Free. Home. Scared.

(image of blue-faced Scot)

Freedom!! Freedom!!

Nobody bothered to warn me or even discuss the fact that I was being discharged. I should have realised I suppose, there have been extra little chats with the dead-eyed doctors, longer sessions with the single-minded psychs, “tell me about your childhood” (cliché but true!) and the curious chirping-chatter of the councillors has been even more insincere. But at no point did anyone actually mention the word “discharge.”

Usually there is a very set pattern to it you see, the pseudo-intellectuals interest in me suddenly grows overnight. Instead of the boring yes/no, tick/cross, form filled, pat-on-the-head, throw-in-a-biscuit morning, noon and night daily care routine, I am instead allowed to have formal one-to-one sessions, in formal, bland offices with bland, boring, bureaucratic little health minions, who hold so much sway, so much power and control over my life. They all sit there asking the same reworded questions, the ones that, if you have been processed through the system several times, you know when to nod, when to smile, when to jump through the burning hoop. Oh, they are all 'individual' people with there own 'unique' insight into the state of the inner workings of my mind, the serious suits with their thousand-pound-a-day haircuts and bleached white smiles, the long-haired, bearded, leftover hippies with their “I feel your pain, man” sympathy, the butcher-than-butch bull-dykes (no offence intended) and their jack-booted, diplomatic “all-men-are-sex-offenders-from-birth” hate. You also have the ultra-gays,(really, honestly, I am not homophobic!) the 'men' that are not really gay, they are way beyond the point of being just gay, they left gay way behind, have gone over-the-rainbow, through the looking glass and are somewhere in Narnia region of sexuality. So wet that they drip sentences rather than talk, so limp that you fear breaking all the bones in their hands with a simple handshake. They sit, perched on the very edge of the chair, gushing positivity, doing the childlike, hands vertical, rapid hand-clap, shocked to the core Kenneth Williams-esk  “oooo, Daaaavvviiiidddd!!!” whenever anything remotely sexual is mentioned. The rest tend to be everyday, waked-in-off-the-street people who sit there stifling yawns, their smiles never quite reaching their eyes, the words “you are screwed up for life, not worth saving” on the tips of their tongues. The Gods bless them, each and every one of them, they have seen a thousand mes, heard a thousand heat-breaking tales of woe, and deal with it in their own ways, but still ask the same bloody questions; “How are you feeling about the future? Have you got any self-harm thoughts at the moment? How are you intending to fill your days?”(it's the nights, you idiots, the days are ok, the nights are never-ending!)

I was given my meds and injection this morning and asked to go to blue suite. (they refuse to call them 'offices' or give them numbers, so they are all coloured rooms or suites) I trotted along, doing my 'eager-puppy' impression and met yet another new case coordinator, who informed me that it was her pleasure to tell me I was being discharged, there and then. Grab your things, Wag, the car's outside. Due to the horrendous sweeping cuts to the healthcare budget, the slashing of staff numbers in half, the shutting down of the already limited bed spaces, the system is at breaking point and I am now deemed to be well enough for the care-in-the-community option.

So here I sit, in an empty, soul-less, three bed house. I will have three visits a day from the nursing staff to do meds and injections for “the next few days, at least” and the wonderfully reassuring twenty-four-hour-a-day crisis phone line. Woop-de-bloody-do!! The ex is back to being her usual “I don't want the kids seeing you like this, we'll talk about some other time” ex self. Lump's around, the big, daft, missing link that he is, and wanted to stay over for a few days but he has his own life, his own set of demons to deal with, his amazingly supportive and understanding lady to be with, so he settled for dawn breakfast-making.

I am so fucking lonely and scared. It is only three hours into my first night and I am already starting to hear the inner screams calling to me with their suicidally sweet, sensuous stories of failures and cut threads. I am going to make it through this time, I WILL make it through because I hate the thought of the smug, self-satisfactory smile on the ex's razor-sharp lips, holding the kids hands and dripping her poison into their minds.

I wish YOU were here with me, holding me, reassuring me, loving me. I know YOU are just a dream-thread, a single tenuous strand and that you will never be here, be with me, be mine. But it doesn’t stop me longing for your touch.

I am free. I have been signed as being 'improving' so I'd better just get on with it then and stop bloody bitching!

Waggy