‘This work is a moving account of a woman’s journey towards resolution and healing, which I am sure will inspire others’.
Jackie Short – Consultant Psychiatrist.
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‘Every Journey begins with the first step’
Confucius – Chinese Philosopher
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What is Mental Health?
It is the emotional resilience which enables us to enjoy life, and to survive pain, disappointment and sadness.
It is a positive sense of wellbeing
And an underlying belief in our own
And others dignity and worth.
This was noted on a Social Services notice board.
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‘Though I sang in my chains
Like the sea’.
From the poem ‘Fern Hill’ by Dylan Thomas.
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To Mark, Jason and Paul
The life that I have is all that I have,
The life that I have is yours.
The love that I have of the life that I have,
Is yours and yours and yours,
A sleep I shall have, a rest I shall have,
Yet death will be but a pause.
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.
Poem by Yvette Zsabo
Second World War British Spy working for the French Resistance
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Thanks to my three sons, Mark, Jason and Paul and my beautiful family for having given me the opportunity to love them; my husband Keith who is now my main carer, and to women everywhere for their strength and quiet courage.
A special thanks to Linda Ware my lifelong friend, with many recognized talents, who has typed my work onto a web site that has been provided for me by Cled Griffin who owns the web site ‘Neath Guardian’. You have both given me a voice and I deeply thank you for it. Also to both for having faith in my work to do so.
A special thanks also to my dear friend Val Killick who has always been at my side and to my Life Writing Tutor Carole Hopkin, a lady of many talents for giving me the confidence to dare chase that elusive dream by showing me the way to my freedom.
Breaking the Chains
Synopsis
This manuscript is about my journey through a dolly mixture of secret thoughts and feelings from the corners of an emotional world that make up who I am; no one knows – not even me. ’ I am non-woman’. The answer lies on the lines of these pages.
Once upon a time, I did not know my name; I did not have an identity; I did not know where I was or even whether I was going to live, or whether I was going to die. I am now grateful I had that opportunity. From there I have travelled from a padded room to an invite to the House of Commons, received a personal letter from the House of Lords, and I stood in an election and won a seat on the local council. Since I have been rising in discovery through insurmountable challenges, facing and not running away.
Today I have serious disabilities which render me wheelchair- bound, with my husband as my main carer, assisted by two visiting carers twice daily. This me I am not familiar with; but I look and learn every day of a life I believed I would never live. I have so much to be grateful for, in a syatem that abandoned me. My family and my friends are my anchor. It is unfinished! It is not over! Not Yet!!
Kay Reed
February 2013
Introduction
4.8.04
I am not a mental health professional, I am a mental health patient, a housewife, and I write for therapy. I write because I have something to say. And for the first time in my fifty three year life, I have reached a ‘place’ where ‘ I matter’. Now there is nothing left to fear. The onward journey will take me on a rollercoaster of love, compassion, and damage towards resolution and healing. And so, breaking the chains of mental illness that has been my companion for so many years.
The University writing course, some years ago, birthed in me a whole new world and a freedom of expression, which was to take me on a journey of self-discovery on which I am still travelling. It offers me a safe, gentle, measured therapy for thoughts from a mind once racked with the despair and hopelessness only mental illness knows.
I would like to take this opportunity to fill these lines with words of self-awareness and understanding of why and where I am now. A small step towards finding out ‘who I am’ somewhere in a life rich in experiences, difficulties and trauma. A woman too busy to slow the roundabout, of her increasingly painful existence, and stop the ‘face’ and ‘accept’. A whole world of rebellion going on in her head that not even a major breakdown could satisfy. It was not her time. My time is now.
I recall a young girl, Grammar School educated, poor background, with women’s duty and sacrifice engrained like soap and water; poor but clean. Well-read but not knowing menstruation when it struck at night when alone; not knowing contraception although married, with a three month old baby, at eighteen years; three marriages, two divorces, victim of mental, physical and sexual abuse; cared for three sons, aged, sick and dying relatives; multiple deaths; two botched births; two botched operations, severe complications, poor nursing care, untreated total post-operative breakdown, untreated further breakdown, unfinished medical negligence case, major severe psychotic breakdown and hospitalisation, followed by long term mental illness diagnosed as bipolar disorder during my detention under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act from September 04 for 5 months.
My mothers’ favourite saying to me ; ‘ beggars can’t be choosers’. ‘you made your bed now lie in it’, ‘your kids you look after them’, ‘you’re weak’, had a strong influence in my life decisions. A lifetime struggle on little and often no money, I had worked when I could around my son’s schooling. Even my deep love and commitment to my children could not waive the great tide of long-term physical and then mental ill-health. Even so, I continued to raise them with great difficulty on little money. Well-being and a sense of worth have eluded me since a lonely child with a crippling speech impediment, which was to haunt me till I left home.
Scholarship educated, I was isolated from the age of eleven by my less fortunate peers, a mixed-sex gang, then living on the council estate where I still live. Relentless bullying continued throughout my teenage years, culminating in a planned sex attack by the ringleader to achieve the gang’s aim to humiliate and expose me ‘an easy lay and a common slag’. The bullying intensified. Hiding away for long periods in my bedroom started then at sixteen years.
I had learned to keep secrets closely guarded since an incident in early childhood. Vulnerable, unsafe, unprotected, intense fear, distrusting and alone, were deep=seated feelings rooted in that bad experience. These feelings were to recur with increasing intensity during every bad experience, throughout my life, culminating in a major breakdown at night, in April 1989, following weeks of secret paranoia I had lost the fight to control. Deeply disturbing emotions flooded in, and I found myself wandering alone at night. Overwhelming fear fluctuated with elation and an exhilarating sense of mental freedom. Suddenly, intense fear of exposure would force me to hide. I was a fraud; a bad girl trying so hard to be good. A mother who never liked me. Alone. Frightened. A small child unprotected by a mother; burrowing my head into her belly fighting to disappear; gripping her with small tense arms, too frightened to cry. Suddenly I find myself in strange places struggling chest deep in dense brambles, bleeding but no pain. I cross a motorway, railway lines, and then I find myself at a canal side. Someone is watching. I’ll get over the other side. Then it’ll be all over. I’ll be clean. Reborn. My debt will be paid. My life will be put right. I choose a deep part of the canal and jump in. Icy water over my head shocks a disturbed mind. I must get out. Grippibng rushes, I climb the muddy bank opposite. Very cold and wet, I investigate a nearby, long, curved tunnel. It is very dark. I lay deep inside on a concrete path; the comforting sound of the rippling canal alongside. If I get to the river bridge, I can fly, down, down into the water….and swim. Where to? I decide to stay in the tunnel. No-one will find me here. It’s safe for now.
My thoughts now safely travel to those ‘secret places’ that have haunted me so much. I have never recovered. The intense fear that dominated that breakdown, has since manifested itself as a silent rage of a further severe mental breakdown as a detained patient for 5 months 2004-2005, and a fresh diagnosis of bipolar disorder. This buried rage is safer to face than the fear. I now realise, the gentle release I feel when I write, has its‘ roots in that silent rage, suppressed by medication. This realisation is a more confident and positive step forward for me. It offers me control with the help of new medication to treat the bipolar disorder, which has activated my lifeless mind, and I feel well; a stranger to my previous existence.
The great love I have always had for my three happy, confident sons is the only ‘truth’ I have had to hold onto. It has provided me with the endurance, and God-given strength, to reach where I am today. And the life tools, I have used to survive, were given to me throughout my young life by a strong and determined Grandmother. Because of her contribution, I have been involved in: a number of organisations and have numerous hobbies and interests. These outlets, from a young woman, had constituted my battle for inner survival and, on reflection, I even ‘went under’ silently fighting.
Now I no longer need fear those self-damaging, repetitive thoughts, which had the habit and power of control. Years of harm now open up a world of realisation, where my thoughts flow free and as fast as my pen writes, line upon line, revealing the secrets of my soul. One day, on these lines, I will write, ‘Now I know who I am’. And when I write these words I will know, with a certainty, I have reached the very core of my rage. And as sure as that elusive dream, the rage will fade into oblivion, and I will be set free.
Over the past few weeks I have been on a journey within my journey, to a place inside of me I did not know existed. During this journey, I experienced no fear or pain, just an overwhelming sense of increasing hopelessness and physical weakness. The will that had always been at my side was absent, and I was being carried along on a path, the duration and destination of which was unknown to me. I could not function, not even to bathe or change my clothes. It was at this stage, I aimlessly sat at my computer and began slowly typing poem after poem. Unable to perform other tasks, this gradually focussed my lifeless mind, and I found myself working on the computer from morning till night. After a few days, I began flicking through the pages of a growing file of typed work, and I became aware for the first time, I had something to say. Somewhere in my being, there was a flicker of interest, and as this grew over the next few days, the contents of the file began to develop a life and direction of its own. Still very weak, about a week after this journey began, I awake with a thought that I had arrived at a ‘place’ I did not recognise. My pen revealed the fullness of its meaning; my present reality. ‘I share a house with a husband who has never understood; we married twenty years ago. My three sons have their own homes and full busy lives. I have a distant father. My mother died in 1983, at the age of fifty four; she developed schizophrenia during her mid forties.
Long-term illness, caused by events out of my control, has taken its toll. I, and only I, can preserve my own mental and physical stability. The care and protection I have sought all my life will never be mine. I am as alone as my only brother, the night he took a fatal overdose, seven years ago while in care. He was thirty nine years of age. He trod a difficult and painful path. He suffered from schizophrenia. I miss him.’ A facing and acceptance of this, was to take me on the next phase of my journey towards resolution and healing. My strength returned within two days. And, it was at this time, I realised ‘I matter’. This realisation has birthed in me a fresh impetus and direction, which is now unfolding upon these lines.
As a young woman, my strong sense of purpose had its roots in the deaths of the only two women in my life, my Grandmother in 1981, and my mother in 1983. Neither had been told they had terminal cancer, and each was nursed and died at home, five months after diagnosis and within 2 years of each other. Both played safe with their lives and still paid the price of long-term unhappiness and disappointment, which turned to bitterness, resentment, and cancers that kill. In my caring role, I listened to their words and looked into their eyes, which spoke of much silent pain, secrets, and endurance. Eyes that told of too much hope and dreams, in their early lives, they had lost the fight to hold onto. Lives moulded in childhood beyond their control, both had spent all their days in the wrong place. They departed searching for lost dreams; their pain only eased by a silence not of their choosing. I vowed, at their final parting, I would not leave this life feeling their loss. The strong sense of purpose I had acquired through their pain, I have lost, sometime, somewhere, through my own. The wilderness of my life has been my home far too long. And my destiny now lies on the lines of these pages.
People have weaved in and out of my life, like the river weaved through the valley of my youth. Some have enriched that experience; some have turned and walked away, and others have harmed me and walked away. I would like to believe, these people did really care and did not mean to hurt or harm me, and that they just did not realise or understand, the effects their actions had on me, even though sometimes, they caused me actual physical harm with long-term consequences. I now realise, these people who walked away, whether friends, family, or professionals, survive at any cost and often with no conscience. I would also like to believe, members of the establishment care about the people they serve. But they are more concerned with preserving their own institutions, within a system that is supposed to protect its’ people. And I have discovered, at great cost, that most of my worst experiences have been at the hands of women.
Each of us is an expert in our own lived experiences, and although others may say, ‘I understand’, believe me, they do not. Because I am now certain, that unless others have shared the same experience, they can never understand, and often see only what they want. It is the effect of these experiences, that will take me on a journey through a maze of secret thoughts and feelings, from the corners of an emotional world that make up ‘who I am’, someone no-one knows, not even me. It will highlight a young woman’s plight towards mental illness and beyond, in the hope it will, in some small way, not only help others, but will help eradicate the stigma, prejudice, and inequalities that exist all around us.
Unknown to me at the time, in 1985, I was suffering from an untreated, total post-operative breakdown, following severe complications and poor nursing care after hysterectomy. The on-going silence by the medical profession only exacerbated my pain. Totally isolated, in that experience, my search began for ‘the book’, which I knew I would recognise the moment I saw it. It would have been written by a woman, who had experienced a difficult life path, like myself, and survived. Although I gave up my search after a few years. I always believed that somewhere, the book existed and i would come across it during my lifetime. As I write this, I now realise, that book has always been inside of me. And the comfort I sought all those years ago, from another woman’s writing, is present in my own. I am thankful for each day I live. And I know, true understanding is granted only from the education of life. I reach out to women everywhere.
Kay Reed 4.8.04
5th August 04
I did not finish typing the ‘introduction’ until the middle of the night, quarter to four to be precise, mainly because I am not a proficient typist, not even a passable typist, no, I struggle with the forefinger of my right hand on an unfamiliar keyboard. Nevertheless, I already knew, when I started at half past nine, I would not give in until I had finished it. Like an endurance test if you like. Too exhausted to even read it, I left that pleasure for my first task of the morning. You guessed it, this wasn’t right, that wasn’t right. And before I knew it, my morning cuppa at my side, no breakfast, I began the final task of last minute alterations. Well I am pleased to say, it is done, and the first piece of work is behind me. The night’s debris resembled my youngest son’s old bedroom. I have now cleared the decks, in the hope that order might in some way, clear my mind in readiness for the onward journey. I cannot tell you how or where it will take me, or to what depths it will go. My pen holds the key.
Kay Reed
Post Introduction
A few years ago now, I believed the piece of writing called ‘Introduction’, would be the most important I had and would ever write. In comkpleting that to perfection, I rubbished many sheets of discarded paper. It is all of ten typed pages and my favourite. So desolate in those pre-mental breakdown months, I gripped ever so tightly onto my fragile sanity of a mind riddled with unknown pain. This made my ‘Introduction’ even more poignant and full of sincerity and integrity that was to carry me through the most important episodes and turning point as a detained patient in an acute psychiatric ward.
Before writing this short piece, I believe I may write about what my memory allows of my last and most important breakdown to date. It will carry me, and you the reader, through the breakdown itself, and the numerous episodes I travelled through in my mental journey and quest to discover ‘who I am’, buried deep in my subconscious, and based on numerous flashbacks I have encountered from that land which fills me with great fear, even horror.
At this moment I am sitting in my living room surrounded by the flowers that were given to me with deep affection and love. I am so grateful for what I have. As someone, somewhere, said, ‘Where a flower blooms there is hope’. And I thank my God for that gesture.
Kay Reed
September 2006
Madness
I have been where madness reigns. I became a part of it. And I was it.
The acute ward opened up a deep precipice and I had no resilience. I tumbled into that precipice of Satan’s blackened home of flames for eternity.
There was no way out with Satan’s blood in my veins. I believed I was carrying his young in my detached womb.
Autumn 2004
Why I chose to recall episodes
Why I considered recalling episodes was mainly to help others come to terms with theirs. I cannot remember the order I experienced these episodes but I believe they may be valuable in helping others still struggling mentally; they are not alone and this may be a source of comfort to therm. Patients find it difficult to regain well-being and self esteem. Patients living alone or caring for families all struggle. Monitoring medication is a big problem. I am lucky, I have a nurse and my husband supervises all medication for my complex health difficulties, including bi polar. Care in the Community is very complex and very expensive. Also I have been told beds are cut and staff. Mental illness should be treated as a priority in the National Health Service. Suicide is on everyone’s lips and topical in local newspapers. The link between homelessness and suicide should never be overlooked and lately ex- armed servicemen. Because many issues are being swept away in hiding it is becoming a large drain on resources. Lives are at risk here. Poverty and loneliness must never be ignored. Recreational drugs are so easily accessible and so damaging mentally on and off all psychiatric wards. I saw myself how easily drugs were passed over during visiting and through windows.
