"I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ."
‘The Little Prince’
* * *
Phokoje go tsela o dithetsenya they say in Botswana. ‘Only the muddy fox lives!’ You and I aren’t foxes but I’m sure we can relate. We only change our lives if we’re prepared to roll up our sleeves and get ourselves dirty. If there’s ever an animal famous in folklore for being able to roll up it’s sleeves and outwit life’s challenges, it’s the fox.
There are 12 species of fox in the world. The most well known is the iconic Red Fox, easily characterised by his red and white face and long brushy tail. They’re related to domestic dogs, so a fox can live up to ten years in the wild. Not surprisingly, they only last 2-3 years in urbanised areas.
Unlike dogs, foxes don’t crave a pack mentality. They live happily in the company of their own little family. They feed on small rodents, insects, even fruits and berries. Foxes are also great opportunists. They’ve adapted to live quite secretly in our city streets, scrounging off our rubbish while we sleep.
You may already know about the research project in Russia working with Silver Foxes. They want to see if - and how, canine domestication occurs. Over the last 50 years, scientists have selectively bred two distinct groups of the silver fox. The researchers have held back petting and vocal taming, and one genetic group of fox have continued to be naturally wild and fearful of humans.
The other group has freely attached themselves to humans. They’ve adopted traits similar to family dogs we all know in our homes today. When a person nears, they prance about with excitement, wag their softened tails, drop their ears and have even begun to make doggy sounds like whimpering and barking.
If this is meaningful evolution, then one day we might even have foxes in our homes. They’ll be curled up in front of our fires on cold rainy nights. It may be a while in places like Australia where they are a real threat to the native ecosystem. Do we want tame foxes though? Maybe that’s what a successful wild animal becomes in the 21st century. One able to domesticate itself. Where tail wagging is the valued commodity.
We all know humans who succeed well in this world by wagging their metaphorical tails too. The clever ones; the pretty ones; the ones with happy smiles and shiny hair. The ones who know how to use the right words, how to entertain and parade lovely things; sing sweetly, do clever tricks, bring amazing objects to the circle. But what about the difficult ones, the ones expressing fear, crookedness and carry strange objects? Perhaps there is a place for these ones, but away in unknown places, so none of the happy ones get infected.
The fox in this story is a wild red fox. He sits on the outer waiting for me to discover him. For us to find him, I will begin my story.
* * * *
Chapter 1
The cold steel needle goes into my right bum cheek and the yellow oil is pushed in. Bricks and veins never mix well. Three nurses hold me down to the bed, my face buried hard into the mattress. I scream but the sound is defeated in the back of my head. I struggle to replace the oxygen into my airway but there is none to be found in the tiny cavern I manage to eke out of the pathetic space between my mouth and the plastic sheeting.
I heave out all resistance I have, and wait. Angry as hell that a great glob of heavy duty anti-psychotic is now pulsating in my butt, radiating out into the rest of my flimsy human biology. It’s all fractals now. I count the hour-long seconds until I’m allowed to breathe again. I feel the pressure of a thousand hands of force release as quickly as it was given. My body springs back up out from the bed. No longer a mattress, I fill my lungs with brittle air.
I spin over and spit out a vomit of abuse to the retreating staff. They’re suddenly deaf to my words, a complete reversal of ten minutes ago when I was scratching at the walls like a crazed cat in a stranger’s hands. My head hurt. My heart hurt. My soul hurt. And now my bum hurts.
I’m frustrated. Being in a 12x12 metre square space for 4 weeks has a tendency to do that to a human being you know. I’m dizzy from the confinement. My brain can no longer stand knowing about the two brick columns in the middle of the room. Or Channel 10 blaring endlessly on a vintage brown TV, spruiking car ads to a man sprawled unnaturally across the 5 green waiting room chairs. Nor can it anymore fathom the two grey plastic tables over near the windows, randomly studded with 7 plastic chairs.
The furniture configuration is sometimes rectangle, sometimes square. But never circle. I want to smash this wall of windows high above the staff carpark. I don’t want to watch staff shift changes three times a day. Their cars come in; boom gate goes up. Cars go out; boom gate goes down. On Saturday, the hospital staff play tennis in a court. They choose to wear crisp white shirts on their weekend. The Chinese doctor always wins with much over-celebration. The silver Mercedes is always parked diagonally across two spaces. The boom gate stays up on Sundays.
Lucky I smoke. The only round thing in the room is a white clock black hands, hanging over the screeching TV. It’s more interesting to watch. I know it’s also a killer to be a clock-watcher so a quick glance reveals the ticking hand nears the 15-minute mark. Exciting times! I shuffle slowly down the corridor to my bed at the end of the line. I take considered steps so not to hurry up and waste time. I open my starchy white pillowcase and reach to the back of the fluff for my pack of PJ’s and lighter. Sweet; still there.
Opening the door to the smoker’s balcony is like entering Rasta. Oh joy. This is our time. I’m not a psych patient in here. I’m a smoker. I hear the phrases; ‘Bad for you’ ‘need to Quit’ ‘cost so much’..etc etc. A lovely different head talk.
The air in here is so thick. I paddle my way through it to get to a vacant plastic chair. Click click goes my lighter. Lovely sound that. Draw back. Mmmm. Breathe in so long. Look at my new/old surroundings – elongated thin concrete foyer; red paint almost faded to the black grey of a thousand years of tilted ash; hazy glass window framed by more brick walls on either side, so not to tease with a distorted view of life. There’s a long air vent at the very top above naked brick walls pockmarked with years of penned graffiti about love, death, psych wards. Plastic chairs move scratchingly here, there, back over here again.
There’s lighter chatter in the smoker’s balcony. Tough talking guys ruffle up skinny girls. Old hags squawk out tyrannical poetry. Young things, first timers and gentle people nervously look at their smoke ends, checking progress. Screamers and dramatics yell their malignant innocence to everyone. Sad people stare down through empty eyes, unable to touch their full souls. Manic people wear their insides as their outsides, swapping randomly their outsides for their insides. Always someone on rations botting smokes off everyone, poking through old stubs for one extra gasp.
Pigeons on the ledge outside the glass sit in their poo. They waddle along the knife-edge to another tasty squat. We’re all pigeons in here. I watch the birds and imagine their freedom to fly away, to go sit on a beautiful branch in a tall tree, overlooking a park. But they choose to sit here in front of us. They’ve opted to keep company with those in the psych ward. Maybe they think we’re pigeon gods. Straddling a small ledge, puffing out great billows of sacred smoke. Protected behind glass shards.
Back to the moment, far away from that smoky paradise.
Here I am squashed into a micro orbit of my bed, stuffed full of Flupenthixol. I wish I could reach into my pillow and pull out a cigarette, but my distant hand has become lifeless at the end of a long lump of rolled clay. I feel gravity multiply as the drugs in my butt take hostage my central nervous system. My mind is becoming foggy. My muscles have no more literal meaning.
The bulging backs of the posse who shot me up are as ugly as toads as they file out of the room. I hate them. I hate this building. I hate the smell of human fear mixed with the constant smell of gravy. I manage to roll like a walrus onto my back and turn my weakening gaze up to the white washed ceiling. I let my sight flop around the steady landmarks of the heavenly square for comfort. Familiar Air Vent, oh how I’m happy to see you there!
My eyes wash over with tears. Why am I crying? What real use is there of brine filling up and overflowing the sidewalls of my eye sockets? Trickling, flowing, dripping salt into my ears. I admonish my sobbing as useless as the cries of a labrador’s defense to a bogan’s pit bull.
Ahh.. there’s the Fire Detector over there near the door. Sweet little round upside down iced cake. A cute little black tester button set wonky in the frosting. I wonder if the button has the character of an army major. ‘Stand to attention! Always on the ready! Do you want me to make a test sound now? Now? Now?’
While my eyes roll up and back through Oculogeric crisis, my mind is dragged downwards into a heavy sleep. I flop around in the deep dark coma; I’m conscious enough that a torrent of saliva is drooling out from the corner of my mouth onto my clean pillow. I’m ashamed of the dirty puddle. I hope no one sees it. For a short time, I dream I have a nice clean pillow.
The primitive need to urinate seeps into my Delta state. There’s no dreaming now, so I just imagine I’m on the toilet.
I also imagine (maybe quite too well) that I’m dying. My heart skips a beat and I look forward to seeing Jesus and all my angel family. I float higher and higher. The sky grows from utter darkness to brilliant lightness. Up, up I go. Is there no end to this wonder flight? Oh how marvelous. Suddenly then there is sharp agony in this flying. I feel a horrendous burning back in my bones and my wings are wrapped too tightly to bloody sinews. The stretching is making my soul and body yell out in pain. I can’t work out why it hurts so much. Oh Lord, take me out of this.
There is a jarring thump. My heart takes a massive leap and I’m jolted back into a senseless silence. Now I feel my body lunging downwards. I’m choking in a mass of thick fluid. The darkness gets darker. Now it’s so dark and so cold that I can’t even see the darkness. I stay down here in my morbid abyss for a while. My fingers stretch out for some solid contact but there is none. I struggle to make myself aware of my struggle. I can’t. But I can’t give up. I need to reach down to save myself from being crushed into the dust of forever. It’s such a long time struggle.
* * * *
Chapter 2
Bang Bang! What’s that? Bang Bang again! I feel a volcano of oxygen sweep into my lungs and I feel my eyes flickering light. Bang bang! What the hell? My brain reboots slower than a Commodore 64 computer but it’s enough to realise where I am. The banging turns out to be Anonymous Nurse #36 whacking on the door to tell me its mealtime. AKA meds time.
How long have I been out for? There’s no way to tell. It could be a long time. I’m suddenly very fat, very heavy and very, very tired as I slump along up the corridor to the common room. I don’t recognise myself in the reflections of the door windows. Where’s that girl gone with the high school certificate, the ability to swim 20 laps of the pool non-stop, the four wheel driving super hero from Puckapunyal army base? The wry smile, the clear skin, the sun-bleached hair, the female form.
I see a plastacine blob. Shaped by another’s hand into a humanoid form, I am no longer girl. I am psych patient number 25,879* (or part thereof). Age 24. Primary diagnoses - Schizophrenia, bipolar, co-dependency. Seems to enjoy music, art. No dependents. No further use for a proper name.
I stand in line to the meal trolley. It’s an ugly contraption to match the ugly ward. Beige plastic trays of hot cooked dinners in neat rows of 4. Each endowed with plastic knife, fork, spoon. I’m so hungry I can’t wait to sit down and gorge on my delicious fare. Potatoes, beef, beans, the indelible gravy. Dessert is ice cream and canned fruit. In it goes, no need to chew. It’s all so soft and happy. The meal is gone in five minutes. I scout the food trolley for untouched trays. There are a few, so I take one and throw the contents down my gullet. Why, I should squawk like a seagull!
I have no idea that the meds are causing my insurmountable hunger. No one here does, perhaps not even the staff. We all snout around the meal trolley like pigs. Some really big men take pickings off discarded plates, greedily licking their fingers of the last vestige of the salty gravy. I see that there is a microsecond delay before they realise they can’t eat their finger too.
Then we line up for chasers. Another trolley has been surreptitiously wheeled out behind us while we were being distracted with the food trolley. This time, we line up to rows of little clear plastic cups, each with their own variety of pills. Down they go with a tiny little vial of tap water.
None of us still have any idea how much these chemicals are really affecting us, so we just take the damn things. We have no choice anyway. If we resist anything in this place, we’ll end up with another needle in our butt. Or if you make a big old fuss, in solitary, staring insanely at your own hallucinations on the generous expanse of whiteness.
There are many unwritten rules in any state of incarceration. Over time, I learn that the psych ward is no different. I see that people leave the place when they smile, laugh, participate enthusiastically in art therapy, speak the words of the psychiatric dialect. I decide I will need to do the same. Monkey see, monkey do. So I do.
I walk out into a state of freedom after telling the doctors;
“My symptoms do dissipate when I take 1000mgs of this antipsychotic”
“Now I realise I need this help to regain control over the voices and delusions”
“I agree to being placed on a Community Treatment Order for the next three years”
“Yes, ongoing acute clinical depression sometimes does need a course of ECT to help the brain recalibrate the chemical dopamine and serotonin imbalance, depleted through no fault of mine, but in just the same way diabetics need insulin to maintain a healthy lifestyle, so too do I need a lifetime of synthetic to biological infusion to stay on top of any stress factors that may influence my genetic disposition to aggravated mental ill-health in the future”
To be continued..
