The Dark Threads

THE DARK THREADS

A Psychiatric Survivor's Story

Jean Davison

To Ian

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:

‘Time-bomb
'
poem. Reproduced by kind permission of the author, Professor Valerie Walkerdine.

Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell (Copyright © George Orwell, 1949) by permission of Bill Hamilton as the Literary Executor of the Estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell and Secker & Warburg Ltd.

Extract from
‘
Aftermath
'
poem. By kind permission of the author, Leonard Roy Frank.

Two lines of ‘Stings' from
Collected Poems
by Sylvia Plath. Reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Quotation from
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee, published by William Heinemann Ltd. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

Extract from
‘
The Weaver
'
poem. By kind permission of E Sue Wagner and family of the late Benjamin Malachi Franklin.

Published by Accent Press Ltd – 2012

ISBN 9781908917621

Copyright © Jean Davison 2009

The right of Jean Davison to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, The Old School, Upper High St, Bedlinog, Mid-Glamorgan CF46 6RY.

Cover Design by The Design House

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The Dark Threads
is an autobiographical account of ‘breakdown' and psychiatric treatment. I have used some of the techniques of writing fiction (dialogue, imagery, fictitious names/identifying details) to protect people's privacy and also to facilitate self-expression. The names of medical professionals have been changed. Instead of using my maiden name I have used my married surname of Davison throughout the book (although my actual case notes were, of course, in my maiden name). In some instances I've fleshed out half-remembered scenes with invented minor details, such as the colour of a bedspread, the weather, an ink stain on a desk. But I have not, to my knowledge, distorted the substance of the true story.

No more, I will accept no more
be sorry no more
be quiet no more
They will have to hear my story
and they will not dare to say it
made me mad
Of course it made me mad
After all they pathologised
my history
No more, no more
my shouts today will be
so loud
My tears drops of pure fire
you will no longer take away
my past
for today I take my life
into these two hands

I am a time-bomb
and I have started ticking

Valerie Walkerdine

PROLOGUE

‘W
E ARE IN GRAVE
danger!' a voice insists.

I can hear the words, but from somewhere distant. I keep floating away. A blurred, drugged sensation. Sounds of moaning. Stench of vomit and urine. I feel the hardness of the mattress, the roughness of the blanket. I am trying to focus my eyes on a ghostly figure beside my bed, but semi-darkness encircles me.

I remember hearing screams. I grip the blanket. What else do I remember? My befuddled brain throws up a vague recollection of being held down firmly and suffocating blackness. Nothing makes sense. Exorcism? Purgation? Trials and torture? But where are the witches? We don't burn witches any more. We don't believe in witches now. The Dark Ages are gone but, oh, it is not safe here. There is a grey mist about me; someone keeps warning of grave danger; and my head hurts so badly. I have had a very strange dream, a terrible nightmare. Am I awake or am I still dreaming?

After a half-hearted attempt to sit up I succumb to the seduction of the pillow to rest my aching head. This is not the same as an ordinary headache, more like the soreness of a nasty bump. But not a surface lump. It is somewhere inside my head; this soreness, this dull, throbbing pain.

My eyes follow the white-clad figure. It is not a ghost but a nurse. She is moving to the next bed. There on the bed, a thin, straggly-haired woman is stretching her arms towards me and warning of danger.

‘We are in grave danger!' She is even more insistent. Her voice is shaky and hoarse.

I am aware now that my bed is in a row of beds. One woman is sitting on the edge of her bed vomiting into a bowl. Some are moaning, others lying quiet and still.

Where am I? What day is it? Who are these people? And who am I? Please don't give me a number or a label or a curious sidelong glance. Tell me my name.

Creeping tentacles of fear spread over my body, reminding me of waiting – that long anxiety-filled stretch of waiting. Before ECT. That's it! We're waiting for electric shock treatment. The nurse is standing near my bed. It must be my turn. Ripples of apprehension run from my stomach to my throat, then settle into a tight knot of fear somewhere inside my chest. Perhaps if I tell her I feel ill I'll be able to get out of it. God knows it isn't a lie.

‘Can I be excused ECT today?' I am begging her. ‘I've a bad headache.'

The nurse laughs loudly as if it is all a huge joke. ‘Excused ECT? You've
had
ECT.'

‘Have I?' I say, bewildered. ‘But I don't remember.'

I feel as if half my brain has been bombed out but, oh, what a relief to know it is all over. At least for today.

‘Be a good girl and get up now, then you can have a nice cup of tea.' The nurse is beaming pleasantly. Meekly I obey. Just like a good girl.

I am handed a cardboard container full of warm, muddy-looking liquid, which I suppose must be the nice cup of tea. It tastes foul.

‘Don't drink it! They're trying to poison us!' a woman in a hospital dressing-gown whispers in my ear as she shuffles past.

Still in a trance, I survey my fellow sufferers. We're a mixed bunch. Some look as if they would give the devil himself a fright but most seem just lost, confused and so very vulnerable. ‘Where are my teeth?' ‘Where are my glasses?' ‘Oh, the pain, I can't stand the pain.' ‘I'll sue you all for this, you fucking bastards!'

As I listen to the other patients and watch them wandering around in a daze, I find it hard to believe it's real. Aren't these people mentally ill? But not me too? No, no, it must be a bad dream. Or there must have been a dreadful mistake. I shouldn't be here; a part of my mind is weeping and protesting against the horror and humiliation of it all. I'm losing my powers of reasoning and my self-respect. I've got to get out of here. I've got to get the hell out of here. Before it's too late.

But is it already too late? I have been violated at a deeper level than words can say. How can I ever be the same again?

Looking back through the drugged haze and post-ECT fog it seems strange to think that, only a fortnight earlier, I was walking through the park on my way to that first appointment at the outpatient clinic. I had never seen a psychiatrist, never even heard of ECT as I dawdled along, crunching underfoot the autumn leaves, those lovely golds and reds and russet browns which swirled about and decked the tree-lined path near the pond. Here I sat on a bench for a while, savouring the scene. It was turning cold but the pond was not yet frozen. The leaves were falling but the trees were not yet bare. Squirrels still darted about now and then, birds still sang and the ground was not yet shrouded in snow. But winter was fast approaching. Soon all would be changed.

Shouldn't there have been some kind of ritual, some rite of passage, to mark such a sudden and awesome transformation? One day I was living in a teenage world of discos, pop songs, dating, giggles with female friends, religious angst and worries about pimples. The next day I was in a nightmare world of drugs, ECT, humiliation and long, bleak corridors leading me far from home. And the only connecting thread, it seemed, was when I had calmly, and I thought sensibly, decided to see a psychiatrist and then agreed to be hospitalised.

How can this be? Have I forgotten something that might explain it all? If I begin by following that connecting thread, will it lead me to answers?

I am still trying to sort out my thoughts when the nurse tells us that an ambulance is waiting to take us back to our wards. How could I have been stupid enough to let my life get into such a mess? And how am I ever going to get myself out of it? I stumble into the ambulance feeling dizzy and disorientated.

The ambulance is bumping across the broken tarmac. In the far corner the hoarse voice keeps on saying, ‘We are in grave danger!' I am sitting wedged between two plump, dressing-gown-clad patients with vacant, staring eyes. I am thinking about the God I don't believe in, my need of ‘Him' accentuated by sheer desperation. Dear God in heaven. Friend of my childhood. Comforter and Guide. Where, oh where are You now?

PART ONE

A GOOD GIRL

Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation.
Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.

George Orwell,
Nineteen Eighty-Four

CHAPTER ONE

W
E WERE AT
B
UTLINS
, Skegness, in the August of 1968, my friend Mandy and me. Two weeks with no boring lists to type or envelopes to stick. Two weeks of sun, sand, sea and boyfriends galore. Lots of kissing, petting, dancing, laughter and … and, all the time, the thoughts and feelings that had plagued me for so long. Who am I? What am I? What to do? How to be?

The jukebox in the disco played loudly while we, wearing mini-skirts the size of napkins, danced the night away with two handsome security guards, stopping now and then to kiss, and to drink all the port and lemons they bought for us. We giggled and clowned about all the way back to our chalet, locked the lads out, and collapsed onto our beds, heads spinning. Still chuckling, we prattled on about what a great time we were having, what fun things we'd do tomorrow, and then on to the bigger things such as how to put the world to rights. Teenage life in the sixties. Who could wish for anything more?

We went to bed, then read for a while. I can't go on like this, I told myself as I lay in my top bunk silently crying, a magazine covering my face. Mandy was lying in bed beneath me reading her magazine. She thought I was still reading mine, but, in the middle of a girl-meets-boy romance, I'd started to cry. It was nothing to do with the paper-thin girl in the shallow, meaningless story. It was to do with me and my shallow, meaningless life.

‘'Night, Jean,' Mandy murmured sleepily.

‘Hang on, Mandy, don't put the light out yet. I've just got me diary to write.'

It all came out in my diary: a place where I could be totally honest. ‘I'm so terribly depressed,' I wrote. ‘I'm eighteen and should be enjoying myself. It's not normal to be so sad and confused about life all of the time … I've got to do something sensible about it.'

I decided that doing ‘something sensible about it' meant that when I got back from Skegness I'd see a doctor.

Even so, I put this off until November, perhaps hoping I might yet manage to sort things out by myself. Came November with its fog and rain, and me still as adrift as a cork in the sea, I visited my doctor.

I first went to see Dr Russo on the pretext that I wanted some sleeping tablets, although what I really wanted was to talk. I thought asking for these would help me by providing me with an easier starting point. But ten minutes later, I left his surgery with a prescription for a small supply of sleeping tablets and the comment that I shouldn't need them at my age.

A few days later, my friend Jackie told me that she was at a low ebb, too. We both decided to visit our respective GPs, and so I tried again to talk to him.

‘The beliefs of the church are disproved by science,' Dr Russo said when I tried to tell him about my confusion with religion.

With Dr Russo, I found myself defending the very beliefs which, in front of Pastor West and my family, I'd been so ardently rejecting. Yet beneath my rebellious onslaught against religion, there had been a challenge and an appeal to Pastor West: always, a silent plea for him to convince me that I was wrong.

When Jackie and I next met she told me that her GP had said she was suffering with nervous anxiety. We compared our bottles of tranquillisers, which we both found made us drowsy and impeded our concentration at work. I went back to Dr Russo and told him I felt worse than ever. He increased the dosage.

I couldn't see the point in taking tablets that made me too tired to talk or do anything. There was so much inside me that needed to come out. I wanted to be understood. I
needed
to talk. It occurred to me that a psychiatrist might be more helpful than an overworked GP.

‘What? You're going to ask Dr Russo if you can see a psychiatrist?' said my mother. ‘What on earth for? There's nowt up with you.'

‘Listen, Mum,' I began, though listening was something she never seemed to do. She always looked pale and exhausted; perhaps her job as a bus conductress was too tiring for her. ‘I need someone to talk to and maybe a psychiatrist could help. I mean they're trained to understand people and –'

‘You don't need a psychiatrist,' Mum said. ‘You ought to go back to church.'

When I asked Dr Russo if I could see a psychiatrist he wrote out a medical certificate with the diagnosis ‘acute depression' and said, ‘Yes, I suppose we could try that, if you like.'

So that was it. If I'd known how easy it would be for me to see a psychiatrist I would probably have asked to see one a few years earlier. Between the ages of thirteen and fifteen I'd gained my knowledge of psychiatrists from
The Human Jungle
, my favourite TV programme at the time. Young and impressionable, I'd seen the psychiatrist Dr Corder, played by the actor Herbert Lom, as a wise, caring person who could help people with their problems. How wonderful it would be to have someone like that to talk to, someone who would take the time to really listen to me, and understand. It's embarrassing to admit it now but I'm sure
The Human Jungle
had something to do with my decision to ask to see a psychiatrist.

And so, on a crisp autumn day in 1968, I was fidgeting on a hard chair in the crowded outpatients department of St Luke's Hospital waiting to see Dr Sugden. I was surprised by the apparent normality of the others in the waiting area. But I looked ordinary too, didn't I?

Trying to ignore my butterflies I picked up a magazine and flicked through the pages. What if he didn't take me seriously? I had a boyfriend, female friends, an active social life, which might make it seem that my shyness wasn't such a problem. When boys chatted me up I could reciprocate. I'd had several boyfriends and I can't have seemed shy when laughing and chatting with them.

However, shyness did still keep me subdued in my office job at Lee's, and it had been an enormous problem before that in my first job at the Fisk Television factory. And at Rossfields, my last school, oh, God, I'd been crippled by shyness there.

And would this psychiatrist be able to understand my difficulties in coming to terms with the loss of my religious beliefs, about life seeming empty and meaningless, and those hard to explain ‘What am I?' feelings? Perhaps he would try to impress upon me all that I ought to be thankful for. Or perhaps, like Pastor West, he would speak about that difficult transition period from adolescence to adulthood. Perhaps he would say there was nothing wrong with me and, horror of horrors, that I must go back to work tomorrow. I had no idea that this was the last thing I need have feared. Or that there would come a day when I would wish that he had.

When I was called into the consulting room my stomach was still churning. Dr Sugden was a frail, elderly man with metal-framed glasses, which slid down his nose every time he bent his head forward. It was hard to imagine that he could have much understanding of teenagers. But I tried not to judge on the basis of first impressions.

I shifted about on my seat. The pills prescribed by Dr Russo were making me feel too tired to want to talk but I tried to explain things. I even told him about the strange ‘dream feeling' I used to get when I was a schoolgirl at Rossfields, and he seemed particularly interested in that, despite my admission that I only got it now when I'd been drinking. He scribbled on his notepad and kept saying ‘I see', but I wasn't at all sure that he did.

For so long I'd been wanting the opportunity to have a good talk, but now all I could think of saying had come out in a few minutes and sounded like nothing much. I felt embarrassed for wasting his time.

‘I'm scared. I'm scared I'm going insane,' I said. Shyness made my voice shaky, adding to the drama of this statement.

‘Do you sometimes feel like killing yourself?' he asked.

I didn't, but would a straight ‘No' make him underestimate how bad I felt? I paused for a while, then replied, ‘I know that wouldn't be the right thing to do.'

‘I see. And are you happy at home?'

Another pause. I'd told Mum I would talk about me, not my family. In any case, I was aware that many teenagers came from worse homes than mine.

‘I feel as if I'm different from me family,' I said. ‘And me brother gets on me nerves.' I hung my head guiltily. Sorry, Mum, but I need to talk.

‘How old is your brother?'

‘Twenty-two.'

‘You don't feel able to talk to him about your problems?'

‘Brian? Good heavens, no. I can't talk to him about owt.'

‘What's his occupation?'

‘He's a bus conductor. Like me mum and dad.' I gave a nervous smile. ‘A family of bus conductors. Except me. I'm a typist at Lee's, an electrical firm.'

‘You say your brother gets on your nerves,' he said, adjusting his hearing aid. ‘What does he do?'

‘All kinds of things,' I said uneasily.

‘What things?'

‘Well, he talks daft and bangs and taps and … and he makes silly noises.'

‘Silly noises? What are these silly noises like?'

‘Noises like animals,' I said.

‘Give me an example to show me what you mean.'

God, this was difficult. I decided to demonstrate Brian's cow noises which he'd been treating me to outside my bedroom door in the early hours of that very morning.

‘OK, that's enough of that,' Dr Sugden said, waving his hand on my third ‘Mooo-ooo!'

‘I can't stop thinking about religion,' I said quickly, trying to get away from the embarrassing subject of my family. ‘I used to go to church but I got confused with some of their beliefs. I mean, things such as God sending people to hell to suffer for eternity. I can't believe in things like that, so I stopped going. But when I lost me religious beliefs, everything began to seem pointless.'

‘Your life seems pointless?'

‘Yes, and I'm confused all the time. I don't even know how to decide what's right and wrong.'

I was thinking that, although, for many of my generation, the pill had rendered outdated the idea of saving virginity for marriage, my decision not to sleep with boyfriends had been anchored in my Christian beliefs. Not even smooth-talking Steve, the most handsome of my previous boyfriends, had been able to persuade me, despite the physical attraction between us. But with nothing left to believe in, on what should I base my morality?

‘So you're trying to sort out what's right and wrong?'

‘Yes. All the time.'

Going to pubs and nightclubs. Smoking. Drinking. Swearing. Petting. I'd rebelled against my religion enough to be doing plenty of those things – but with no real pleasure, just a head full of conflicts and confusion. I felt adrift in a meaningless world.

I stared at an ink stain on his desk. ‘Nothing makes sense any more.'

‘I see.'

I had difficulty hearing and being heard. Dr Sugden spoke softly, and he'd obviously got a hearing problem. On top of that, I felt intensely shy with him. I could scarcely meet his gaze, and a feeling that I was being prematurely and negatively evaluated added to my discomfort. How much easier it was to talk about these things to Jackie, or even to Pastor West. There was another of many awkward silences, and shyness made me fidget.

‘You're not well,' he said. How swiftly a mental illness verdict was reached by a man who had never seen me before in his life. ‘You're heading for a nervous breakdown.'

A nervous breakdown? I wasn't sure what that meant but I wondered why I hadn't had one sooner as I'd been like this for such a long time.

‘So do I need to stay off work?' I asked. I'd been off work for three weeks, my longest break since starting work at fifteen. I knew I'd better go back soon but I hoped to have just a little more time.

‘Yes, and come back to see me next week.'

I walked from the hospital into town where I had tea in a café. Then I went to meet Danny, my latest boyfriend. He had been my favourite singer at the Tempest Folk Club when I was fifteen, but we'd only been dating since we met again about three months before. He'd earned his living by singing in clubs since travelling from his home in Devon, though now he had few bookings and could barely manage to scrape enough money together to live on. But who needs money when you can live on dreams? I thought cynically.

Danny greeted me excitedly. ‘I've written another song,' he said, ‘and I've got the tune for it worked out on my guitar now. It's dedicated to you. Wanna come to my digs and hear it?'

Listening to Danny singing had never failed to cheer me up before. When he played his guitar and sang, his eyeballs would sometimes disappear up into his forehead leaving only the whites of his eyes showing and, while he was singing lovely romantic songs to me, I'd be trying hard not to laugh. Today, however, I didn't even want to smile when he sang. His cold, shabby bed-sit with its hard, lumpy furniture and peeling damp walls was as bleak as my mood.

We sat cross-legged on the threadbare rug in front of the small gas fire, an old blanket draped around us for much-needed warmth. As we shared a drink of tea in a cracked mug – the only mug he possessed – I wondered how much I could tell him.

‘Danny, I've just seen a doctor,' I blurted out, unable to bring myself to say the word ‘psychiatrist'. ‘He said I'm not well.'

‘But what's wrong?' he asked, looking concerned.

‘Acute depression,' I said, remembering the wording on the medical certificates Dr Russo had given me in the past three weeks.

‘What are you depressed about?' He slipped his arm around me and I rested my head on his shoulder.

‘It's hard to put into words. I'm just so confused about religion and life and … everything.'

‘Things are never as bad as they seem,' he said, stroking my hair. ‘I always believe that.'

‘Yes, I know
you
do,' I said, wondering when he'd last had a good meal as I glanced round his sparsely furnished room. The shiny guitar looked oddly out of place in the drab surroundings.