The Ward
The Ward Zoe Glen-Norman
Disclaimer: Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.
Devoted to the invisible ones, whose voices are not heard.
“Midway through the journey of my life I woke to find myself in a dark wood For I had wandered off from the straight path
How hard it is to tell what it was like This wood of wildness, savage and stubborn The thought of it brings back all my fears
A bitter place! Death could scarce be more bitter But if I would show the good that came of it I must talk about things other than good.�
Dante Alghieri, The inferno
She was taken there in an ambulance and she did not fight it. She didn’t know where else to turn; the one person she always relied on was the very person causing her pain now. Counselling wasn’t just a service to her. It was the closest relationship she had. It was the only thing she looked forward to each dreary week. She spent longer on the train than with her counsellor but still she made that tiring journey every Wednesday without complaint. Her family watched her pour her heart and soul into a mammoth mandala painting which she gave to her counsellor too, though when her family asked she only said it was for “someone special”. Her counsellor became the centre of her universe and she let everything and everyone else drop away. She didn’t even tell her family she was seeing a counsellor, and from the effort she put into her dress every Wednesday, they must have thought they had a living Juliet under their roof. Now her counsellor was leaving her and she was left to put together the shattered shards of herself and her life. She was not herself; she did not care if a meteorite hit her, nor did she care for her attire anymore. She simply threw a jacket over her nightie before walking into public. She felt as though she was cloaked in a heavy layer of fog which cut her off from the rest of the world. The mockery she received from a group of teenagers earlier that day passed right through her.
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This is the story of one young girl’s experience in Australia’s mental health system. She would like to be known as Ivy. Ivy, being an evergreen plant, represents fidelity and strong affectionate attachment, such as wedded love and friendship. The ivy plant is also a strong plant which can grow in the hardest environment.
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Thurs 31 March, 2016
It was nightfall when she arrived. She stepped out of the ambulance and was escorted into the ward. The staff took her bag to search for any dangerous objects, from knives to ordinary items like sharpeners and scissors. She felt as though she was at an airport going through customs. Next, she was shown to her room. She heard the nurse say something about items getting stolen in the hospital and together they made a list of everything in her bag. Her pulse was then taken and some other general tests completed. It was a bit of a cold welcome to the ward, she thought. A strange place to be for a heartbreak. Her bed was a stretcher with bleach-white blankets and sheets. The TV in the communal area next to her room made the ward feel a tad more homely, but at the cost of her sleep. Things were looking a little more hopeful when the TV went off for the night, but then, to her horror, the staff started coming in and shining torches at her. All they cared about was keeping her a breathing object, she felt, and she suddenly had great empathy for animals in the zoo. She was on edge all night, especially with the endless stream of emergency “codes” announced via the overhead speakers throughout the night. She had no idea what they meant. Like a song stuck in your head, that monotonous “Attention please, code grey, 3
inpatient unit one� lingered in her head for a long time to come. The ward was like a combat zone. One morning there really was a fire and she had to evacuate with the other patients.
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Fri 01 April, 2016
The day after she arrived she met the doctor who would be overseeing her stay. This woman was a psychiatrist, but all psychiatrists went by the name “doctor”. The doctor came to her room and found her face down on her bed wearing industrial-grade earmuffs. Ivy never left the house without them as the world was too loud for her. Like a third-degree burn victim, even the slightest sound could pierce her skin and injure. But this wasn’t exactly the best impression for getting out of the loony bin. Ivy had never seen a psychiatrist before the hospital. The doctor was an older woman and seemed more experienced than the other psychiatrists, most of whom were so young they must have charged straight through medical school without a minute to breathe, live or experience what it's like to have one’s life derailed by severe mental breakdown. The doctor asked Ivy when she wanted to leave. Ivy was so overwhelmed by her first night here she felt she’d be better off out. She said she wanted to leave soon as she was getting even more worn down by this place. The doctor suggested Tuesday the following week. The hospital was a vacuum. Nothing happened, it was just the same mundane routines day in day out, to the point patients found themselves looking forward 5
to lunch or dinner as it was all that ever happened. The clock’s hand seemed as stuck as the patients, while the rest of the world continued on. In one courtyard, Ivy could hear the roar of traffic speeding by on the other side of the impermeable wall. In the other courtyard, she saw the rest of the hospital towering above her. Other than being in a pit near a major road, she wouldn’t have been able to describe where this peculiar place was. She knew the name of the hospital but she had never been there before and she had arrived as good as blindfolded given she was in an ambulance and the sun had set. She remembered the games she used to play at school where a jumper was thrown over her head and she was spun round and round before taken somewhere- helplessly depending on her partner- then asked to guess where she was. While it felt like forever, it was only a day after she arrived that Ivy met Theresa. “Mind if I sit here?” Theresa asked Ivy, who was eating her lunch alone in the courtyard, picking out the artificially red cherry from her fruit salad. “Sure. It’s nice of you to ask,” Ivy replied, and Theresa joined her under the rotunda. Exuberant and forward, but fragile as an orchid flower, Theresa could be described as an extraverted version of Ivy. She was a hippie at heart, lived on a self-sufficient farm, and her mood swings were as rapid as Ivy’s, although it was all visible from 6
the outside. She revealed to young Ivy that she [Theresa] was Bipolar. She was extremely distressed about the state of the planet, in particular other patients dropping their cigarette butts on the ground and “burning Mother Earth”. Ivy only caught fragments of her story as it was a bit of a jumbled jigsaw puzzle, but she could tell Theresa had a kind heart and often found her looking out for the other patients. Theresa became Ivy’s first friend in the ward. It was Friday that Ivy’s counsellor found out she was in hospital, and Ivy got a call from her that evening. “Your private psychologist is on the phone,” Ivy’s pregnant nurse at the time informed Ivy who was under the rotunda with her tray of dinner. Ivy didn’t know whether she wanted to talk with her counsellor or not. Sinking butterflies thrashed about in her stomach. She decided to take the call and headed inside. No one really knows what exactly the exchange was on the phone, but when Ivy hung up, she collapsed to the ground, with the patient next-inline for the phone attempting break her fall. “I didn’t do anything, she just fell,” the patient swore to Ivy’s nurse who came to the scene. Meanwhile Ivy lay on the hard, bitter floor wailing. Her nurse tried to lift her up by the arm but it 7
had lost all solidity, it just flopped back to the ground like a rag doll. “Get up, I can’t lift you,” her nurse demanded, as though Ivy was in total control of her actions. Ivy continued to lie on the ground like a flopped fish, baited, reeled and left to die. The demands continued. “You’re upsetting the other patients,” her nurse tried, “You’re acting like a baby.” Eventually Ivy heaved herself up, hitting and yelling at the walls before following her nurse into her bedroom which was conveniently right next to the hospital phones. She fell onto her bed and screamed into her pillow. Her nurse tried to get her to take a white, round tablet, literally pushing it into her mouth. Ivy was struck by how unusually weightless it felt. As distressed as she was, she still couldn’t accept it. “I can’t have it,” repeated Ivy. “You’ll have to have an injection if you don’t take it and an injection will hurt,” threatened her nurse, who presumed Ivy was being difficult. Her nurse didn’t understand that Ivy was so worried about chemicals it was verging on phobic. Over the past many years Ivy’s diet had progressively 8
shrunk as she attempted to avoid anything man-made. Purity was her holy grail, and it was hard enough eating the hospital food, let alone taking their medicine. She followed an organic diet and researched everything that went into her body. Many of the ingredients in the medicine Ivy wouldn’t even put on her face. Needless to say, the ordeal over the medicine managed to shift Ivy’s focus from her counsellor for a bit. She kept telling her nurse she couldn’t have the drug. In the end her nurse just left poor Ivy alone in her room. When Ivy’s nurse returned, Ivy was able to hold a conversation. She was shame-ridden, however, exclaiming she was a horrible client and that she didn’t deserve her counsellor. “I think right now you should be focusing on getting well rather than your counsellor,” her nurse said. Later that evening Ivy headed into the courtyard, the cool night air calming the fire of her grief. She sat down in the corner of the courtyard. She would have liked to be swept away to a distant hill where she could gaze at an open starlit sky rather than the little square, glowing windows of the hospital above. On her hilltop she would meet beings of glistening light, beings who would take her away to a planet that feels more like home than this one. A planet where the sun doesn’t rise and fall, where 9
people don’t come and go, where there are no goodbyes and there is no loneliness because everyone is one with each other so there is no need to try and explain how we feel inside because those around us just know. Meanwhile, notes were being furiously scribbled about her in the staff office.
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Weekend
She started to get the most out of her stay when a nurse showed her the women's lounge. It was in another section of the ward, the "gender sensitive area", which required a special card to access. It was a peaceful room, the only noise being the gentle trickle from the fishtank. When the TV started up in the morning Ivy would get up, move into this lounge, and sleep on the couch. What she also liked about this area was the sense of community she felt here. It was in this smaller lounge she connected with the other women in the ward. The hospital had some brilliant colouring books she would take into this room and work on with Shanti, a softly spoken older woman who was Buddhist. Ivy came to appreciate the smallest of things, like Shanti’s pack of rainbow gellpens she used to colour a vibrant Phoenix, and the "offerings" Shanti would bring her from the outside world, like a chocolate bar and a bag of chips. Ivy was so hungry but wasn't allowed to leave the hospital, even just to get her own food. She was given no orientation when she arrived so it took her a while to discover that food was left in the cafeteria between meals, such as the evening sandwiches. Ivy found her restrictions a bit strange given she was meant to be voluntary. She had been “invited” to come as a voluntary patient and was told she’d have the same rights as any other citizen, but now they kept saying she needed to see her doctor first. Her mother’s birthday was coming up and she 11
didn’t know what she was going to tell her. Ivy didn’t want her family to know she was in hospital, like she didn’t want them to know she was seeing a counsellor. She asked if she could move into the gender sensitive area. The staff kept saying a room would come up soon and she would be notified, but she felt dragged along. Finally, fed up, she set up on the couch in the women's lounge one night before it got locked, borrowing one of Theresa’s blankets. This infuriated the nurse who was in charge of her that night. Ivy was shocked how heartless some people working in mental health could be. Was it such a big ask to get some rest? Isn't that what hospitals were for? Her actions did have some success as there were indeed a couple of rooms free that night and one of the other nurses offered her one. But she didn't get much sleep that night either as she felt so unsafe in the hands of her nurse. She lay awake worrying her nurse might come in and hurt her.
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The following week
One of the staff ran little outings for the patients. This was the first time Ivy saw the outside of where she was staying. The group took a stroll around the block, but before they left the ward, they were warned that if any of them ran away, the police would come for them and they’d be taken straight back to the ward. Ivy didn't feel intimidated as she was “voluntary” afterall, and as difficult as it was being in the hospital, never in her wildest dreams did she think there'd be a moment she’d consider running. She was actually really depressed when Tuesday came because she wasn’t ready to go home and face her miserable life again. Being in hospital was a removal from reality and this was serving Ivy rather nicely. But we must be careful what we wish for because it might just come true. When Ivy saw her doctor on Tuesday she was terrified that she would be sent home, but her doctor ended up doing the complete opposite and making Ivy an involuntary patient. Ivy’s doctor said she was going to call her parents whether she liked it or not, and Ivy cringed as she imagined the moment her unsuspecting parents found out their daughter’s a nut. Her doctor also said she’d have to put a treatment order on her since she wouldn’t take any medication. A part of Ivy was actually relieved. Deep down she knew the loss of her counsellor was only the tip of 13
the iceberg. She was so stuck and had suffered in silence for so long. She felt she was being taken seriously at last and something was going to be done about this. There was a flicker of hope within her that maybe medicine could help her. She wanted to believe her doctor cared about her and just hand herself over instead of always trying to find her own answers. But the other side of her was equally terrified, and as much as she wanted to believe the hospital was a loving place, she just didn’t. She shuddered at the thought of that mean nurse she had the other night making her take the pills. Being shut in hospital against one’s will had only been something happening around Ivy. She never thought it would happen to her. Now she was officially a psychiatric patient and owned by the state. She was in shock and her whole body froze. She couldn't move even after the session finished. Her doctor whistled Ivy’s nurse to deal with her and left. Fortunately Ivy’s nurse at the time was a kind nurse and took Ivy by the arm back to her room. She was a student nurse so she was yet to have her feelings deadened by the system, Ivy gathered. Her nurse shed some light on why her psychiatrist might've made this decision. She told Ivy her freezing could be interpreted as catatonia. It also sounded like the hospital was building a case that Ivy couldn't look after herself. According to the nurses' notes she hadn't showered for three days. But the reason she hadn't showered was 14
because she’d run out of underwear and didn't know what to do with her laundry because there was no orientation. Ivy couldn't believe the speculations being made about her. Apparently she was not mixing with the other patients enough. A little later she caught a glimpse of her blood test referral and under "other clinical notes" was: "psychosis?" This place would make you psychotic all right, Ivy thought to herself. The hospital no longer felt safe. In fact Ivy couldn’t help but see a sickening similarity to the holocaust: uniform pyjamas, Hitler the psychiatrist sitting on top with the nurses administering his orders. These people even believed they were doing the right thing too. That night, Ivy used her mobile phone to call a friend, Om, who she saw now and then and who lived locally. While it was extremely distressing for Om also to get such a phone call, he tried his best to hold it together for Ivy and came down straight away. On the other side of the locked doors, Ivy packed up her bag, soaked up her tears and firmly told one of the nurses that it was time for her to leave and her lift was outside. The nurse wouldn’t let her out. She insisted that she came here as a voluntary patient and she wanted to leave now, but the nurse wouldn’t budge. There was a small window in the ward door Ivy peaked through as she desperately tried to see her 15
friend. On the other side was a foyer, but she didn’t know whether it too was locked. She couldn’t see her friend anywhere. Meanwhile, he hovered outside where two cops passed him with a handcuffed man who they led inside. Om was horrified and wondered what on earth his friend doing in such a place? Eventually, he had to go home, but he promised to come back the following day. Ivy wondered if she should ask him to bring a large suitcase disguised as belongings for her so she could squeeze into it and he could quietly wheel her out of the ward. She was so little she could probably fit. Ivy texted another friend who had stayed in this very ward before. He suggested Ivy calls the police, but they couldn’t even do anything and Ivy gathered they were one with the hospital anyway. The operator asked to speak to one of the hospital staff, but there was no way Ivy was going to hand her mobile phone over to them, it was her only string to the outside world. “Abuse happens in hospitals too” Ivy informed the operator, who was no help at all. It had dawned on Ivy that this was essentially abuse, institutional abuse. It was hostage. This place stripped people who already felt out of control of any control they had left. Ivy couldn’t even show how upset she was because she was completely dependent on them and she worried they would just use her distress against her as further evidence she was “mentally ill”. That day, Ivy saw just how much power doctors had and it was frightening. She could no longer sleep at all 16
and she began to look terrible, red blotches breaking out on her face. She realised how important it was to have a good circle of friends rather than investing everything in one person. She thought about her old activism friends she used to protest with before she became so depressed. She imagined them banging on the door of the ward chanting “let her out, let her out”, and how much that would mean to her. She could almost hear Om banging too and how worked up he was, despite not showing it. She confided in some of the other women in the women’s lounge, like native tribes would gather around the fireplace and share their stories, triumphs, joys and sorrows. She could better relate with one woman, Kayla, who never really wanted to be in the hospital in the first place. Ivy had met her the day she first arrived and found her difficult to connect with; she was hostile and would just pace endlessly around the hospital. She told staff she’d jump the wall. Now she was Ivy’s comrade. Turns out both women were led to believe they would be voluntary and then had their status changed once inside. Kayla said she didn’t want their drugs either, although she didn’t seem to have the same sheer terror Ivy had as she still smoked. Ivy met another lady who had long been trying to fight a community treatment order a doctor had put on her; she wasn’t free even outside of the hospital. A third lady told Ivy she went to see her psychiatrist simply because she couldn’t sleep, then ended up in the hospital. The staff would wake her to give her a 17
sleeping pill. She also had a shadow of electroconvulsive therapy now hanging over her. She was trying to put it off by not drinking the water she was required to drink before the procedure. There was one very angry women who Ivy didn’t speak with but heard in the corridor. She had been stuck in the hospital for quite some time and hated the place. “Anyone with any intuition would feel this is not a healthy place to be,” Ivy heard the woman exclaim. Theresa was the next victim. She was furious about being tied to the system and made dependent which stood in stark contrast to the philosophy she lived by, as reflected in the home she built for herself. At one point Ivy even heard quiet Shanti express her disagreement with what the hospital was doing. She had been in the hospital for a month and told Ivy she had outlined her principles to them when she first came. She didn’t feel comfortable taking drugs, as Ivy suspected, but they still made her take them. She never fought with them and believed anger was a “bad” emotion, so Ivy did not take it lightly when she told her she felt it was a violation to her body and rights what they were doing. She was in the process of finding a place to live for when she leaves the hospital. Her heart was in a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of the city, but the hospital staff didn’t seem to want to support her. Ivy felt all the anger 18
Shanti had not allowed herself to feel over being so disempowered. She didn’t understand why these people were being kept in the hospital. It was traumatic what was happening to her and so many others, all based on one person’s opinion about what was wrong with them. Ivy wondered why there were no tests done to diagnose the supposed “chemical imbalance” she had like there were with other illnesses. She wondered whether doctors even knew what exactly a chemically balanced brain looked like. It was pseudoscience, faith at best. Theresa found a bunch of pamphlets about patient rights and the women began their quiet rebellion. They rebelled with intellect and they rebelled with art. The most stunning dream catcher Ivy had ever set eyes on was made by Theresa. Long strands of different textured wool in pastel blues, greens, pink and white dangled from the ring at idiosyncratic lengths, like a mermaid’s hair in the ocean. Theresa had made it before Ivy arrived. When she saw Ivy, she told Ivy she knew it was meant for her. Ivy hung it in the women’s room and was shattered when it went missing. She asked Theresa if she’d seen it, and Theresa said it was in the staff’s office. Something that struck Ivy about the hospital was how much it resembled the old prison privileges system. She got a “tick” for going on the outings, and a “cross” for staying in bed all day or not showering. 19
She had to work to get her rights back. She no longer felt she could just collapse, rest and be herself in this place. If she wanted to get out she needed to morph herself into someone she wasn’t, a normal, functioning member of her sick society. She had to show the hospital she could control herself. Fortunately for Ivy she did reach a point where she was more in control, but it was not through stuffing her emotions and pretending to be who the hospital wanted her to be. That is precisely what landed her in there in the first place. Her people pleasing and the masks she wore left her so disconnected from everyone around her that the only person she could be real with was her counsellor who then became all-important to Ivy. Her turning point was when her family and friends came to visit her, the day she, Om and her parents all sat in the cafeteria together and the tears finally ran free like rain down a window. While she was separated from them physically by walls, in many ways the hospital brought them together, broke down her compartmentalised life. She’d kept everything she was going through from her family. She was a different person to her family, her friends, her counsellor. Now here they all sat, together, in a mental health ward. Interestingly, her mother had just got back from NewZealand where she had a strange fit and ended up in hospital at the same time Ivy had her crisis. It reminded Ivy of a case she read about in a parapsychology journal where a twin experienced pain in her body at the same time her sister, unbeknown, was in a plane accident. When her parents left, for the 20
first time Ivy could remember, they hugged. It felt so wrong that they all couldn’t walk out that door together, but Ivy had a new-found strength and confidence, and with her army around her she felt there was no way the hospital could do this to her. She was one of the fortunate ones, as many in the hospital, such as Shanti, had no family and received no visitors. When Ivy told Shanti that she had been made an involuntary patient, Shanti advised that her best hope would be to get her family on board, and she was right. “You’re lucky you have parents that are still alive,” she commented. In that moment with Shanti, Ivy wasn’t sure whether to feel happy or sad.
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“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.� Og Mandino
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So it went that amidst Ivy’s darkest hour, she found strength, she found hope, she found love, and she found gratitude. Ivy’s mother brought Ivy her favourite organic food and her piano sheets as there was a piano in the hospital. Her time in the hospital made her realise what mattered in her life, such as music. Many people commented how beautiful her playing was and it brought her great joy to be able to connect with people in this way. She felt it was something she needed to pursue more when she left the hospital. Om frequently visited his friend, and for Theresa and Shanti, it was as though God had just blessed the ward with his presence. “You two will be forever”, Theresa exclaimed while crossing two fingers. “Even if you’re not boyfriend/girlfriend, you will always be friends. If Om does go out with another girl, you will never let her jealousy stand between you two.” Shanti watched Om from a distance like a fan watches a celebrity, trying to work up the courage to approach them. “He’s one to keep,” she whispered to Ivy.
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That night Ivy was able to sleep again. She had a dream that she could leave her body and world behind for good, and she had to make a decision whether to stay or go. In the end, she decided to stay. The next day, she told Shanti her dream. Shanti was glad she chose to stay. “You are here to help this world,� she said.
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When Ivy next met with her doctor, she felt very different in herself. In this session she struck a fine balance between being honest about her struggles but also being hopeful about the future. She held herself back from saying too much. Ivy’s doctor probed about her diet, looking for any rigidity in her relationship with food. “Do you only eat organic food?” she asked. “I like to eat organic but I can’t always,” Ivy replied, making extra effort to make eye contact. “Like the hospital food I’m eating isn’t organic, so sometimes I just eat non-organic.” Her doctor probed about Ivy’s activism, looking for any paranoia. “What kinds of things do you lobby about, I’m curious,” prodded her doctor. Ivy chose the most benign of her causes, steering well clear of chem-trails or anything else that was considered a conspiracy theory. “I was trying to stop the government from dredging the bay,” she expressed passionately, “And the irradiation of imported food.” She didn’t give away anything that her doctor could use to justify a treatment order. 25
“Do you sometimes feel hopeless?” asked her doctor. “Yes I do,” Ivy let on. When her doctor started assessing for any suicidality, Ivy shared the dream she had that last night. “I actually had a dream last night that I could leave this world and I chose to stay. While separated physically, in many ways my stay here has actually brought me closer to my family and friends.” “What do you want to do when you leave here?” “I realised how important music is to me in here and I want to put together some songs with a cello player. I’m also thinking of getting into acting.” There was a pause, which her doctor shortly broke. “I want to start you on an antidepressant,” she said, and at this point Ivy was very close to losing it emotionally. “I don’t feel I need them.” Ivy replied, trying her hardest to keep her cool and stuff the sheer terror which rose in her.
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“You don’t look happy.” Her doctor diagnosed. It was the comment Ivy had always longed someone would say to her. She was a brilliant actress and felt more real on stage than off. Everyone commented she came across as so friendly, calm and collected, but meanwhile she was drowning inside and she desperately needed a lifesaver. She needed to be seen. “I’m just thinking,” was all Ivy ended up saying. “This antidepressant will help with anxiety, and unlike other medications you do not need a high dose for it to be effective.” “Not being given a say in my treatment is actually making me more anxious,” Ivy exclaimed quite frankly while trying not to sound aggressive. At the same time, she remained interested in and open to the drug her doctor wanted to give her. It was quite an art which Ivy managed to master rather superbly. “Can I get the med from my GP?” Ivy asked. “You can do that..” “What is the name of the med?” “Lexapro.” In the end, Ivy’s doctor let her go. Ivy was made a voluntary patient and her doctor asked, once 27
again, when she wanted to leave. They had done the full circle. Ivy said she wanted to stay in the hospital a bit longer as it was helpful just being in the hospital, and they settled on the following week. Ivy left with the intention of picking up a pamphlet about Lexapro and the option of changing her mind, but it needed to be before the weekend so her doctor could monitor her response. While it was a huge win, there was a strange flicker of disappointment in Ivy as well. She was the only one in the hospital not taking anything. She got talking with the other women in the women’s lounge and Kayla had started taking something. Her stance had completely changed and she said she actually liked the drug, while one of the other women commented that her medication made her feel calmer. Ivy was envious and felt so alone in her double-battle, an unbreakable cycle where the medication was for anxiety, but she needed to feel less anxious in order to take the medication. One morning Ivy work up feeling awful and wondered whether this was the outcome she truly wanted. She drew a card from her oracle deck which she sometimes used to make decisions. Interestingly she received the card “Be Honest with Yourself”: “This card indicates that you’re hiding your true feelings and aren’t being forthright about an important topic. The fairies urge you to admit your true feelings to yourself.
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Do you feel stuck? Depressed? Tired? Angry or irritable? These are symptoms that arise when we're dishonest with ourselves. Maybe you feel that you can't afford to be honest with yourself and that you don't have a choice. This card isn't asking you to make any radical life changes or have a confrontation with another person. However, it is urging you to admit your true feelings to yourself. One easy way to get in touch with your true feelings is by going outside and engaging in a silent conversation with the fairies who live amidst the flowers, trees and grass. Even if you can't yet see or hear the fairies, mentally tell them everything that you're thinking, feeling and experiencing these days. Ask them to help you get in touch with your deepest feelings. The fairies love to hold a mirror up to us so that we can see and admit the truth.� Ivy was left with the affirmation "It's safe for me to be honest with myself and others. I speak my truth with love." What Ivy really wanted was to let go of control and feel safe at the same time. But that was a difficult wish to fulfil in such a cold, sterile environment. Nurses just went through the motions and because they were on a rotating roster, it was impossible for them to build a close and trusting relationship with their patients. Similarly patients were shuffled in and out as quickly as possible to make way for new patients, and there was certainly no shortage.
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The last few days
During the remainder of her stay, Ivy used the hospital on her terms as a place of respite. She had met another girl her age, Jade, who was a kindred spirit. It was lunchtime and Ivy had been sitting under the rotunda within hearing distance from Jade and her family. Jade believed she was the only vegan in the ward. Her mother, disagreeing, signalled to Ivy. Jade’s mother asked Ivy, one day, if she’d gone to a Steiner School. “I’m sure I’d be happier if I did,” said Ivy. Jade’s mother said Jade had been bullied in school as well. Ivy wished she’d gone to school with Jade; Jade was the kind of friend she would have liked. When Ivy passed Jade’s room to go to bed, she heard the most transcendent music seeping from the door. She no longer felt she was in hospital but in outer space, and she wondered whether Jade felt as lost on this planet as she did. Ivy liked to sit at the art table with Jade. They contemplated time and why the world beyond went so fast. Ivy watched Jade go through an old magazine ripping pieces from various pages and gluing them together to make a new picture in its own entirety. She was a budding artist and Ivy could well imagine her work becoming famous one day. Then Ivy could say to 30
people she had the honour of knowing Jade before she became famous. Ivy spent the rest of her time creating... creating art, creating jigsaws, creating friendships, and creating herself. Her mother had bought her an Enchanted Woodland colouring book containing pages of busy, intricate outlines, though at one point it went missing. Ivy asked Theresa whether she’d seen it, and Theresa, deeply apologetic, confessed she had it and had coloured one tiny ant on one of the pages. Ivy was not upset but bemused, wondering what made her chose to colour the ant of all pictures. Theresa also confessed to wearing Ivy’s earmuffs, which Ivy left in the woman’s lounge one time, while eating a banana. She begged forgiveness for her sins. Ivy certainly met some interesting characters during her stay. Ivy drew enchanted creatures- a little cloaked man repelling a ferocious dragon with his crystal staffand Theresa found her a cute wooden miniature car to paint during her trip to a local milkbar. Ivy was regretful that Theresa never got to see the finished product, as she had wanted to see; Ivy ended up leaving the hospital rather abruptly without saying goodbye. It started when she saw Jade’s empty room. Her special friend was gone and Ivy never got her number either. Ivy had seen Jade’s mum in there earlier tidying things up and she beat herself up for walking on past. The ward didn’t feel the same without Jade there. Ivy was falling. It started to feel 31
pointless staying in the hospital watching people come and go all the time. It was nearing the end of her own stay and she decided it really was her time to go now, but she still felt miserable about leaving. The day of her discharge she woke up feeling like she’d been smacked in the face by a train. She wished someone had of checked whether she felt she was ready to leave. Those antidepressants were starting to look more attractive now and she wished she could have tried them. She felt totally unprepared to leave. Her nurse offered her some valium, bringing it into her room in a tiny plastic cup. Ivy just swished it round and round the bottom of the cup; as much as she wanted to she still couldn’t bring herself to take it. Her nurse got frustrated and took it away. Ivy said no, she really did want it, but her nurse told her it was too late and left. By this point Ivy was just too upset by all the lost opportunities. She concluded the hospital really didn’t care about her and she’d be better off out. Fuelled by the energy of her anger, she packed up her bags and got Om to pick her up that morning. She also pulled out her Swiss Army compact pocket knife she’d smuggled into the hospital when she arrived, went into her bathroom and slid the blade over her forearm before throwing on a jumper and returning to the world on the other side of the locked door.
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After discharge
After she left, Ivy kept having nightmares that she was still in the ward. She woke up disoriented and out of her body. She slowly began to realise she was at her parent’s place and, relieved, she descended into her body again. These horrific flashbacks happened for several nights before they began to fade. Ivy searched for Jade on Facebook, scrolling through multiple Jades until she accepted that she wouldn’t get anywhere without Jade’s surname. She then called up the hospital to ask if they could pass on her mobile number to Jade, but the hospital said they had nothing to do with Jade anymore. Eventually Ivy stopped searching and surrendered it to the hands of the universe. People come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime, she trusted, and if Jade was meant to be in her life for longer, then it would happen. Several months later, Ivy went to a tye dye class run by an organisation for youth mental health. She walked into the room and there was Jade. Ecstatic to be reunited, the two girls hugged, and this time Ivy didn’t let Jade leave without getting her number. Ivy had given her number to Shanti and Theresa while in the hospital. While she heard from Shanti after she left, she never heard from Theresa, and presumes her number got lost. She wished she 33
could follow through with the ideas they came up with for when they left the hospital. They were going to take Shanti to the Buddhist temple together, and Theresa was going to introduce Ivy to her Shaman medicine man who she said Ivy reminded her of. Ivy accepted the gifts Theresa gave her, hanging the dream catcher, which she managed to get back from those nasty thieves, in her room. Its long stands hung low enough that they caressed Ivy each time she passed, and Ivy felt as though she was wading through mystical reeds. Despite her madness, Theresa had also taught Ivy some special lessons which Ivy held dear. Ivy remembered sitting with Theresa in the woman’s lounge shortly after arriving in the hospital. Theresa pulled out her yin yang necklace made of stone. She told Ivy the yang used to be pure white but it had greyed over time. If even stone can change, Theresa wanted to demonstrate, so can we. It spoke to Ivy’s diagnosis, which is considered one of the most difficult to cure.
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When Ivy’s counsellor decides she wants to finish up, Ivy plummets lower than the bottom floor of a hospital. The Ward, a true story, follows this young girl’s journey through loss- of people, of rights, of power, and of sanity. A glimpse into the world on the other side of the locked doors and the fragile and complex relationships, founded on madness, that are often formed, The Ward is also a call for mental health reform... for a place we can go in times of grief, heartache and despair to be held with love, care and nurture while we crumble.