The Dark Threads by Jean Davison Page A

I watched patients, usually elderly males, using them as an ashtray or spittoon, but now I was past caring. I hadn’t seen Raymond for a long time and wondered if he’d cut his wrists again. I looked down at my own white wrists where the veins stood out clearly and knew I hadn’t the courage, or whatever it takes, to do it; suicide could never be a way out for me. But how was I to cope with the overwhelming feelings of despair if I couldn’t end it all? I couldn’t hold on and I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t live and I couldn’t die. Panic gripped my soul. For me, there was no way out.
    With my nose pressed to the window pane, I noticed that the white carpet of snow covering the hospital grounds had given way to greenery. Newborn leaves were appearing as tiny shoots on branches of old, gnarled trees. The air smelt of springtime, a season I had once loved. In the mental hospital world it was too easy to lose track of time, but while I was wandering round in a drugged stupor, months were tiptoeing by …
    I managed to escape some of the afternoon OT sessions when Dad’s friend Joe brought my parents to visit in his car and then took us all out for a ride. On sunny days with the windows open wide we drove down narrow, winding country lanes, past fields, trees and hedges, where the sights and sounds of nature caused a faint stirring within me, a kind of nostalgia for life. It didn’t last long. Sister Oldroyd continued to allow Maria and Tessa to go on afternoon car rides with their parents but she told my parents not to visit me in the afternoons because it was causing me to miss OT which was an ‘important part’ of my treatment.
    At OT I fought to keep awake while typing page after page of meaningless prose for copy-typing practice. I had long been a competent typist and at least I’d been paid for doing it at work. When I could bear no longer this ‘important part’ of my treatment, I would escape to the toilet and allow myself the luxury of drifting off to sleep for a while. I was too drowsy now to write on toilet paper for my diary and, anyway, writing had become as pointless as everything else. But I held on tight to the nostalgia for life that the car journeys had strengthened. In moments of despair I tried to focus my mind on winding country lanes and fields and trees and sunshine till my heart cried out: I want my life back.
    Some of the patients were like bloated robots. I looked at them, sadly, and made the connection. I had become just the same. My weight gain was apparently a side effect of at least one of the drugs. I wore long, loose sweaters that hid the large gap where my size 12 skirts wouldn’t fasten. Another side effect was that my face and neck kept breaking out in angry, red lumps – far worse than my previous teenage pimples. And Danny had seen me change from the girl he’d known into a lifeless automaton.
    When Danny visited I couldn’t stop myself from slumping forward and falling asleep at the table where we sat at visiting times. I knew I owed him, and my parents, more than a view of the top of my head when they travelled to see me, but it was so hard to fight against this drowsiness caused by my current dosage of 125 mg of Melleril three times a day, 5 mg of Concordin three times a day and Mogadon every night. I don’t think I gave Danny any reason to feel that his visits were worthwhile or that I cared for him at all. On top of this, he’d been putting up with increasing hostility from my father. Danny had told my father he intended to speak to my psychiatrist to query my treatment since its adverse effects were obvious. Dad had told him not to interfere, and couldn’t manage even to be civil to Danny after that.
    â€˜Jean, wake up and listen to me!’ Danny said, one visiting time.
    An uncharacteristic tone of agitation in his voice reached my dull senses. I raised my head mechanically and opened my