Sometimes I wait. I visit the space within and I observe; nothing in, nothing out. I make the staff stop too. In the morning they wait at my bedroom door, calling my name again and again. I feel them slowing down as I remain completely quiet and don’t move. Some get angry, some joke and laugh, some are rude, thinking I can’t hear, some want me to get up, many don’t, they just want to sit upstairs and have a completely quiet person to look after.
     When I achieve perfect stillness I can lay out everything. It is the peak of my mental prowess and I am very intelligent, everyone says it. You see, the thing is, I’m in pain. I am wracked with pain. I am in so much pain it pervades right into my deepest cells. If you zoomed in with the most powerful microscope, every deeper revelation would be a new pain. I was born in pain and every single event in my life is defined with a continuing pain.
     When I was young, the pain was overwhelming, it covered everything; I was a constant of pain. But as I passed puberty I noticed that I could feel pathways within my mind, I could feel neural fires lighting up and extinguishing. I learned about the brain and I learned that my somatosensory cortex was processing pain. A lot of pain. But where was the pain coming from?    
     I began to work down the pathways. I performed detailed analysis on the origin and presentation of my pain. I found that others had done this, and I would like to thank all the psychiatrists, psychotherapists and psychologists, especially Cindy, for giving me such a perfect map as to why I am in pain. The truth is, I am ill, so so mentally ill, all of it, every single diagnosis; that is me.
     ‘Fat pig.’
     Well, yes, there is that. That’s my anorexic voice, it’s the leader of the pack. If I’m strong I can ignore it. I’m not often strong any more though.
     ‘Shut up, fat pig.’
     I have read all the books. I would probably make a great psychologist. But the thing is, it’s just me. Me in here, and now all these representations of illness are my map.
     ‘Fat pig.’
     Shut up. Just shut up!
     My greatest fear. I’m just going to say it quick – what if I never was in pain? What if the experience of life just feels like this?
     ‘You disgust me when you think like that. When you think like that it makes you fat. Go and cut yourself. Go and cut some fat off or I will start attacking Simone.’
     It gets worse because I have all these doubts now. When I was confident of being ill, I felt really well.
     Oh yeah, there is another thing. I think I’m a poet. Thomas likes my poetry, he really encourages me. He’s a bit mad though, he’s all about literature and mad people and poets, he’s just so different to all the other staff. I love the poetry group he runs, but I don’t think he even agrees with medicine. He says that poets found a way out, that they shone lights into the darkest places, explored them, mapped them and returned; underworld stuff.
     I like to think I excel at that. Let’s take today. Today, I am in my internal mental illness orchard. I created all these trees many weeks ago, and they have fruited beautifully. Let me take you on a tour.
     There are so many different trees in my orchard. Take this one, this tree I like to call my passive tree. These presentations are more of the non-doing type. That low hanging fruit there, that is called dissociation, it tastes nice, I like that one a lot, it’s kinda like a mango, papaya-type fruit, easy to eat but you get hungry quickly again. I like a bit of dissociation, some people think you’re rude, but, there is a secret bit, it’s very good as a gateway to self-harm. Oh yes, it makes the flesh seems distant and so easy to slice through.
     ‘Yeah, you always get hungry, fatso.’
     Ignore that. Now that fruit there, same tree, different branch, it’s mutism, that one is not so bad, kinda bitter and you have to hold it in your mouth a long time if you really want a reaction. Once you get to a week – and that’s not easy – they start to pay attention. It’s tough to get the taste out of your mouth once you’ve been sucking on it that long though.
     That one, high up there, that is a very heavy one – catatonia, wow, once you eat it, you’ve committed and you lose a lot of choice, it’s so intoxicating, like a void that just eats you up. I’ve never dared to eat too much of that one. Me, I like to be involved, I mean, psychologists, I just love how much they love me. Dr Cindy is obsessed with me. She doesn’t realise how far I have pulled her in. She thinks she is in control. It’s so funny. All that training and I could eat her for breakfast.
     ‘Fat pig.’
     Fuck off.
     Dr Cindy thinks that I will kill myself given the first opportunity, and that is what I want, not to kill myself, well a bit, but definitely her belief.

​

*

​

‘Come on, get up, get up, get the fuck up,’ said Thomas, arriving at Sarah’s door. It was ten thirty and everyone else had got up hours ago. ‘Come on, the world is waiting outside that window. It’s a very beautiful thing, the world, not the window. The sun is shining, the stars are too, but we don’t see them, just like you. Ah ha! Come on you little poet, there is no time.  You have…’ Thomas paused, the best way to get Sarah up was to engage her in conversation, but if it wasn’t interesting enough, she wouldn’t bother to engage. ‘Let me tell you a thing,’ said Thomas.
     ‘You’re taking a while to finish that sentence?’ said Sarah’s quiet voice.
     ‘Ah ha, there you are. Did you know that Philip K Dick wrote a book and in it, there was an autistic kid on Mars, A mining oligarch figured that the autistic kid was living in fast time, and if he slowed down the time of an autistic person then he could tell the future, therefore finding out where to mine. But it turned out that the autistic person he chose controlled all time, then when time was sent into a spin everything got a little fucked. So perhaps, as you have an autism diagnosis, you are controlling time, you are manipulating all around you, changing the very cogs of our perception, did you ever think that?’
     ‘You know, funnily enough I haven’t thought that.’ Sarah said, her head appearing from under the cover.
     ‘She lives.’
     ‘I don’t, or at least, I don’t want to.’
     ‘But life is beautiful.’
     ‘Not through my eyes.’
     ‘Come on, you have eyes, what a wonder! Unreliable little bastards that they are, all our eyes, not just yours.’
     ‘What? Why are our eyes unreliable?’
     ‘We’re just getting a censored image, all the wonders around us, different wavelengths, so on, so on, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.’
     ‘What?’
     ‘Well, you know, when we think of the same things, part of us dies. We maybe shouldn’t use language to communicate. William Burroughs said language was a virus from outer space. That it was part of the control machine.’
     ‘Okay. Erm, so, why are you talking to me then?’
     ‘Mainly because I’m not allowed to throw things at you.
     ‘Thomas?’ Sienna appeared at the end of the corridor.
     ‘What?’ said Thomas.
     ‘Heidi wants to see you.’
     ‘Oh shit, what now?’ Thomas turned back to Sarah. ‘We better take this up later.Try to change your mind while I’m gone, but don’t manipulate our reality if you can help it.’
     ‘Okay, I’ll do my best,’ said Sarah.

 

*
 

‘What did Heidi want, are you in trouble?’ said Sienna as Thomas wandered into the nurse’s bay some time later.
     ‘I’m not actually.’
     ‘Oh, come tell then?’
     ‘Nah, I’m joking, I was in trouble. Seemingly Cindy has claimed that I’m trying to steal kid’s poetry.’
     ‘What? You’ve gotta be joking?’
     ‘I know, it’s ridiculous.’ Thomas burst out laughing. ‘I tell you, that woman has some serious issues. Maybe she should spend more time focusing on being a psychologist than trying to get me into trouble.’
     ‘Yeah, too right. Sarah is really manipulating her.’
     ‘What? How?’
     ‘She told me that she wants Cindy to believe she wants to die, in fact she needs Cindy to believe she will die and that she is confident that she can make her believe it.’
     ‘Do you think she wants to die?’
     ‘I don’t know. I think she wants to be sick. I don’t know if she is suicidal though, but she said that making Cindy believe she is suicidal makes her feel real.’
     ‘Some crazy logic. You’d think Cindy would know better. Sarah is playing a dangerous game.’

 

*

​

Let me get back to my tour. That tree is a great one, I have had periods when I loved that tree. Bit of ADHD, mania, all the way up to psychosis. Psychosis can be scary, so out of control, it’s a nice fruit, but once you eat it, bang! You can end up in a different orchard, a different world.
     That lovely tree there is the self-tree – self-doubt, self-hatred and self-obsession… I dearly love those fruits, small and moreish like grapes, I could eat them all day…
     ‘And that’s why you’re fat.’
     Yes, yes, and now we get to my ultimate tree – the eating disorder tree. Definitely the one that matters most. It has pride of place in the middle of my orchard. My ultimate place of worship. The fruits on an eating disorder tree… that surely is the work of Satan. I bet Eve ate the apple of the sacred eating disorder tree. That’s a curse that could last forever.
     Let’s be very clear. I am very dedicated to that tree. Every branch is a piece of my life. Every twisted root a tale of my past. Every leaf an incessant thought, the fruits are equal in this tree; anorexia, bulimia and binge eating. Big, heavy, low hanging fruits, easy to reach; abundant. Their taste, how can I describe it, it is the very core of my being, the experience of every taste bud having an orgasm, every cell meeting its mate, every feeling being fulfilled, the overflow, the impassion, the exact money for the ultimate price, this is inverted paradise, pure punishment disguised as pleasure, dribbling over the chin, sloshing down the throat, dropping off the stomach shelf into the void, the calorific, fat loaded, pig-making void of being, the disgusting sickly pit of ugly guilt, the horrible…

 

*

 

‘Sarah? Sarah? You awake?. You awake, you could be, maybe you are, let’s just get the fuck up, okay. Hello? Sarah, Sarah! Wake up. Wake the fuck up!’ said Thomas standing in her doorway.
     ‘What’s up with her?’ asked Sienna.
     ‘Maybe dead I reckon.’
     ‘Oh dear that is unfortunate. Well I guess she had a good life,’ said Sienna.
     ‘Oh she did, I mean, these days in the psych ward, they have the best, no need for potential, no need to be in the real world having fun. I mean, Sienna, did you have fun when you were an air hostess, travelling to exotic places, enjoying beautiful beaches and seeing the very wonders of the world, or would you have preferred to have been laid on a plastic mattress with a plastic quilt, slowly getting bored to death and treated by incomThomasent assholes.’
     ‘No beach could replicate the wonders of this room with the insulting graffiti written all over the walls. No, no, these are the best days indeed,’
     ‘Can you two just shut up!’ said Sarah.
     ‘It’s a miracle!’ said Thomas.
     ‘You guys are so bad, I’m telling Heidi.’
     ‘It won’t matter, she’s already seen me,’ said Thomas.
     ‘What have you done wrong now?’
     ‘Seemingly Cindy claimed I’m trying to steal young people’s poetry.’
Sarah was now sitting up in bed rubbing her eyes. ‘How could you be stealing our poetry?’
     ‘Cindy is obsessed with Thomas,’ said Sienna. She is always trying to get him into trouble? Maybe she’s jealous as the kids like poetry more than her.’
     ‘I like her,’ said Sarah.
     ‘Do you though? Or, do you like terrifying her with your death wish?’ said Thomas.
     ‘I mean, there is that,’ said Sarah.
     ‘She has attachment issues to you anyway,’ said Thomas. ‘How long was your therapy session yesterday?’
     ‘Erm, an hour and a half, an hour forty?’
     ‘And how long was it supposed to be? One hour. She went over your dinner time, she thinks she is your saviour and she’s broken the therapeutic relationship. She would be disempowering you if wasn’t you who is manipulating her to serve your own needs,’ said Thomas.
     They all laughed.
     Now Sarah, if you aren’t going to get up we will leave you to your room,’ said Sienna.
     ‘You can’t just leave me?’
     ‘Get up and we’ll chat.’
     ‘Okay, give me five minutes.’
     Thomas and Sienna, closed the door to Sarah’s room and walked off down the corridor.  
     ‘Do you think she’s gonna cut herself?’
     ‘Definitely,’ said Thomas. ‘Let’s give her a minute and we’ll stop her before she starts.’
     ‘Has she got a razor blade?’
     ‘I dunno, she’s got something. But it doesn’t matter if we find it, she’ll use something else. If we just take away the implement and don’t deal with the cause, nothing will change, she will carry on. It seems that we’re making everyone worse. Bloody Claymount, it makes people worse. We’re a mess, ‘cause the kids are mad and then we’re mad, and some of us are madder than others.’