Homeward Bound

I'm so bored of the whole process. I'm bored of recovery. I'm bored of medication. I'm bored of being told what I can and can't do and, you've guessed it, I'm bored about what feels like the longest wait EVER to get home. While I'm at it, I'm bored of being around other ill people, I'm bored of the classes, the food, the staff and my F@#*ing shower that still doesn't work. I'm so fucked off.  Sorry, here are the @#* to put in. I can't be arsed.

I try to reassure myself that anger and resentment are part of the process. That it means I'm coming back, that I'm returning. I am beginning to feel like I don't fit in here any more, which is difficult while I am, but possibly means I'm nearly ready to get out.

The drug levels are going down, the leave times are going up and still I'm caught in psychotic purgatory where I'm not at home anywhere. I just want to be in my house, with my belongings around me, with my clothes and shoes and post and my own space and cups without my name plastered all over them.

I'm ready to go home.

I'm also not ready at all.

I'm so scared.

I've been fighting so hard to get home for the last two months that I hadn't had a chance to think about what it would actually be like to go home, back to the scene of the crime where it all started. Where the unraveling began.

This was all home represented at the moment. I had become so engulfed in the horror of what had happened that I had forgotten that we were also going back to a place of unfathomable joy, empowerment, love and strength. The place where Albert swam into our lives and I would revisit the rooms where I lost and found myself completely. 

The plans were in place. The ward round had spoken. I was going home. We were going home. 

My dad had arranged to collect us and all my stuff, which had somehow managed to accumulate. That is the only issue about having a Primark near a psychiatric ward. The lure is too great, I was repeatedly drawn in like a crazed moth to a particularly cheap flame. 

Albert had grown, I had shrunk. We were both different people to the two that came through the unit doors all those weeks ago.

There was a mixed atmosphere in the ward as I left for my first home leave; happiness that I was on the next step out of there, sadness that we wouldn't be around for much longer, envy as other mothers at different stages looked on longingly, as I had once gazed at Lucky. I was becoming increasingly absent, my presence leaving ghostly trails of the madwoman that wouldn't be confined to the attic. 

It was the night before I left for home. It was just a couple of nights leave, but it was the biggest step into the known unknown I had ever taken. I had packed everything up in anticipation of leaving. I wanted it to feel like I was going home for good with just a few more overnight stays on the ward left. This was the home straight of a long lonely marathon. I couldn't see any finishing lines, but my faithful supporters were still cheering me on. I saw their faces in the darkness as I forced myself to sleep through the turbulence of my emotions.

Everything blurs past in the morning in a wave of busyness, appointments and checks, until the moment I am sitting in dad's truck. Ready to go. My two boys with me, just like when we made the longest journey into night. The hum of the ignition soothes us all. We've made it. We're here. It's a moment we weren't certain we'd see, that felt too far away to hope for just a couple of weeks ago. The radio blasts out and calms my fractious heart. We pull out of the hospital car park and a familiar tune begins to play. Homeward Bound.

I look out out of the window and experience the strangest mixture of safety and fear I've ever known. The soundtrack makes me feel fleetingly like I'm the off-beat lead in an indie film of my life. Although in that neatly packaged piece of storytelling this moment would probably be where the credits rolled. The end. Neat. Complete. I wish it was.

Homeward bound,

I wish I was,

Homeward bound,

Home where my thought's escaping,

Home where my music's playing,

Home where my love lies waiting

Silently for me.

Love and bridges over troubled waters,

Mutha Courage X

Mad Muthas

One of the best things about being mad in a psychiatric ward is that you are not alone. One of the better things about being mad in a mother and baby unit is that, funnily enough, there are mothers and babies there.

All of us had different illnesses and all of us were at different stages of recovery, but what we all shared was that they had all struck post-natally and so, luckily for us, we could have our babies with us.

It only struck me a few weeks after I had arrived that the pain for some women was that the baby they had with them was not their only child like mine was. I shared many painful moments with other women who cried over the separation from their other children. Families sometimes miles from the unit. They were there because there was a bed, not because it was convenient.

The ladies I spent two months with were my joy and my frustration. The way we loved and supported each other was staggering, but regardless of my love for them they were also a perpetual reminder that I was there. Trapped. Unwell.

During the group therapy sessions we would talk, share, draw, occasionally be tossed around on a blue sheet (the drama student in me was loving it!) and I was honoured to be a part of the healing process of others. The emotion was so raw, the memories so distressing, the future so often overwhelming. We became each others' "can-do sisters" and reminded each other when we were at our lowest ebbs that we could do it, we were doing it, and we would get home. 

It was always a sensitive navigation with the other women. When I was first admitted I was oblivious to the needs of others, but slowly, as I began to function as part of the group, I gradually became self-aware again. Wow. Self-aware. That meant that I had a self to be aware of again. This was a monumental step for me. 

Tuesdays were always an interesting dance of joy, disappointment and caution. After ward round everyone would be checking in with each other to see what had been said, what had happened to medication levels, what had been said about your progress and the most important question of all, how much leave did you get? In hospital terms "leave" was the litmus test, the progress report made physical. 

I learnt very quickly in the unit who to share my joys and successes with and who to play it down to, who to laugh with and who to lend a shoulder to. We all needed such different things at each stage of our time in there. One lady called Lucky got increasing amounts of leave until I hardly saw her and I always thought she had exactly the right name.

No matter what we were going through we ate together. I never could have predicted, just months before, that I would be here, in a psychiatric hospital, sitting around the table with my new family.

Love and dramatic blue sheets,

Mutha Courage X