerting their friends to the party they’re throwing in my caravan,” I’d tell them.

I played music all the way home. I had the wildest playlist. I started with “Heal This Land” by Tina Malia. I played some old, upbeat songs, such as “The Boys Of Summer” by Don Henley. I played ethnicelectronic music like Deep Forest, which my worker hated, saying it sounded like somebody was being strangled. I also played this song by Faery Band, and my worker wound down her window, telling me it sounded like witchcraft. She warned me that the music we consume has an impact on us. I played songs about love, and anti-psychiatry songs such as Define ‘Better’. When we were on the home stretch I played “The Light Behind Your Eyes” by My Chemical Romance. “So long to all my friends, every one of them met tragic ends,” the phone blasted.

“So, this is the leading song back to Melbourne,” my worker joked. “It’s so depressing.”

 She got a glimpse into my deranged mind that night and I feel a little embarrassed.

Part 2. Back in the city

It was a bit of a shock to the system returning to the city. It was like crossing a veil between two worlds or lives. I forgot that I didn’t have to use a torch in the dark as I had power.

I was sick again that night. So sick that I woke my dad up, who didn’t even know I had come back.

“I’m so sick,” I said, sitting on the floor outside his door. I then went back to bed, my torture chamber. The next day I started to itch in bed. I worried that I had brought bugs back with me from the mouse-infested caravan and infected my bed. The first thing I should have done when I got home was shower, but I just went straight to bed. I asked my dad to wash my bedding as I was too unwell. I showered multiple times a day. I left my suitcase outside and felt like I had to quarantine all my belongings. It was the last thing I needed. As I write this, I am on my laptop in my bathroom because I don’t want anything I had in that caravan to be touching my bed.

I moved into my old bedroom at the back of the house. I was so pulverised I could do nothing but lie in bed, even though I wasn’t getting any rest in there. I’d toss and turn and my level of agitation was like nothing I’ve ever felt before.  

I felt like a wild animal lost in suburbia. I felt suffocated having neighbours that were so close. I couldn’t hack the sound of a neighbour’s lawnmower. The sound was like a drill into my head. I couldn’t hack being around my dad, especially when he used the kitchen at the same time as me. I was scared being around cars again, which was such a change from living in the middle of the bush where the nearest road was kilometres away, and even on that road you rarely saw a car. I felt vulnerable not having a locked gate, especially tonight. It’s a bit of a strange night. We have a northerly wind and I heard a man shouting outside on the street. Not long afterwards, there was an earthquake! I also haven’t been able to hack all the traffic. I tried to go to the shops Saturday morning to get some milk. The carpark was completely full. I decided to park in a disabled spot. I was disabled, it wasn’t a lie, and I was going to be quick so I hoped I wouldn’t get booked for not having a disabled sticker.

“How are you today?” the check out man asked.

“Don’t ask,” I would have said, if I could speak.

I couldn’t cope or deal with anything. I was in a distressed state and couldn’t even communicate as I am still non-verbal. I tried to write something down to my dad but he couldn’t read my handwriting. I was so frustrated I lost it, stormed off into the back bedroom and screamed such a loud, shrilling, deafening scream. I threw things around the house. I then decided to present to the emergency department, which was like peanut butter on a mouse trap. I didn’t want anything more to do with their psych department, I was going for my physical issues this time. I was convinced there was something seriously wrong with me: a really bad infection, an obstructed bowel that would kill me in two weeks time, or possibly even cancer. I couldn’t stand one more night with all these distressing symptoms: the nightmares, the feeling of gas not being able to leave my body, the sleep deprivation. I wrote it all down to hand to the receptionist and doctor. I then drove to the nearest hospital in such an altered state I was lucky I didn’t have an accident. I stopped at the supermarket just before it closed and picked up some apple juice. Someone was next to me blasting music, which I could not deal with as well. It was Saturday night and election day and the atmosphere was a little strange.

I parked near the hospital and walked into the emergency department wearing a thick puffer jacket. I handed the note to the receptionist in the waiting room. I said in the note I was autistic and non-verbal.

“We’re very busy tonight,” she said, and told me the wait would be almost two hours.

“I need to sit somewhere private,” I told her. I was given an empty room. I was able to lie on some seats as they were more like a couch and I covered myself with the white hospital blankets a nurse gave me, blocking the violently bright hospital lights.

Not long afterwards, a mother with her toddler opened the door and invaded my space. There were toys in the room and her toddler started noisily playing with them. They were clearly disturbing me and I screamed. The mother didn’t seem to give a shit.

“We’re allowed to use this room too,” she said to her child, who didn’t even look sick.

She called some family members and told them to join them.

“Let me see your bum,” she said to her child. “Stop doing that, you’ve hurt your head remember? Let mummy take a look.”

There was just something about her that really irked me. I tried to open the door to let some air in but you couldn’t leave it open. Eventually I completely lost it. I started a screaming fit, picked up the bin in the room and threw it. It landed heavily on the ground and made a loud noise. This, along with my screaming earlier, was not good for my sensitive ears. A code was called and a bunch of staff swarmed the room. I hurried out and hid in a corner. The nurse knew I was autistic and told the others I was finding the lights too bright and needed to be given a bed. I was moved into the emergency department. Security asked if they needed to do anything, but she told them they could leave.

The staff were actually pretty decent towards me during this stay. My presentation was completely different. They probably barely recognised me. I no longer spoke, I didn’t smile, I was quiet and subdued and apart from that moment in the waiting room I didn’t cause a scene. I just lay in bed in a lethargic, flat and somewhat altered state.

The doctors ran some tests. They left the blood pressure cuff on my arm for too long and my fingers started getting tingly. They then did a blood test and inserted a cannula, which was very uncomfortable. I thought it must be horrible to have cancer and have to get injections and toxic chemicals put in your body all the time. My fingers are still tingling from their tests which are considered non-invasive. After all this, they didn’t find anything wrong. They had no context to my presentation. All they had were three emergency contacts: a friend I have not spoken with for months (although she does know my friend in the country too, how much of energy vampire she is and that I planned to go back there). My mum, who had no idea what’s been happening lately either, and just told the doctor that my living situation is dire and my house is a total mess. And my dad, who only knew I had gone to the country and thought I loved it there, except then when I came back I woke him up in the middle of the night telling him I was really sick. He told the doctor about the way I was discriminated against by their organisation six months ago (November last year), which is when I lost my voice. He said I had been given the label of BPD and viewed as an “attention seeker”. I overheard the doctor saying that I was being “circumstantial” and that something else was going on. I’d be interested to get my discharge summery. They did give me a referral for an ultrasound, as I requested. But they seemed to conclude it was psych related. Perhaps it is some horrible physical manifestation of my Complex PTSD, I’m not sure. Or maybe the tests just weren’t able to pick up what’s wrong with my stomach. The doctor said that he was aware I have had psych admissions before and asked if I was feeling suicidal. I paused for a bit, then shook my head.

The staff suggested I stay overnight so I could see somebody in the morning who could help with my living situation. So I spent the night in the emergency department, listening to something that will probably haunt me forever. There was a psych patient in the ED who was extremely distressed about being stuck in the ED overnight. I didn’t blame her. You are surrounded by sick, dying people, beeping, and don’t have your own room with a door you can close.

“No, no, no, no, no,” I’d hear her moan.

Then she would yell, swear, cry, and try to leave for a smoke all night long.

“I’m not on an order, you can’t do anything to me,” she said.

The nurse told her she was on an assessment order.

“Who put me on the order?” she asked.

“Your mental health clinicians did,” the nurse said.

“They didn’t even talk to me first!” she protested.

She wanted to be transferred to Box Hill or Maroondah where they have psych staff overnight and she could be assessed and moved out of the ED but the hospital wouldn’t move her. They said they weren’t allowed until a psych person gave permission, and there was none that was the very problem. There are no psych people overnight at this hospital. All they did all night was call codes and have male security officers restrain her, which just traumatised her even more.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!” she’d scream, as they gave her an injection. “I have stitches there!”

The nurse had to write something up to justify their use of forced treatment. It seems that it is possible to be restrained and forcibly treated even while on an assessment order. Once, while in the emergency department, I had a nurse threaten to give me an injection if I didn’t take some olanzapine and diazepam.  

It seemed no amount of drugs they gave this patient could dull her down. Soon enough she’d be swearing again.

“I need to go to the toilet and I don’t need a fucking male standing outside, fucking rapist!” she yelled. They at least let her go to the toilet without a security guard hovering around.

She continued trying to leave. At one point it sounded like she did get out. The staff were on the phone describing what she looked like and requesting she gets found. I was praying she managed to escape, but she was found and brought back.

“RESTRAIN!!!!” a male security guard demanded at one point. It was almost like the sick cunts enjoyed assaulting her. She was begging them not to put her in physical restraints.

“Please, I just wanted to smoke, I always come back,” she said.

At one point I wondered if they’d given her so much medication that it almost killed her.

“We have a patient who is about to code,” I heard her nurse say.

Finally, I heard the nurse on the phone requesting a psych person. I then heard the patient go quiet. I thought she was finally at peace and going to be seen to. I finally managed to drift off, but then was woken again to “don’t fucking touch me!”.

I said something to the staff, said it was upsetting witnessing all this, but no one would do anything. I asked them why the fuck was she taken to this hospital in the first place where there was no psych triage.

“She was too sick to go anywhere else,” a staff member told me. It sounded like the ambos felt they just had to drop her at the closest hospital possible.

The next day I was told that the person I was waiting all night to see probably couldn’t help me. All they could offer was some emergency accommodation, which would be even noisier than my dad’s place. I left without seeing them and shaken by what I had experienced that night. When I left the psych patient still hadn’t been seen. I regretted never going over to her cubical and sitting with her or giving her a hug, letting her know that she had some support. I was just so sick myself, it’s not my job and I guess I felt pretty useless. That was probably one of the longest, worst nights of the poor woman’s life and the guilt and regret I felt about not going over there was so bad I couldn’t stand being in my own skin and felt like killing myself. It triggered all my trauma about not protecting my sister or doing anything when my dad would threaten to kill my mum. I felt like such a hideous person. I couldn’t live with myself and I couldn’t live with what went on in this world. The past month I have seen such ugly things: dead animals, dying and distressed people, gas exploitation, psychiatric abuse. It’s almost like I feel that by killing myself it would make it all go away or something, especially if I co-create reality.

“I swear I am not insane,” I told my new psychologist. “I am actually the sanest person you will ever meet. My grip on reality is more than most people and that in itself actually breaks your mind. Depressive realism. Do you blame me for going on about Satan after the things I’ve seen in my life? I am the expression of Gaia.”

I’m scared I will never heal physically and psychologically from that night in the ED. My fingers still tingle and I’m facing the possibly of lifelong nerve damage now. It’s just torture; you try to fix one problem and you get more. It never ends. I just want it all to be over. I wish I had of got the tests done through my GP instead. I’m sorry that woman is still tied up in the mental health system. All you get from the mental health system is violence/abuse or neglect. Some people/diagnoses seem to attract one more than the other but they are both equally awful in their own ways.

“Acute hospital settings are rarely safe or healing for people with complex trauma unless there’s immediate risk to life or urgent medical needs,” Lani, my new psychologist, said. “Many people with domestic violence histories and disorganised attachment patterns subconsciously reach for support in those settings, hoping for safety and care—and instead are retraumatised by restraint, neglect, or dismissal. This leaves many feeling shame, blame, and further despair. You’re not alone in this experience, and your reactions make complete sense.

What you need—and deserve—are the basic building blocks of healing:

• Safe housing away from past abusers
• Somatic and emotional regulation support
• Gentle, consistent community care
• Spaces where you are not treated like a diagnosis, but a whole person”

I seem to spend my entire life running from one horrid situation to another. I’ve been even worse since that night in the ED and didn’t hesitate to cut off my hospital wristband, though have no memory of doing so. I’ve been a total ditz, sending texts to the wrong people, such as a vent about my dad not having my bed ready when I came home which I sent to my dad instead of Lani.

I wrote this text to Lani about how my whole sense of time has been completely lost:

“I have no idea what time I got home today and it’s taken me a while to realise what day it is. I have no idea what I did this afternoon. I don’t know how long I’ve been back from the country or how long I was there for.

Probably spent the day in bed, which is all I ever really do these days. Even though it’s my torture chamber.”

Last night I then remembered that earlier that afternoon I had slipped into another state of consciousness where I had another dream/flash of something. I didn’t remember the details, all I knew was that it was nasty. I’ve been in a constant state of terror.

“How long is this going to go on for?” I asked Lani. “There is something incredibly dark whirling around me”

I feel like I’m spreading bad vibes like my sleeping bag spreads feathers, turning the world around me dark and making people sick. My dad is very sick right now as well. I have been worried I’m going to start hearing voices next. At night I can hear chatter in my head, though it is not especially loud or meaningful.

I sent Lani a link to hypergraphia. This is a quote from Wikipedia:

“In 1969, Isaac Asimov said “I am a compulsive writer”. Other artistic figures reported to have been affected by hypergraphia include Vincent van Gogh, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Robert Burns. Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll is also said to have had the condition, having written more than 98,000 letters in various formats throughout his life. Some were written backward, in rebus, and in patterns, as with “The Mouse’s Tale” in Alice.”

“Sound familiar?” I said. “You’re probably both sorry you’ve given me your email addresses!”

Lani said she did not regret giving me her email and told me that suicide emails are better sent to her. I wrote my physio another email today.

“This past weekend would have to be the ultimate crashing chord of this nightmare crescendo. I ended up back in the ED. I still don’t know what the fuck it was I just saw/heard while in there, but it’s probably scarred me for life. I was ready to set the place alight. 

I’m sorry if I’m freaking you out or have been overwhelming you. Is the pain group running today? Or have you just not sent me an invite as you don’t want me coming? Honestly I’m probably not even up to coming anyway.

I’ll try not to send you emails while suicidal, sorry about that.”

“Hi Zoe,” he replied. “Nothing you say is ever going to freak me out, many of the people I care for in Persistent Pain have very traumatic backgrounds and struggle with mental health issues. It is true that I’ve said to you in the past that I can help you with improving quality of life, by building your strength, health and wellness, and putting things in place that will assist with reducing your nervous system sensitivity over time, but I’m a physiotherapist and not a psychologist and so the distressed emails are really just a place where you’re venting and expressing distress, and not something that I can offer professional support with. It does make much more sense for these to be sent to Lani, and she’ll also help you to use more appropriate services after hours for the crisis support, and build strategies to help you cope with distress that don’t involve pouring your heart out in email format (using email to us a bit like a journal, for instance).

We’re putting this team care plan in place not to protect me or other team members from you, far from it – it’s to make sure that it’s really clear to you who in your team can help with what – this will improve your care and help you have more success with improving wellness. 

The more your support team can work together and understand what’s happening in each of the different silos of care, the better and more comprehensive your care will be. It’s all about building you back up, there’s no “you vs us” here, we’re just here to help.

Once things are settled down a bit in terms of housing and social circumstances, we’ll get back on track with the ongoing process of improving sleep, reducing headaches, and improving engagement in movement and activity.

I’m not going anywhere, and looking forward to seeing things improve for you.”

“God help you dealing with all these nut jobs like me,” I wanted to say.

I ended up going to his online pain support group, but I was scared to see him and for the group to see me. I both muted my voice and left my camera off. I said nothing in the chat box either, even though I related so much to the discussion, which covered everything from pain to autism, ADD, anxiety meds, POTS, needing to be on the floor, desperately wanting to be fixed and the trauma of realising our pain is chronic now. I wanted to scream at my dad because he kept using taps during my meeting. I was sitting in my ensuite and the plumbing noise was driving me crazy. I was sick of not having control over my own space, of being assaulted by noise and by other people’s energies. My stuff went missing all the time. I had a break down when I couldn’t find my favourite necklace, which I hung on my ensuite door. Below are some texts sent between my mum and me.

Lani also does seem to really know her stuff, and speaks about it in human language, rather than medical jargon:

“The sleep deprivation, nightmares, paranoia, cold, mice, and constant disruption—it’s no wonder your system is sounding every alarm,” she wrote. “Anyone in your position would feel pushed beyond their limit. You’re not being dramatic. You’re being deeply impacted, and it makes sense.

When the boundary between waking and dreaming starts to blur, and the body is stuck in a state of distress, it’s terrifying—especially without a reliable sense of safety or support. I hear you…

If it feels useful, I can send a short grounding audio—or you could record your own voice saying:

“I’m awake. I’m here. It’s May.”

Simple anchors can be powerful when the edges start to dissolve.”

Lani texted me on Sunday asking for consent to discuss things with my physio.

“Hey Lani thanks for asking,” I said. “What do you want to discuss?”

“That you have had early childhood trauma and my perspectives on this.”

“Yes, sure,” I said. “What are your perspectives?”

“That you have been living with someone unsafe this entire time and it’s difficult for you to progress with somatic and therapeutic healing if your core home is triggering and destabilising for your sense of what reality is and what has happened.”

“What are you saying?” I asked. “Advise him to stop our work together? Or just reassure him that this is why I don’t seem to be making progress and it’s not him?”

“I would never advise him to stop working with you unless I thought he was unsafe person and I would talk to you directly.

I think he needs to know this important information for context. The fact that you can trust him (as much as you can) is very important the other stuff will come in time when your housing and other stuff is processed”

I felt both heard and also uncomfortable about Lani calling this person an “offender”. I love this person, and the last thing I want to do is start a smear campaign against them, as a friend and her family did to me when I was younger. I keep wondering if I’m making it all up, and whether Lani is planting seeds of suspicion in my head that don’t belong there. 

My support worker in the country has found me a nice, clean caravan to rent. It can be towed to my friend’s place. But it all feels like a bit much right now. Unfortunately whenever I return to my dad’s house I fall into a rut and can’t get out. I get stuck in some bad patterns, such as procrastination, sitting on the computer all day and night and other addictions and compulsions to cope. I am also extremely distressed from that night in the ED and the damage it has left me with. I haven’t left the house, have withdrawn from everyone and didn’t even think I had it in me to write a blog post. I also find the area a bit “dark” with all the gas exploitation going on. Plus I am a bit traumatised from staying in such unhygienic conditions and don’t want to ever step foot in the old caravan again, but I worry I will have to as the new caravan won’t have enough power to run a fridge or cooking facilities. I don’t want to lose the opportunity, but it’s all a bit much to return at this stage. I’m probably going to have to take sedatives for at least the next month. I started taking olanzapine again a couple of months ago when I was confronting something dark in my mind as I fell asleep. I would wake up extremely nauseous and my hands and arms would turn numb. I then went off olanzapine, thinking that episode had passed, but now something similar is happening again. I took 5mg of olanzapine last night and it seemed to help a bit. My friend takes olanzapine for his nausea, so it is probably a good one for me, helping with a few things. I never believed my case manager when he said I needed the drug, but maybe he is right.