This chapter of my yet unpublished memoir gives some insight into my life in a women's refuge. Although I really struggled (and at this point had not taken ownership for my healing), I will always remain grateful to the people who helped me.
Feeling again like I had no place to call 'home', it was confirmed when after four months, I was flung out of the Mental Health Unit back into the gutters of the unknown in the form of a rundown motel swarming with underhanded deals changing hands between dealers and prostitutes.
The aura emanating from every concrete brick desperately struggling to hold up a crumbling foundation oozing with corrupt laden deception and dark energies sent chills down my spine as I stared numbly at graffiti and dirty windows. Resistance overruled my inner world to the point of having a physical reaction. With difficulty I swallowed down the bitter taste that had risen in my throat restricting my airway. My head was spinning, my palms sweaty. By the time I turned the key in the door and flung it open, I almost expected the Mafia to be sitting there collaborating and smoking cigars. My mind had begun shutting down. Dissociative Disorder was swiftly moving in trying to protect any small remnant of my essence. I vaguely scanned the interior with intense difficulty as I was robbed of my vision. For a brief moment the world paused and the disorder shackled me!
Two days later I stared intently trying to bring my surroundings into focus. It seemed that the lens would not sharpen the images. I struggled to recall anything! I did not know where I was, or how long I’d been here. I lay so still that the breath escaping from my parted lips was excruciatingly deafening leaving my ears ringing. After a few moments I shivered as a blanket of clarity fell over me. That’s right! I did not belong…anywhere…I had no place to call 'home'. A tear slid down my cheek.
For nearly two weeks I lived in fear and on high alert!
To some extent I blindly thought that I’d successfully mastered living with my chaotic internal world but again, I was wrong!
External situations shook my inner world to the core. As I stood outside smoking a cigarette, in vain trying to tame tumultuous inner waves, a passing car back-fired so loudly that it instinctively triggered fight/flight to take hold within me. I started running! A deep, desperate need to survive something I could not see.
Leaning against the door of my motel room I struggled for air! My mind was echoing the reverberating sounds of the noise I’d run from, and my brain started firing! I had nowhere else to run! There was no escape!
I crawled onto the bed, the thought of bed-bugs making my skin itch. I tried to switch off from the police sirens outside cutting through my fractured mind. Suddenly my door flew open! A prostitute burst into my bedroom invading my space - I froze! She mumbled incoherent words of looking for her brother. Her lies rained down on me and still, I did not move and I did not answer her. She turned around and sprinted out. I could not process what had just happened. It only left me reeling in further fight/flight and hating myself with further vengeance. I cried for days.
The next gutter I was thrown into was ‘sophisticated’. It did not contain dealers and prostitutes. In its worn out trenches it housed women who had bravely slipped out the back door after one too many blows to their jawline and ego, rather more acceptable to society than the former. By this time I didn’t care anymore what happened to me. Any beacon of light promising to guide me 'home' had been smashed to pieces within an ocean of one too many betrayals and disappointments. My Heart had frozen over as the last flicker of hope was dragged under by the treacherous currents.
The social worker from the Mental Health Unit drove me the forty minute drive to the women’s refuge. The silence in the car was painfully cutting, far more painful than any amount of harsh words spoken or the blade penetrating my skin. I felt as though I were being led down the ‘Green Mile’. I had given up a long time ago dropping off the edge - my heart was already dead but a tiny part of me still longed for somebody to rescue me, for somebody to see me, for something to change.
As the car pulled up outside a complex my stomach twisted! I did not feel ready for yet another drop into the ‘unknown’. My nervous system was beyond caring too and delivered me another blow as my adrenal gland shut down for the second time.
The ringing doorbell reverberated within me another weary SOS which I instantly judged harshly and banished to lock down in ‘that’ compartment of my mind. I wanted to run and run and never stop! And in my mind I was!
A middle aged woman balancing spectacles on the bridge of her nose filled the doorway. I scrutinised her from head to toe. She was no oil painting, her brown hair limply bordering her double chin. She stretched out her arm to shake my hand but my arm remained by my side as I stared at her with a poker face. I would not allow anybody to shred my dead heart! It’s all I had left. She laughed nervously and there were some mumbling's exchanged between her and the social worker. As I was coaxed inside, I took a deep breath, preparing my mind for another betrayal and destructive disappointment. I no longer believed in anything or anyone, least of all myself.
I completely switched off as the admissions process took forever. Just when I thought I was about to lapse into a coma from boredom, I was semi revived as the social worker said his goodbyes and wannabe ‘oil painting’ led me back out the front door and through a side gate. I could almost see the pain on her face at having to walk slower than slow to stay walking alongside me. I surveillance'd my surroundings instinctively scanning all escape routes. My anger rose at the thought of what my life had become. I did not sign up for this! And I thought to myself “Where does it all end? At what point do I make the decision to finally take my last breath? Or do I?”. Broken tears were flooding from inside but I hardened my facade and forced myself to feel nothing!
After passing two units to the left of the driveway we were walking along, she led me to the door of the third unit. I was surprised as I stepped into a cosy, comfortable, ‘normal’ looking lounge area. Sitting on her knees in the centre of the carpeted floor was a young girl tending to a little baby. As she looked up our eyes locked, and I knew through experienced pain that we could read the other’s soul. I jerked my head away sharply trying to keep my past trauma mine. How dare she invade my memories!
I watched in horror as wannabee ‘oil painting’ revealed a sheet of paper inundated with codes. I thought to myself “Am I just a number now?”. She punched in the code to my bedroom door exposing an almost bare room only housing a single bunk-bed and a rickety chest of drawers overlooked by a built-in cupboard. My horror was heightened as a huge cockroach scurried across the floor. I shuddered as resistance chained me to the door-frame. Wannabee turned around disappointed that I had not galloped into the room with glee. I switched to auto-pilot and muttered an apology dripping with contempt as she left the room.
As before, with every Mental Health Unit admission, I was again in a place where I did not want to be, and the fact that there was nothing I could do about it induced further feelings of powerlessness. I sat on the edge of the lower bunk-bed screaming inside! Feeling my agitation escalate beyond boiling point within seconds, I leapt up and started pacing back and forth, back and forth, further fuelling the rising madness!
I didn’t know how to make it all stop! I sank to my knees and sobbed from very deep within…from that invisible, isolated place inside that could rarely be reached. The ‘command’ echoed it’s war cry into the dungeon of my dark soul. My mind switched to ‘disturbed artist’ mode and silently I saluted the ‘Hitler’ of the reigning chaos.
Over and over my mind kept firing! Internally I was again running frantically from one compartment of my mind to the next trying to find any clues on what to do next.
As I stepped out of the door I tried to control my breathing. I prayed to nobody there, that there was nobody about. I didn’t want to bump into anyone on my path of destruction. I stood still on the staircase listening. The house was silent. I moved down slowly and focused, one step at a time like a lion stalking its prey, visualising my success. I scanned every inch of my surroundings. I moved into the kitchen and carefully opened a cupboard door and peered inside. There was nothing of value to me there. I moved onto the next cupboard working methodically until finally my heart leapt as I saw an array of empty glass jars. I chose one carefully - the artist selecting its tool with precision and focused intent. I rushed out into the courtyard and slipped around the corner. Sitting on my haunches, I smashed the glass jar hoping that nobody would be alerted. I stared down at the shattered pieces imitating my soul. Again the artist carefully and precisely selected the tool. I discarded the rest without care, like my previous hurts from my past had done towards my heart, and I ran up to my bedroom. I stabbed the door code in aggressively and burst into the room with only my mission filling every crevice of my mind where the 'command' was now overbearing.
I perched on the edge of my bed and inspected my glass tool. I smiled at the power that I held in my hand. Without further hesitation I slowly sliced the glass into the skin of my upper thigh. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t wince. I didn’t stop. Next leg. As I watched the blood stream down my legs, vivid and beautiful, my mind glided into peace and for a few moments I’d taken back my misconceived power and I could breath again. I felt victorious but it didn’t last long when I heard my door code being activated. My blood and I came face to face with Wannabee, in all our vulnerability. Her voice boomed as she ordered me to clean it up! Then I was marched down to the office for punishment. Wannabee printed out a novel on Borderline Personality Disorder and made me read it out loud and underline stuff. What the hell???!!!!! She didn’t have a clue! Did she not know that just because I’d been labelled, that I was not brain dead!? Did she not think I could recite these words without looking at the black ink engraved onto the white paper? Did she not know that broken hearts lived the words without having to read them? Could she not see my broken wings bleeding, never giving up the fight to take flight? Did she not know that self-harm was NOT suicide but a way to NOT die! I felt my anger soar with invisible eagles. I sat there seething inside and after page two, I stood up, pushing the chair back into yesterday so that it went flying into the printer and I stormed towards the door vehemently voicing to her that she could really destroy any hope for somebody trying. I walked out in the direction of the road. I didn’t know the area, didn’t know where I was going. All I knew was that I needed to run and run and never stop!
By the time I arrived back at the refuge, I’d walked away all emotions for now, leaving only nothingness in the dark. As I was about to go back upstairs to my bedroom with my cockroach friends - the only ones I had right now, Wannabee walked into the house with a new-comer. My attention settled on a baby girl balanced precariously on her mother’s hip. I wondered how she managed to hold the baby up, let alone herself. She was chronically under-weight. My mind played out her story. Low self-esteem from years of abuse and being silenced. An innate need to gain some power over her out-of-control life. Using food as her pawns. Empowering herself by deciding what touches her lips. Having no sense-of-self, thus allowing domestic violence, and believing that she deserved this treatment…until something snapped inside of her! I looked at her and an invisible cord that binds all of us broken angels, sent out an “I’m proud of you” and we knowingly smiled at one another. Funny how victims have a silent language all of their own.
For the remainder of my time there we spent some ‘normal’ days together. We had a few movie nights where she bravely faced the popcorn, managing only a handful to keep up the facade, then being tortured and consumed with thoughts of how to rid her body of this so silently and inconspicuously that the world wouldn’t notice or care.
One night she offered to cook us a ‘spag bowl’. All day I observed her as I understood the words she never spoke...trying to prepare her mind and body for the clashing parallels so alike and yet totally contradictory. That night I sadly watched as she was ironically obsessed with every single ingredient, as she read and re-read the labels. As we sat down to eat, I saw everything she would not show the world - the inner war waged, her mind arguing with all the demons, struggling to make decisions, holding on, letting go, falling from the jaded edge not caring, replaying that scene, wishing that somebody would care. I was crying inside. I lost a lot of weight too in that refuge but for different reasons. At that point in time, my relationship with food was under control. For me it was not being able to afford groceries because I chose to smoke instead with the little money my husband grudgingly released. After my husband tossed me out onto the sidewalk, dissociated, he also tossed out ‘Till death do us part’, so I was penniless, homeless, mentally ill, and without my kids. I wondered why I kept holding on. What was I even fighting for?
Another time, courtesy of the refuge, an outing was arranged for us. Some normalcy in our existence of trade off's and ‘I owe you’s’ down clinical corridors of insanity and endless buffets of anti-psychotic medication. We all piled into the community eight-seated mini van pretending that we foresaw amazing promise for our futures. A lie we dared not believe. As we drove off, we all adjusted our masks to keep us buoyant for another day.
The Nan Tien Temple was so peaceful but I wondered what deals the Monks had made and who they traded their souls to in order to find this serenity. Another lie and pretence just to cope in this cruel world? I didn’t buy the possibility that it could be real. Nothing good was.
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