know

PART IV: “Sometimes we get so tired of waiting for a way to spend our time”

March 7, 2019 — leslie dean brown

When they eventually did return our phones, it was under a strong proviso. We had to sign a type of non-disclosure agreement/contract before we could even touch them:

Absolutely no photographs under any circumstances, and especially not of anyone or their face (they made that explicity clear); no social media use at all; and finally not reveal anyone other patients’ identity to anyone, not while inside or even after being released. The nurse eyed the high-dependency ward as they explained the importance of adherence to these additional set of rules and regulations. Non-compliance meant there would be no second chances… no further privileges… privileges revoked… I even think they explained that to us too… I still managed to pop off a shot or two of my bedroom when no one was looking…

And so they are in complete control. It was around this point that I realised that there was literally nothing I could do about my situation. That I was not in control anymore. And that I simply had to accept where I was. From this point on, I think I was more concerned about eliminating this great sense of underlying boredom that I was feeling more than enacting any of my suicidal thoughts.

Even so, I was in such a state of shock, that for several days I didn’t even realise there was an art therapy room! It adjoined the main room, located right next to the kitchen. It was always locked and we had to ask for it to be opened (on the inside, you had to ask for everything). It was very rudimentary, but it was an extra space I could go. I could not look at the acrylic paints (too brightly coloured) or the paintbrushes (mangled), but the coloured pencils were more than satisfactory.

I discovered this beautiful artwork buried under a mound of papers. This was the best art in the whole establishment! Clearly this is someone who is very creative, very talented. This artwork inspired me in a big way. I would very much like to know who drew it.

I started by sharpening all of the pencils because about half of them were blunt — all except black, because there was no black pencil. One day, I began to draw with the pencils. I was drawing on the shittiest paper imaginable. It was more like the paper that you use to wash your hands with after going to the toilet. Yet it felt so good to be finally doing something constructive.

I could feel myself becoming more creative. I mainly drew things that I had drawn before. Because I didn’t have any references to go off (no internet). I drew in little patches. Over the course of three days I added more and more. It had nearly finished and there was a small empty patch at the top left.

The next day they took over half of the pencils away! So I felt like I wasn’t able to finish; I couldn’t, because only half the pencils were left! The thing is, artists like their colours. How can they leave us without the red, blue and black?! Two of them are primaries!

I was forever asking and asserting for them to return the red and blue pencils because there was no red and blue ones left. “The black I can sort of understand because they were not here to begin with”, I proclaimed. A male nurse who was sitting with me said I was getting “agitated” — “I’m not agitated, I’m frustrated”, I quickly contended. I mean it’s a bit like asking a musician to play a guitar that is missing three strings! Isn’t it? He just didn’t seem to get it at all. He told me that it wasn’t a university equipped art room. I knew that. Of course. Still, it bothered me.

It occurred to me later that maybe I could learn something about myself from this encounter. I mean, it seems to me that art is very important to me. For others, it is clearly not. So I realise now that this –art– is something I care about, something I’m passionate about, much moreso than your average Joe.

It dawned upon me that the illustration shown above is a beautiful piece of art –although it only has four colours in it. Well I already knew about using limited colour palettes in art, but not in the sense of having half my palette inadvertently taken away from me. I started thinking about using the tools at hand. I’ve seen popular TV shows where professional photographers are forced to use the crappiest cameras imaginable. And they invariably still come up with fantastic photographs. I was also reminded about something my dad used to say: “a poor workman blames his tools”. From then on, I pretended that the lack of available hues was an intentional choice; for my next drawing, I used just three colours.

Was I being an OCD wanker about the pencils? I don’t know. You tell me. It’s totally okay now though because it made me more aware of what is important to me, my passion, my aptitude, my creative ability, my drawing skill. Some people care, other’s don’t.

One item they returned sooner than the other [electronic] ones was my Illustration book written by Andrew Hall. I was extremely glad to have something like that to continue reading. I guess they don’t see books as any kind of danger to mentally ill people?

One day, I forget which one, I took two packets of biscuits at afternoon tea time. Because there were only three biscuits to a pack! And I thought six biscuits was a fairly reasonable number to eat. One of the security nurses saw me and told me to put it back. I hadn’t even sat down. I swooped around and back it went – back into the same bowl from whence it came! The whole time, they were eyeing us like hawks. This is what I had to endure…

After about four or five days, I had talked to all but one of the patients at length. Mainly because the nurses were essentially too busy for more than a 5 minute chat. At first I didn’t know whether they were violent patients or not. So I was curious about that (for my own safety). But it turns out that they were all such a great bunch of people. All of them.

After speaking to an older, wiser nurse for almost 15 minutes, I was able to turn the experience around and look at it for what it really was: an acute rehabilitation center. She recommended trying to take what you can from the experience, to ask “what can I get out of it?”.

The next meeting was my third assessment, with two psychiatrists present, one of them new. Number three psychiatrist was a female and I really opened up to her about my childhood. I was to be released “either tomorrow or the day after”.

By this stage, I was talking to new people and slowly improving (my psychologist had previously told me I was too isolated). I was going to bed and waking up at the right time. I was eating a wider range of foods than before. But most importantly, I was talking to other people who shared the same views as mine. I was not alone. In fact I decided to stay a few extra days.

All in all I stayed a total of eight days inside that pyschiatric hospital ward. Others had been in there anything from one day, to one month (and in one case, five months). Towards the end of my penultimate day, the same porky pyschiatrist came into my room and asked me the exact same question, just like he had asked me the week before. This time, I answered ‘no’. No I wasn’t suicidal.

The good news is that I do feel more optimistic upon exiting the facility. My motivation level is improved. I haven’t had any further suicidal thoughts. Maybe the lesson here is that we shouldn’t be so quick to make generalised assumptions about how our future lives are going to turn out?

No one came to pick me up from the hospital, but I was well enough to catch the bus home. I must say that my newfound sense of freedom felt very strange after being locked up for more than a whole week. I was waiting at the bus stop and wondered whether to buy a snack for the journey home. In the end, I decided not to. Just knowing that I could buy something without having to ask anyone anything made me smile.

I did some further reading about that place a few weeks later. And it turns out that no one has ever died in that facility. Not for any reason. So maybe Mister PorkFace was right after all? Maybe it was a safer place to be after all, if only temporarily?

And when you said that no one’s listening
Why’d your best friend drop a dime?
Sometimes, we get so tired of waiting for a way to spend our time

Axl Rose, Coma GNR.

Why do people want to learn the Russian language?

July 23, 2018 — leslie dean brown

I have lost count of the number of times that people ask me why I want to learn Russian, of all languages!

Oscar Rabin — Oskar Yakovlevich Rabin — ¨Oil refinery¨ (нефтелавна)

I decided to learn Russian for many reasons. So here goes. It starts with history, culture and my upbringing. When one is growing up, there are a lot of references to Russian people (stereotypes) on television and in the movies. Like for example Get Smart, James Bond and last but not least the Rocky and Bullwinkle show.

How many French spies did Mr. Bond get with in all of those movies? None, probably. For me, there has always been this mystery or enigma about them (no not the French, the Russians!). Maybe that’s it? Maybe it’s because it’s not French?

You see, here in Australia, the most popular language to learn has always been French. I studied it in highschool because there were only three options: French¹, German and Japanese. That was it. There was never any Russian option available.

There are as many Russian speakers in the world as there are German and Japanese combined. Yet according to duolingo, there are over two and a half times the amount of German language learners (and at least 75% more Japanese language learners as well). Likewise, there are almost as many Russian speakers in the world as there are French speakers, and yet four and a half times as many people are trying to learn French as opposed to Russian. Why is that? I could equally ask “why aren’t more people trying to learn Russian?” or “Why are so many people interested in learning French/Japanese /German/Spanish?”. I don’t know.

We did study a little bit about communism and agriculture in Russia during highschool. I paid attention in class, because this particular teacher threw the end pieces of his chalk at you if you didn’t. LOL. Even so I found it fascinating —unlike oh I don’t know— learning about Constantinople (because I never had any idea where it was on today’s modern maps).

So I have always been intrigued by Russia and the USSR for example (but the cold war was before my time). And my father was a young man in world war two, learning how to drive tanks, so the Russian fighters would be mentioned in his old war stories. I soon found out that 20 million Soviet soldiers died fighting as our allies. So I think there’s a strong chance that without their help, we could have lost WW2.

And let’s not forget the iron curtain. You couldn’t know about Russia even if you wanted to (unless you were a spy). So I gradually started reading more about Russia when I was able to (and about the breakup of the Soviet Union and how it impacted people’s lives). It became much easier to read about the USSR/Russia after the internet became popular, in the mid to late nineties.

In other words, it’s not like African countries which nobody has ever heard of. Russia has a big world presence. Everybody has heard of Russia!

So many Americans are anti-Russian (or anti USSR for that matter) and it doesn’t seem logical or fair to judge an entire nation without really knowing about it. For example, in the cold war, it’s common knowledge that Cuba had [presumably Russian] missiles pointed at America. But before this, USA had missiles installed in Turkey and pointed at the USSR! So it’s a hypocritical situation and ever since I read about the Cuban missile crisis, my interest grew.

The analogy today would be that North Koreans are not bad or evil people, even though it is seen as a ‘regime’. With some people, if information is not freely available, they become even more curious about it. Right?

Also, in my culture, we tend to support what is called “the underdog”, for example in football games like your recent world cup. Because it makes the win even more special! So you could say that I wanted to know Russia’s side. I wanted to know how Russians think.

So I visited Moscow by myself in the year 2000 when I was 23 years old, to “see for myself”. Anyway, it was part of a round the world trip, so I didn’t have much time in each place. There was simply no time to learn 12+ languages. I wouldn’t know which ones to learn in any case! And in most places I could get by in English. But somehow Russia was different…

Despite this uncertainty about languages, way back then, I managed to learn most of the Cyrillic alphabet, and it was a good thing too, because I needed it to navigate there with the street signs and train stations (without any mobile phone or internet or anything!).

I got a kind of a culture shock, but in a good way. The whole thing was a great experience for me, almost like being in a parallel world. All of these mostly Caucasian people walking around, but speaking a very different language to ours.

I remember little things like the heavy doors to the metro and that people were actually helpful. Even a military officer politely escorted me all the way to the platform so that I could get to where I needed to go. Even so, travelling there felt strangely intimidating. I saw the seven Stalin buildings, which were very imposing (until then I had no idea they even existed!). My point is that for me at least it was all very surreal. Everything just seemed to be opposite to what I was used to. That was part of the appeal. Suddenly I felt like the foreigner.

Anyway, In 2005, I went back to St Petersburg. And again I was awestruck by the culture. I felt that the time invested in learning the alphabet has already paid off. But I still couldn’t speak any Russian!

During my two world trips, only a few places left a big lasting impression on me. One of them was Russia. And the other was Japan. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy visiting other countries like Italy (one of my favourites for other reasons, like the food) and cities like NYC, Istanbul, Rio and Buenos Aires. But I digress. Anyway, I realised that unlike so many other countries, English was not very useful to me in Russia and Japan. Even in Japan for example the street signs are also written in English. But not in Russia (at least they weren’t when I went).

I was always one of those people who thought that they could never learn a new language after becoming an adult. So it never really occurred to me to proactively start to learn Russian. Well, I did buy a little pocket English–Russian dictionary (which I still have). But I just became overwhelmed and promptly gave up when I saw how long all the words were. Because I was young and naïve and I thought I could learn by reading a dictionary. Wrong!

Also, when I was doing my PhD, I encountered many relevant scientific papers about silica and colloidal chemistry written in Russian. I would have referenced some of them, but unfortunately I couldn’t understand them or interpret the results.

Eventually I moved to Spain (Tenerife), I lived there for about 8 years, and I managed to learn Spanish. So now I am back in Australia, feeling lost, and so I decided to start a new language-learning chapter in my life!

Maybe next time I will go to Russia in the Winter? Or maybe I will go on the trans-Siberian railway? I haven’t got any specific plans, but I am sure I will visit again one day — and I suppose the point is that I will be much better prepared² with my language skills next time. Hopefully I will be able to strike up a conversation with “the enemy”. And who knows? Maybe I will find a beautiful Russian wife one day? I hope so!

And finally I should say that after starting to learn Russian words, I like them! I like how they sound! And the more I learn, the more I want to know! Because they sound strong! You don’t stuff around with unimportant words like ‘a’ and ‘the’. And I like all of the letters like Z, V, Y, X (and also j, q if you really want to know). They’re my favourite letters in the whole alphabet. Because whenever we play scrabble, these letters are worth the most points!

I hope that answers your question(s) as to why I want to learn Russian and what attracts me to Russian culture.

Let’s talk about the Qantas corporate identity.

May 10, 2018 — leslie dean brown

Should I say it? Should I say it? I’m going to say it.

Illustration by leslie dean brown. © 2018. All rights reserved.

See, I think this is the problem with *some* big corporations. They spend so much on graphic design to make their corporate identity/image visually impeccable (which is good) but then they go and do totally nasty shit like this to ordinary hard-working people. My question is, why risk jeopardising your consumers’ perceptions of your brand?

It’s not like the passenger had a crystal vase in her luggage, is it? Your airport ground staff ran over her bag with the airport vehicle! It’s not fair to expect people to take out travel insurance when they are YOUR mistakes. If it’s your fault, fix it!

Absolutely shocking customer service! It’s not acceptable at all. Would you have treated someone in 1st class this way? I think not.

Designers take years or even decades to finetune their skills, and yet your customer service staff go and ruin most of the hard work that everyone else is doing to make your brand appear fantastic! Sorry, but it’s not right. It’s not right at all and it has got to change.

For me they have betrayed not just their customers but their designers as well. You know, we try so bloody hard to improve a brand’s corporate image. Don’t we? We study for years and years and years to try and work out what works best. But if companies are going to treat their customers this way –like shit– well, more people are eventually going to see straight through the design façade. And the worst thing that can happen is when customers lose their sense of trust with a business. Thoughts? Or are most designers simply too scared of losing their own clients to say it like it is?

“Great design is like a powerful antiobiotic which helps to ward off the disease of nonprofessionalism; the mistake that even the largest corporations make today is to forget that to rely on design alone will hasten the disease’s immunity, rendering the drug ineffective. Without the aid of fantastic customer service, no matter how big you are, customers will see you as an amateur.” – leslie dean brown

Quite apart from the whole quality/benefits issue, the whole reason people trust the larger bands in the first place (rather than dinky little mom and pop stores) is because customers know that most of the time they can get refunds or exchanges on their merchandise.

It just makes designers’ lives more difficult when they act like corporate bullies… eventually consumers will see straight through the ‘design’ factor and it won’t be a ‘cool’ brand anymore.

I’m not afraid to say that in this case, you are operating like little Ferengi: “Once you have their money, never give it back”. I travel Qantas. But this is just not cool, Qantas, not cool.

PART I: “There were always ample warnings. There were always subtle signs.”

March 19, 2018 — leslie dean brown

I had an appointment with a mental health worker the day before my admission to the psych ward.

The reason I was there in the first place was that I had asked my GP about it. I wanted more frequent visits with a mental health professional. A counsellor or something. Someone like Deanna Troi. Someone nice that I could talk to about my innermost feelings. Because it helps to get things off your chest. It helps to talk.

They say you shouldn’t let your skeletons out of the closet. Suicide is still a very taboo subject, so I thought long and hard about posting this. In the end, I decided to hit ‘publish’.

But I also wanted to speak with a psychiatrist directly in order to check up on my medication. Because they are the experts and I didn’t think Cymbalta was working properly. So I had asked my GP to see a psychiatrist. She in turn had offered to provide a referral, I had said “I would like that very much” and she obliged. Good. Finally I was getting somewhere.

I called them to make the appointment. I thought I would get to speak with a psychiatrist straight away. I don’t know if the person I spoke to first was a community health worker or an occupational therapist. She told me “it doesn’t work that way”, that “there’s a screening process”. I would get to see her three times first, and if approved, only then I would get to see a psychiatrist. This was the first visit.

After 45 minutes of answering questions, I still didn’t know if I qualified or not. Apparently psychiatrists are in short supply in regional areas (they even fly in from Sydney to do mental health assessments and then fly out a few hours later). Interesting.

They asked me whether I had any suicidal thoughts and I said yes. Why lie?

Previously I only ever had fleeting thoughts which is fairly normal I think. Personally I consider suicide the last and least desirable option. But it still is an option and it should be my right to that option if I so choose.

The next question is always “Do you have a plan?”. I didn’t think I did. Not really. I said I didn’t have a time or a place (yet… it was always pretty vague).

She delved deeper. I had eliminated some suicide methods like slashing my wrists (I hate the sight of blood), shooting myself (too much mess) or jumping off a cliff (about one year ago I had walked to the edge of a cliff to suss that out). And I had told them about that too.

No. For me, I was looking at just taking loads of sleeping pills, to send me off into a neverending blissful sleep.

But for my weight, the lethal dosage, the LD₅₀ it’s called because there is a 50% survival rate, is something like 200 to 2000 tablets! I didn’t have enough. And I told them that, too. She went to say something and stopped herself. I think she didn’t want to give me any ideas.

I told her that I didn’t want to destroy my kidneys or my liver by taking too many pills. Plus that was not the right way. Not effective enough.

Well in case you are wondering, I read that overdosing just fucks up your kidneys/liver and cause great agony in the process. Meaning you just don’t die in your sleep, chances are that you wake up choking on your own vomit, have a heart attack or respiratory failure / asphyxiation, none of which sounds pleasant. I didn’t want that. Doing that would add to my problems.

I had also told her that I had imagined holding a gun to my head and testing how far I could pull the trigger (I don’t know how far you need to pull the trigger, I’ve never even held a gun). I had told her I don’t like guns, but that it was lucky I didn’t own a gun because I might have already tested it out. I had imagined my dead body lying on the floor.

One of the last things she asked me about was what (if anything) makes me happy. I told her about my dog. She turned to her computer and said to me “just keep an eye on that dog”. My dog is what is called a “protective factor”. If something were to happen to that dog, I would not be in a good frame of mind. Who knows what might have happened if that had occurred? I dread to think.

That same night I started to actively ‘research’ it. Personally, I wouldn’t consider a few google searches and reading half a dozen websites true ‘research’, but there you go. Later on, I was dwelling on it for hours on end in bed when I should be sleeping. I looked back upon my browsing history just now and it appears I typed into google “easiest overdoses“. Not good.

I was landing on pages like this one. And this one. And this one. And this one. My background is scientific research and to me this was nothing. This wasn’t even ‘research’, it was just me sussing things out. I read them all.

See, what I was thinking about wasn’t going to be a suicide attempt. It was not to “attract attention” as you might be thinking. No. I had actively researched the most effective and efficient suicide methods. I had typed into google things like “easiest overdoses“. I had ignored the special little google window that pops up in first place and says:

Need help? Australia:
13 11 14
Lifeline Australia
Hours: 24 hours, 7 days a week
Languages: English
Website: https://www.lifeline.org.au

I don’t know why but I wasn’t going to call Lifeine until I was ready to actually go through with something. That’s what I was waiting for, the last moment. Only then would I call. Why waste people’s valuable time?

All I can say is that if you have lingering suicidal thoughts you shouldn’t wait that long, because by then the chances are that you may go through with it (and unfortunately lots of people do). Besides, what happens if you are waiting for that one conversation to stop you and then your phone dies for whatever reason? Luckily for me I had professional help long before any actual suicide attempt. I personally think I was about one to three months away (assuming my situation worsened).

She called me the next day just after midday (I was asleep). She actually asked if I was asleep and I said ‘yes’. That never looks good. Had a brief chat with her. She asked if I had any more suicidal thoughts and I told her that I had thought about it for a few hours. I could tell she was a bit annoyed because she said: “why didn’t you call the number I gave you?”. I honestly don’t remember how I responded to that question.

At that point, she suggested a voluntary admission into the local hospital. I asserted that I didn’t want my freedom taken away from me (like I told her being with my dog makes me happy, plus a couple of other things but not that many to be honest). I said I needed to post something first. She said “can someone else post it for you?”. I said “yes, probably”. That was when she said “mate, you’re actively researching it, you have a plan, you need to get yourself to a hospital”. So she eventually/ultimately talked me into it.

She just said to gather some clothes and I can’t remember what else because quite honestly it was all a bit hazy from then on.

On top of that, she stipulated a time. By that point it was 12:45pm. She said if I wasn’t at the emergency department by 1:30pm they would send someone to come and get me. I don’t know if that would have been police or not, I didn’t ask, but I suppose by that point I realised I was sicker than I thought I was and just accepted the situation — better to walk in voluntarily than be dragged in kicking and screaming.

Yes they probably do have the power to do that (call the cops) based on a mental health assessment. I found out later that yes police do have the power and authority to detain you; you can be ‘sectioned’ under the mental health act and taken to a psychiatric hospital, using force if necessary.

Until then, I never even considered visiting a psychiatric ward, I thought they were for more serious schizophrenic-types of patients, not chronically depressed people. I actually thought I would be going to something called a “sub-acute” ward, one that is not locked (I think). I also expected to talk my way out of it. For some reason, I couldn’t. So they kinda tricked me into it but it’s probably a good thing they did, because by the time I got out, it woke me up.

[continued to part II]

There were always ample warning
There were always subtle signs
And you would have seen them coming
But we gave you too much time
And when you said that no one’s listening
Why’d your best friend drop a dime
Sometimes we get so tired of waiting for a
Way to spend our time

Axl Rose, Coma GNR.

PARTII: “They’ll be waitin’ for an answer but you know nobody’s home.”

March 18, 2018 — leslie dean brown

Illustration by leslie dean brown. © 2019. All rights reserved.

Believe it or not, but I just spent all of last week in the loony bin… here’s how it happened:

[continued from part I]

Yes I was admitted to hospital over a week ago. First to the local emergency department. And then later transferred 1.5 hours away to the nearest mental health unit (aka “psychiatric ward” aka “lunatic asylum”). This is how my journey began.

I decided to opt for the back seat because I didn’t want to talk to anyone. The nurse sat beside me with the driver in front. I was very quiet, looking out the window at the world go by. At about the half way mark, I started to get nervous, because they were mentioning this thing called a “psych ward” with increasing frequency. Previously they had really only told me that I was being transferred to another larger hospital.

The nerves morphed into nausea. I told them I felt sick. I asked for more air. They gave me a vomit bag. The driver pulled over and not long afterwards, I vomited. Ugh. It must have been the blood test on the empty stomach that did it (and sitting in the back seat). They offered for me to move to the front seat. Pretty soon, I started to feel much better and started talking to the driver. We both agreed: this world is in trouble. And if you’ve been reading this blog, you know why. The nurse asked me: “Is all this why you’re depressed?”. “Partially”, I replied. “Partially.”

I was fine for the rest of the trip, but I was disoriented. We arrived at this weird-looking building with tall, thin vertical windows with corrugated iron cladding. I’d never been here before. I remember being escorted through several locked security doors. The sun was high up in the sky and I couldn’t tell which way was North.

We ended up in a little interrogation room and they told me to take a seat. There was a single chair with armrests in the center of the room. I sat, wondering whether or not to get myself comfortable by using the backrest. It was all a bit odd. They kept asking me if I knew why I was here. I knew. Truthfully? I don’t even remember what else they asked me. Probably my name and date of birth.

Oh I remember! There was a multiple choice questionnaire, that’s right. A K10 anxiety and depression checklist, not the usual Depression and Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) scoring template I was already familiar with.

“About how often do you feel depressed?”, the nurse asked with a cheery voice. “All of the time”, I responded bleakly. She filled in the little circle at the far right end of the same row. “About how often did you feel that everything was an effort?”, the nurse asked. “All of the time”, by now almost monotone. She filled in another little circle at the far right end. The month prior, my depression scores were listed as ‘severe’. They literally could not get any worse.

I remember being told to remove all of my belongings except the clothes I was wearing (for some reason I got to keep my wallet although they did ask for that too). Without my phone and car keys weighing down both pockets I felt almost naked. I was searched with a metal detector.

Then I was escorted through another set of double doors commonly seen throughout hospitals. I’m pretty sure they had a metal grid inside the window portion, for added security. My purple Crumpler^® messenger bag sat on the floor on the other side of that doorway. I think here is when the shock really started to set in because –unlike at an airport security checkpoint– I was not immediately reunited with my possessions.

Once inside, they sat me down at a round table which was bolted to the floor with sturdy metal L-shaped brackets. I was presented with a piece of paper to sign. I began to read through the document, which was printed on a single sheet of A4-sized paper. It was the terms and conditions regarding my voluntary admission.

I think it all seemed pretty routine for the nurse. As for me, I was still in a state of complete shock. I hesitated for a moment. There were about eight people in the room. Lord knows what was wrong with them. Another patient wandered over in my direction, and, keeping his distance, said to me in rather a loud voice something along the lines of: “Can I give you some advice? don’t stay here if you don’t have to be here, everyone wants to get out of here if you can leave just go get out of here don’t sign anything!”, like it was one drawn out sentence with no pauses in between. Hmmm. Not a good sign.

I glanced around this room and outside towards the 20-foot security walls and the abundance of dull grey cement and concrete (yes I know the difference between the two by the way). It all all looked very sterile. Even the raggedy-looking tomato plant appeared to be depressed. To me, it all looked (and felt) like a virtual prison. That’s probably because that’s exactly what it was!

I also noticed that there was a complete lack of art on the walls –and taking this complete stranger’s sage advice– decided not to sign. It all seemed like a very depressing environment to be in and I just didn’t want to be there. “Fuck ’em!”, I thought. “I’m not staying here a moment longer than I have to”, I resigned. Besides, I held this belief: “Shit, this is really going to interfere with my work” somewhere in the back of my mind.

“I can’t sign that.”, I said. Out loud. “I won’t sign.”, I said again, emphatically. Now I don’t know if everyone realises this, but there’s a whole world of difference between the two words “can’t” and “won’t” (for some people at least). And I thought that saying both of them strongly enough, sequentially, that they would somehow synergistically add up and give me a tiny bit more clout than either word used alone would. Nope.

“I don’t need to be here”, I thought, looking around the room one last time, utterly convinced of my decision-making abilities. “What happens if I don’t sign?”, I then asked (inquisitively and a admittedly a little belatedly). “If you don’t sign we can keep you for up to two hours until you see a doctor who can release you”, I was promptly told. “Well two hours is better than two weeks”, I muttered to myself, and stubbornly refused to cooperate with them any further.

I don’t exactly remember what happened next –whether I was standing or sitting or where– but it wasn’t long before I was ushered by one of the nurses into another small private room. A large man with a somewhat porky face and dark complexion walked in. I started answering a whole bunch of his questions. And then I realised I didn’t even know who the fuck I was talking to. I couldn’t even remember his name. “Are you a psychiatrist?” I asked, once again belatedly. “Yes I’m a type of psychiatrist” he said with a charming English accent. And I was like “okay… fine… good… I’ll be able to prove to this bloke of my sanity… finally I get to talk to someone intelligent!”.

Please keep in mind that I just wanted to leave this place and go straight back home to pat my dog. Because it’s the little things like that that make me feel ‘happy’. Access to all of those little creature comforts we tend to take for granted. Plus my freedom. And I thought that if they made me stay –if they forced me to– there was a fairly strong chance I’d either throw a temper tantrum, try to escape or worse yet kill myself. There was just no way this was going to work for me. Because I was already at rock bottom. “I can’t stay here two weeks.”, I said, while shaking my head resoundingly as I often do for added effect.

Once again, I was asked whether I knew why I was here. Maybe the real problem was that I was too honest? Yesterday, I had visited my local community health centre. To try and get some more help. Because I felt that the monthly visits to my psychologist were not enough. They were helping –sure– but only very slowly (cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT as it is known is inherently a slow process). So I had told the occupational therapist my latest thoughts. I had told her everything. That’s why I was here in the first place… of course I knew why I was here.

He told me that they were worried about me and spun the old “duty of care” argument. Uh oh… I could see where this was going…

Because although I didn’t wanted to kill myself right there and then in that exact moment, I had dwelled on it for some time. I hadn’t completely ruled out the possibility of doing something like that in the future. If my situation were to get worse for example, as a kind of an escape route from my relentless suffering. Like if my mum or my sister died, or some other fairly drastic and unexpected life event. For example if my dog was ever taken away from me — simply being with her was one of life’s few remaining pleasures.

Quite frankly, yes, I was almost over it. I almost could not take any more. Almost. I had had around forty hours of cognitive behaviorial therapy in the last three years alone. My change of career was about ten times harder than I ever imagined. I didn’t feel very successful. I had no motivation left. My sleeping patterns were a complete mess. I felt hopeless. Useless. I had basically had enough of it. It might be the least desirable option, but it’s still an option. My secret option. And I had briefly checked out on that option too.

So I don’t even remember if he asked me this next question before or after the previous paragraphs, but he said it in a strange, roundabout way. Instead of asking whether I had ever had (or currently had) suicidal thoughts or asking me directly whether I wanted to kill myself, he posed the question in the conditional, subjunctive form, like this:

“If I were to ask you whether you wanted to kill yourself, what would you then say to me?”.

Now that’s a strange way of asking somebody something, isn’t it? Is this some kind of pyschiatrists’ trick? Since I’m a rather fond of learning languages, I’ve since learned that this is called “the subjunctive mood”. Right. Looking back on it now, yes, it’s rather clever now that I think about it. All of a sudden this became a hypothetical scenario. Yes hypothetically I might want to kill myself in the future if the situation got worse. And then there was an awkwardly long pause on my behalf. Too long. Like nearly this long:

He had caught me off guard. Dammit! Yes I felt about as guilty as Jan Ullrich when asked about doping. But I didn’t smile or laugh because it wasn’t funny. Nothing was. “It’s too soon”, I remember thinking. “I’m not that suicidal. Not right now. Not yet. I’m not ready to do it yet. I’m only partially suicidal.”

Lots of things were going through my mind, but I still hadn’t answered yet! I’m not one to tell lies. Should I answer “maybe”? “Not right now”? “Sometimes”? None of these are good answers. I realise now that when you’re in this kind of predicament, anything other than a straight up ‘no’ is not the right answer. In the end I decided upon saying “how can I answer that question?”. I couldn’t think of what else to say. But the alternative was to sit there and say nothing for even longer. My lame response was a partial admission of my suicidal tendencies.

It was around this point in the conversation that he said “we can keep you here as an involuntary patient” and “I don’t take this decision lightly” (or whatever way he said it). I was astonished. “You want to put a suicidally depressed patient into a more depressing environment?!”, I remarked.

I felt like a tiny insect who had flown unwittingly into the outer perimeter of a very large spiderweb. The web had been spun well before I had entered the room that day. And the juicy big orb spider was coming to get me. It was a trap and suddenly I was stuck! Fuck!

You see, up until then, I had assumed that if I voluntarily walked into one of these centres, that I could voluntarily walk straight out again. Wrong!

I honestly wish I had a fucking tape recorder with me, but I didn’t have one so apologies if this next section isn’t verbatim and/or with the correct sequence of events. He looked me right in the eye (or I looked him right in the eye if you prefer) and he said: “The state wants to keep you alive” (or the equivalent, the only words I really remember were ‘state’, ‘you’ and ‘alive’). Or maybe he said “The state has a duty to keep you alive”, or something else very much like that — sorry, I just I don’t bloody remember.

“The risk to you is less in here than out there” the man said. To which I promptly replied: “but you haven’t seen my home environment, so how can you make that judgement? YOU don’t know!“. Then he repeated himself and I repeated myself. A few times actually. I was getting anxious. And then I said “well we’re just going ’round in circles”. The nurse nodded in agreement. The meeting was basically over at that point. There was to be no further discussion or compromise.

I had been classified as either a “mentally ill patient” or a “mentally disordered patient” (I’m still not sure which one). Basically, I was sick. How had I let things get this far? I don’t know. Depression is the disease of the 21st century; it wears an invisibility cloak and it can creep up behind you while you least expect it. Somewhere along the line, I had been gradually losing hope about my future.

By now it was dawning on me that there was not going to be an exit from here any time soon. Whether I signed that silly admission form or not, they were not going to release me back into the big bad world for a while. That was it. I was to be admitted as an involuntary patient at a psychiatric hospital ward.

[continued to part III]

They’ll be callin’ in the morning
They’ll be hanging on the phone
They’ll be waitin’ for an answer
But you know nobody’s home
And when the bells stop ringing
It was nobody’s fault but your own

Axl Rose, Coma GNR.