The Dark Threads by Jean Davison

tears? They don’t go away. They swell up and multiply inside you, then freeze into blocks of ice. How was I to make sense of these experiences? Was it a dream, a nightmare? No, I really was in a Victorian asylum, along with trapped fish, parched plants, a caged bird and other ‘lost’ people. I was loaded with drugs and pain. Like the soil in which the potted plants stood, I was cracked and dry.
    I began to tend lovingly the wilting, neglected plants that stood on a sill in the day room, watering them daily from a plastic cup. I wanted to make their heads stop drooping so that they wouldn’t look like they, too, were drugged senseless. Live and grow; bloom, plants, bloom, and bring some life and colour and beauty to this place of frozen tears.
    At Rossfields, my last school, I used to wonder how it would feel if I was at a boarding school or some other place where I’d have to endure my shyness at evenings and weekends as well as through the day. Now I knew.
    My three colleagues from work had visited me during the first week of my stay and told me of their great surprise on hearing where I was.
    â€˜We’d noticed how you’d always been quiet at work,’ Rose had said, ‘but we’d no idea that anything was wrong with you. I mean, we thought it was just shyness.’
    â€˜But that’s right, it was just shyness,’ I had said emphatically, though I’d known this couldn’t have sounded very convincing in view of my present address.
    I realised now that my shyness, confusion about religion, dissatisfaction with my job and social life, letting my family situation get me down, boredom, wondering what life’s all about, and other adolescent turmoils, could all be construed through the perspective of psychiatry as symptoms of mental illness. Later, I would think about how this wasn’t a constructive way of looking at these kind of problems, and I would wonder why I colluded with the mental health professionals for a long time.
    Dr Prior once described me as a ‘good patient’. And indeed I was. Good patients believe they are sick and must obey their doctor if they want to get well. Good patients keep on at least trying to believe that the doctor knows what’s best for them, even against the evidence of their senses. Good patients co-operate with staff, follow the rules and passively accept their treatment. Yes, I (with the one exception of refusing further ECT) was a very good patient.
    Lee’s held my job open for as long as possible. I’d worked there for three years since leaving the factory. About three months after my last day at Lee’s, my parents brought me a letter at visiting time. It was from Mr Harlow, the Director, asking when I would be returning to work. They had not anticipated such a long absence and were sure I would understand that it was hard for the staff to continue coping with extra work, and temps were expensive. I tried several times to answer this letter, but words wouldn’t form on the page; I didn’t know what to tell them. I was in the hands of those who were treating me and they never even asked me about my job. I supposed there was no point anyway. My treatment put work out of the question. I asked my father to ring Lee’s to tell them I wouldn’t be going back.
    Mandy visited several times during my stay and she also wrote to me. I was grateful for her reminders of the world outside. Life in an institution – and that’s what it was despite any other name they may wish to call it – can be hellish.
    I can’t make it in this world, I’m simply not going to survive, I thought despairingly, as a dark wave of gloom washed over me, knocking me off balance. I was sitting alone among the crowd of patients in the hall at OT sipping tea from one of the dirty, brown-stained reusable plastic cups. The fact that these cups were never washed adequately had bothered me at first, especially when