Sarah Vaughan is Not My Mother: A Memoir of Madness

by Thomson, MaryJane

  I make my way slowly, trying to ignore the stiffness in my legs. I long to have my body functioning the way it used to, not slowed down by drugs the doctor has given me. Part of me wants to veer off track and go to my ex-boyfriend’s house and get some drugs that will make me feel light and euphoric but I don’t want to risk what might happen. Hiding places run through my head, but I know I would eventually be found and sent back to ICU.

  I head back to the hospital and report to Waris. “I am so proud of you, MaryJane,” she says. “You went out by yourself and made it back on time. I think the new meds are working for you.”

  “Yeah, Waris, just one problem—I’m feeling stiff in my legs, not so easy to walk all that quickly.”

  Waris goes and gets the drug Congentin while I wait outside the nurses’ station, watching the patients. I notice how they don’t look normal, the way people do on the outside world. They look kind of expressionless and worn out, moving about slowly in worn-out clothes. They seem to have no vigour or life left inside them. You get used to this when you’re in the ward. A lot of the people come in with no money and have spent their life struggling and battling. It’s no wonder some get relief when they are institutionalised. But it is sad to see young people who also look like that.

  There’s a pile of people outside the nurses’ station, all asking for extra drugs. It makes me sad that some people will spend the best part of their lives waiting for their meds, or waiting to be driven somewhere, the hopelessness of it all. If only they could be free to decide for themselves, to be independent. After a while people stop complaining, stop looking at the things that are wrong. Some just resign themselves to being invalids, accepting cash from the government and accepting they are limited and need to be in and out of hospitals. It’s a hard cycle to give up.

  Waris gives me the pills. “So, how was your afternoon out?”

  “Oh, it was cool. I enjoyed taking the walk in and back.”

  “Did you eat lunch?”

  “Yeah, I got fish and chips from Bond Street and then I went to the library and listened to music.”

  “Oh MaryJane, I’m so happy for you, going out on your own without me. Did you see anyone you used to use drugs with?”

  “Nah, I didn’t see anyone.”

  “Well, that’s good. I was a bit worried about you but I’m pleased you are back on time. Can we go into your room? I need to talk to you about something.”

  We go into my room. Waris sits on the bed and I turn the chair around to face her. “Is something wrong?”

  “Well, your drug test came back and they found cannabinoids in your urine. Now, I don’t think it was recent because you seem to be getting better and better with every day that you are on your new meds. You even look different.”

  “Oh.” I start panicking. “Does this mean I can’t have leave by myself any more, because really I need that leave. I’ve been stuck in here for three months without leave and I think it’s time. I think I’m ready to go back out into the world.”

  Waris looks surprised. “Of course you’re ready to leave, darling, but you should know if there’s one thing that’s going to set you back it’s your use of drugs. You can’t keep using drugs. It is not good for the maintenance of your health.”

  I nod my head. “Yes, I know what you mean. I was thinking on the way home how nice it would be to live drug-free, and eventually medication-free. I just want to be pure, Waris.”

  Waris looks at me and says, “Darling, I’m sure you do, but the medication helps take you out of psychosis and it stabilises your mood. How do you feel on it?”

  I start looking at my pictures on the wall. I look out the window. “Well, it’s not sedating like the other meds and I do feel more like my old self. I just feel a bit stiff really.”

  “Okay, well that’s good to know. Tomorrow is court day so you may not be able to go out until the afternoon. Your lawyer will meet you before you go in.”

  I roll my eyes. “Oh great, another court meeting where anything I say gets ignored and the judge keeps me under Section.”

  “Well, the doctors here don’t feel you are ready for the community treatment order, but when you are ready you will go on one of those. Jack Mirage is your lawyer. You remember him?”

  “Yeah, I remember him from last time. I will make some notes tonight for when I go in and speak with the judge.”

  “Good on you. You are very intelligent so I’m sure you will have some good things to say. You will be free to go out again after lunch but you may not have enough time to make it back into town.”

  I smile at Waris, feeling happier at the mention of getting out. “All right, that’s cool,” I say. “I was just wondering though—will I get more leave the day after tomorrow, where I get to go out for longer, like more than six hours?”

  “Of course, darling, we are just doing it slowly so you are able to cope.” Waris clasps her hands together.

  “I see what you mean.” I smile, relieved.

  Waris leaves my room and I write down Jared’s number. I am already scheming about ringing him tomorrow to see if he will spend the day with me. It’s as if the conversation with Waris hasn’t happened. I get a sensation of the drugs rushing into my veins and surging through the blood in my body, rushing to my head, and then the sense of relief when my head is lightened and my body feels no pain. No pain of living and no fear of dying. I think how I would like to live my life like that, not like everyone else, governed by what society tells them to do and not do. I can stay on the benefit while everyone else works or studies and follows their ambitions. I can just live the way I want to live.

  I ignore the thoughts I had earlier in the day. I look at Jared’s number and decide not to call him now as it’s the time he will be taking his next dose of heroin. I lie on my bed and fantasise about using drugs again. The voice speaks to me. “You deserve respite. The drugs you use don’t make you mental. They bring you relief from your physical problems. Ring him tomorrow.” I look at one of my pictures and pray Jared will pick up the phone when I ring. He must be wondering where I am anyhow as my phone got taken off me when I was picked up and admitted.

  I start feeling excited. I move lightly out of my room to the smokers’ area. I see Lester and Fiona at the table. I move nimbly over to them, touch Lester on the back and say, “Boo!” He turns around. “Sweetie, I knew it would be you. Fiona and I were just saying we expected you back by now.”

  “Well, I’m back.”

  “Wow, you seem happy. Looks like the trip out did you some good,” Fiona says.

  “Yeah, it did. I had a great walk into town and listened to some music at the library. It felt really good to get out. I think you can become dependent on this place.”

  Lester looks at me. “Yeah babe, know what you mean. Some people actually like staying in here because they can be fed and drink coffee all day and receive attention.”

  “Well, it’s not going to happen to me. I want to go home, to my own house, and make my own meals and see my family.”

  Lester looks at Fiona. “I just want to get back to my radio show.”

  “Bet you do. They must be missing their number one DJ,” I say.

  Fiona offers me a cigarette and I take one. “Really missed you. Couldn’t hear your music or anything and I can’t sit in that lounge during the day, it’s so depressing.”

  I nod. “I think you do right to sit outside, then you can’t soak up everyone else’s energies. Surely you must be allowed to go out for a walk by now?”

  “Tomorrow I think. Maybe they would let me go with you.”

  “We should ask. I have court tomorrow.”

  “Same,” Lester says.

  “Oh, wonder why I’m not going,” Fiona says.

  “You probably haven’t been here long enough. They just review your Section status under the Mental Health Act, nothing too exciting. The judge never lets you go: they just need it to be official.”

  “Sounds like we have no rights,” Fiona sa
ys.

  “We don’t get listened to,” I say.

  “Yeah babe, that’s totally it. Best not to try and fight. You just get frustrated, and when that happens it gets taken down in your notes.”

  I say, “True. I can just see my file growing.”

  “Those notes can be held against you,” Lester says. “Don’t be deceived. When they say obs they are thoroughly observing you.”

  “Yeah,” I add. “They’re not just checking where you are and making sure you haven’t run away. They also note down what room you are in because they can see patterns in your whereabouts, whether you are around people or isolating yourself, whether you’re reading, which shows your concentration levels—things like that.”

  “Oh, I never knew that.” Fiona sounds surprised.

  “Babe, you’ve only been here a week. You can’t be expected to know everything. MaryJane and I have been coming for years so we know how the place works.”

  I look into the dining room window. People are lining up early for dinner.

  Lester says, “It’s the only occupation in here, eating.”

  “Some of the people in here, like Hamish, are old,” Fiona says. “I’d ask someone to shoot me if I were still queueing up in a place like this when I was sixty-five.”

  I suddenly get a wave of paranoia that I’m going to be old and sixty and still coming to a psych ward. I say a prayer to God in my head that this will not be the case.

  Lester says, “We won’t be like that.”

  Fiona says, “You reckon?”

  “Yeah, totally,” I say.

  Sadly, many elderly people do go into psych wards. Because of paranoia they reject the love and care of their families. They cannot care for themselves so they end up in places like this, maybe unaware even that it is sad. Being institutionalised becomes their reality.

  “I’m going to run away and leave the country so they can’t catch me. I’ll change my name and everything,” I say.

  “Yeah, but I’ve got kids and a husband. I can’t just leave them.”

  “You probably don’t need to worry. This is your first time in; you are not trapped into the cycle. I am, which is what scares me.”

  “Scares me too,” Lester says.

  “How do I not get into the cycle?” Fiona says to me.

  “Well, going on my experience the things that get me in here are taking too many drugs, not sleeping, and isolating myself from the world. The doctors call me psychotic but I just think I’m misunderstood. Whenever I start feeling happy, I panic because I know I’m due to come in. Then their drugs knock all the life out of me and I have to start again. This time, though, I’m going to save my benefit and go live in another country.”

  “I think I’ll join you, babe,” Lester says. “I need to do the same. They always get me when I’m feeling good too.”

  “Well,” Fiona says, “I was feeling pretty bad when I came in here and feel happy now to have met you and know a bit more about how the system works. I don’t even think my husband wants me to come home.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he wants you home, but he also wants you well. Maybe he felt you were at risk of harming yourself,” I say.

  “Maybe, but I’m angry at him for putting me here.”

  “Don’t be, babe. Sometimes people don’t know what to do,” Lester says.

  “I’m sure he’s deeply affected by your not being with him,” I say. “And I’m sure now you’re gone he wouldn’t want to live without you.”

  I look through the window again. “They’re serving dinner.”

  “I know,” Lester says. “I can smell it. Fish of some sort.”

  “It’ll be sweet-and-sour fish. I should have bought us some food from town. I’ll do that next time.”

  Fiona, Lester and I make our way to dinner. The tables are nearly full so we go into the lounge and sit on the couches. The news is playing on TV but as usual I can’t hear it. I have a sense of guilt around wanting drugs, but I have made the decision to ring Jared tomorrow. I know at some deep level that it is the wrong thing to do, but all I can think about is that it will be one last time and I won’t ask again.

  Drugs are like that. Every day you say one last time, yet you keep going back for more. Drugs can change you from a beautiful, healthy-looking person to anorexic, malnourished, unclean, a shadow of your former self. Mixed with mental illness the result can be ten times worse.

  I know all this, but I convince myself I need relief from the psych meds and the institution. Thinking about it makes me nervous, which kills my appetite for food.

  Fiona says, “Aren’t you hungry? You’re not eating.”

  “I just don’t feel like eating right now.”

  “Babe, was it something I said?”

  “No, I just have a lot on my mind, I wish I had the strength to do the right thing all the time, then maybe I’d be in a better place,” I say. “I’m sort of powerless over my vices.”

  Lester stops eating and looks at me. “Me too, babe. I do the wrong thing by myself all the time.”

  “Could be like karma,” Fiona says.

  “Yeah, maybe if I do good it will come back to me, but I just haven’t reached that stage yet. Oh, what if I don’t? I’ll be in this rut forever.”

  “No, babe, you won’t be. It’s just how you’re feeling right now. It will get better.”

  “You’re right. Sorry if I’m bringing you down.”

  I take my tray back, make a coffee, and tell Lester and Fiona I’m going to have a smoke. They come with me.

  “I feel the same,” Fiona says. “I have habits I’d like to break, like my self-harming. You’ve probably seen these bandages.” She shows us the bandages on her wrist.

  “Babe, that’s no good.”

  “I can’t help it. I just sometimes want to die and I can’t stop myself cutting my wrists.”

  “Then maybe it’s good you are here; maybe you can get some help with that,” Lester says.

  “Yes, but they don’t give me counselling. They just throw me pills that make me feel worse.”

  I know what she means. It can be hard to help yourself when you are just given medication and have no one-on-one time with a counsellor. Nurses in the ward are not trained to provide counselling, but often what people need more than anything is someone to listen to them. In the community it can also be hard to see counsellors: most people on a sickness benefit don’t have sufficient funds, and there is often a huge waiting list for free counselling.

  “And these doctors tell you nothing,” Fiona continues. “All they’re interested in is prescribing you more drugs. I’m not psychotic, I’m suicidal.”

  “Babe, maybe you need to get out of the rut that makes you feel this way.”

  “I would if I could but I don’t know how.” Fiona starts to cry. “Talking to you guys helps a lot; it means I’m not alone in my head with the same thoughts spinning around. MaryJane, you just got me thinking about letting go of old behaviours but I just can’t let them go.”

  “Yeah, after a while you feel comforted by those feelings and thoughts, and feel sad to let them go,” Lester says.

  Waris comes out with my meds. “You guys have been sitting here for hours—must be quite some conversation,” she says.

  I take my meds and say, “Thank you.”

  “So are these meds better?” Lester asks.

  “Yeah, they don’t make me feel so stifled in my thinking, and I feel as though I can move about more easily. Olanzapine and Seroquel are horrible. They put concrete in your back and feet, and make you very immobile.”

  “I know that feeling,” Lester says.

  “They should be more careful what drugs they give us. The code says we have the right to refuse medication, but it doesn’t seem to be true. I tried and tried to refuse meds, but they made me take them,” I say.

  Because you’re under Section you are obligated to undergo treatment, which seems to cancel out all your rights. Most new people going into the ward are given
a strong dose of an antipsychotic, whether they want it or not.

  A nurse comes out and gives Fiona and Lester their drugs. Fiona rolls her eyes and takes them. Once the nurse has gone Lester spits his pill out on to the grass.

  “Oh, that’s a good idea. I’m going to do that from now on,” Fiona says.

  9

  In bed I plan the next day in my head. I write down what I will say to the judge. My hand feels stiff, which makes it hard to write, but I am determined to get down what I am thinking.

  Waris comes in and says goodnight.

  “Night,” I say. “I’m just making notes for tomorrow.”

  “You’re a good girl,” she says. I think to myself, imagine if she knew what I was planning. She would be very disappointed in me.

  The voice tells me not to feel guilty. I justify it to myself by thinking if God doesn’t mind it doesn’t matter what others think. I tell the voice I’m not talking to any other voice, only him and my real mother.

  I eat an orange and replace it on the sheet with another one. I go and ask Tu, the night nurse, if I can have another cigarette. She says no. I call her a bully and go back to bed and have a cigarette in my room. She comes in, sticks out her hand and says, “Lighter.” I look around and can’t find it. “I know you have one,” she says and walks out. I say, “Bully” as she leaves.

  I don’t sleep very steadily. I wake up at two and start thinking about what I can say to Jared that will get him to come and pick me up. We didn’t have a very good conversation last time I spoke to him, which was when I was in ICU. When he tried to phone me I called him a rapist because God had told me he was. He wasn’t a rapist: God just didn’t want me talking to him.

  I toss and turn. Tu comes in every hour and shines the torch on my face. I get up and walk around the ward, uncomfortable because I have lost my lighter and need a cigarette. At five I finally relax and doze for an hour. Dead on six I go out to the smokers’ room. Once again there is a queue of people at the coffee trolley. Lester is sitting in his usual spot, staring out the window to the car park. I ask for a lighter.