(mi's side) Violent delights.

Violent delights

Mi

The next morning was a bad morning and I had only been out of bed for half an hour. I knew that I should have been OK and I told myself that over and over again, but the brain remembered what had happened the day before. It remembered that fact the running and given me nothing. It remembered that Esmee had stitches, it remembered that Esmee was pregnant and it remembered that it was now only nine days until I left the unit to spend the first night at what they said would be my new home eventually. It mostly remembered though through all the more important things was that the morning before I had been presented with pancakes and yoghurt for breakfast. It remembered my BMI was now at least 18.5 which meant I weighed over 115lbs.My whole body screamed constantly at how unacceptable that was but I fort back everyone did but sometimes it was too much. That morning through it all the thought of food was driving me insane, the thought of feeling something inside of me was imposable because the there was a bit inside of me that new how close oblivion could be and there was a bit of me that still wanted that. Emmet and Esmee had tried to show me that there was a place for me in there world but they had only proven that in a psyc unit I could fit in, that I would be safe, even with the agreement that now hung on my wall I was still aware that the world was scary and that it would, could and had hurt me.

I bounced my legs fast up and down on the side of my bed at the same time as I rand my hands together. I didn’t like the fact that my fingers almost didn’t fit around my wrist any more. When I had first came I could almost get them around my thighs but then I had only weight 75lbs. I still remembered my first day here so well, the way Emmet had got to me so instantly and the way I had told him I was fat. I told myself over and over again so I believed it, but now I could admit it at least to myself if no one else. I wasn’t fat, I was dying from being so thin. The truth was I just didn’t care. I wanted to die… Now I just wasn’t sure. In some ways it was worse. At least then I was convinced that I had no life to live.

“So what’s all this about then Mi?” Emmet asked coming to sit down on the edge of the bed with me before placing his hand on one of my shaking legs. “Are we talking extreme anxiety or calorie burning or something else entirely?

It doesn’t matter anyway. How about I ask you one? How’s life with the baby and are you excited?”

“Life with a baby mostly tiring hence the massive amounts of yawning that will be going on today and if you are referring to the fact that Esmee is pregnant, then of course I couldn’t be more excited or happy, now your turn. To me it matters.”

I smiled and looked away from him staring at my legs wondering myself for a while why I was so content of bouncing them up and down or how it helped in the slightest. Calorie wise it would be helping to burn them off before breakfast but not it the quantities that I would be putting them back in, anxiety wise it didn’t serve a purpose. It didn’t even help. I just couldn’t stop.

“Is I don’t know an OK answer? How about I’m scared? Or how about once again I am on red observations and this morning Lee had to watch me when I used the toilet and changed my clothes. She looks barely older then I am and she seems to have her life on track. She’s not insane! She isn’t messed up inside and someone being pregnant, or a pile of pancakes doesn’t send her loop the loop crazy!”

“Mi I’m really sorry that you are still on the red observations. I tried really hard yesterday to get them down and so did the late shift. Esmee was trying as well through the night but she had an emergency admission that had to take priority.”

“It’s not just the red obs Emmet. It’s everything; sometimes it’s just too much inside my head. It just feels like there is a million different things going on and they all want the most of me. I need things to stop, or slow down. I don’t know I just woke up in a state.” I jiggled my legs harder against the side of my bed watching as the fat on the bones jiggled underneath the harshness of the denim on my jeans.  I had always seen it. It had undoubtedly gotten worse over the months but the belief was founded now. There was fat stuck to my bones and it wasn’t just me who could see it. With tubes and drips and manipulative words they had gotten their way, they had made me what the world deemed to be normal and I loved and hated them for it in equal measure.

“You do not need to think of anything right now apart from getting through breakfast in a safe manor. I understand that thoughts won’t just go away and some thoughts are very intrusive and hard to bare and I am not asking you to forget them, what I want you to do is try and store them so to speak. Like a computer anti-virus system. It finds something that is potently harmful and it puts it in a safe vault for you to deal with later. Once in a while it picks up something particularly nasty that takes a lot of battling with to get rid of and other times it’d just a mistake and it is something that was never really that threatening in the first place.   Do you understand what I mean?”

“Since when has life become that simple? If we were all computers Emmet it wouldn’t work lie this. There wouldn’t even be a need for this place, or your job. Besides a computer doesn’t feel like this,” I moaned pulling the sleeves up on my cardigan and scratching at the scars underneath that littered my arms. It had been a long time since I cut. Well it felt like a long time it was only weeks, maybe a moth. I tried not to remember but it was not a monstrous idea and until then it had felt OK because remarkably I hadn’t really needed to now I was starting to feel it again. It was impossible not to go crazy when the sight of your own arms could trigger you.

“OK, let’s roll those sleeves down for a start, now is not the time to be looking at them. You feel in distress and your mind doesn’t need a reminder of the way that it used to cope because naturally it will want to go back there again.

I didn’t want to let him do it as Emmet took my sleeves by force and pushed them down back over my arms but my head wasn’t happy. The feeling that it wanted had already set in at first glance at the carnage. I had never understood it. I never understood why I felt such longing to cut my own skin when most would have run a mile, or why one look at an old wound could make me long for the blood underneath. Most of all I didn’t understand why I wanted to make the longing worse by staring at the very thing that was triggering the thought, maybe it was simple as no matter how violent it was for some reason for me and other people it actually worked and we took delight in that.

(esmee) i sort of helped

Hi all. Just wanted to give everyone a reminder of the new blog that is from Emmet's point of view. The links to the right. Go have a looksee if you fancy it. If not enjoy the chapter bellow.

I sort of helped

I stayed by the door with Pollyanna for a whole hour and a half before I tried to talk to her again which pushed the time up to  four in the morning. Her mood had flipped briefly back to anger in the time I had been sat with her but it had mostly gone to deep sadness and stayed there. It had been thirty minutes since I heard her sob twenty since her breath had stopped becoming shaky and ten since I noticed the tears stop rolling down over her cheeks. She looked shattered and I wanted nothing more than to take her to her room and tuck her up in bed like I would my daughter. It looked like she could sleep for days and still be considered exhausted. I had already decided that the official induction to the unit could wait until the morning shift came on but I would have to sort out her cuts and grazes, do her vital signs, do an ECG and take some blood before I could let her rest. I would also have to try and talk to her a little bit more to see if I was happy to let the initial suggestion of amber observations apply after such a bumpy entry and several expressed wishes that she wanted to kill herself.

“Pollyanna, I know you have been very distressed but I would like you to come a bit further into the unit with me now and down into the clinic room so I can do your vitals an ECG and some blood test. I will also need to clean up your cuts and put on new dressings. After all that we are probably going to be hitting handover, the morning shift will take over from us and they can chose what they plan with you for the day.”

“I don’t want to,” She moaned pressing her hands up against the front door like will power alone may make the locks burst open. “I’m trying to escape. At some point this door will have to open… and I am very quick.” She was testing me. She liked my comfort and my soft lulling when she was distressed but she had changed her spots again and now she was feeling insolent with everyone. For a second something inside her convinced her that she loved me, now the hate was back and worse was she or at least the bit inside her that will ill was saw me as a soft touch. She had to know that the rules where there for a reason and a section was absolute. She also had to know that I was up holder of the rules and I would enforce them; even if it made me sound like Crystal.

“Pollyanna I understand that you don’t want to be here but you must understand that you are a formal detained patient here and you have to stay against your will. As the unit team leader and nurse it is my responsibility to make sure you stay and I will do that to the very best of my ability. Now as you are threatening to try and leave the unit I really must insist that you move away from the door. If you don’t I will have no choice but to remove you by force which will mean being transferred to intensive care and I can tell you that it isn’t very nice in there.” I made her cry. I had done it before and I was expecting it in this case but it still drove something though the very core of me which left me feeling slightly nauseated. I didn’t enjoy the “tough love” approach in the slightest. I had been on the end of people tough love and felt how devastating it could be but after all the time in the job I saw that at times it was needed. I had forgiven every nurse that had made me cry in that way because in health I saw that I was –through no fault of my own – being impossible. I could only hope that in fifteen years’ time the patients I was treating now would feel the same.

“Why does everyone always shout at me? I don’t mean to be bad all of the time.”

“I am not shouting at you, and you are not bad in the slightest. I believe that you are very poorly and in a great deal of distress and in need of care and treatment which I would really like to give to you if you will let me. Now let’s take this one step at a time. You come with me now and let me do the tests I need to and let me clean you up then we come back and sit by the door a bit longer if it helps you.” A war played out behind Pollyanna’s eyes as I gave her the suggestion. It was her logical self, the bit that refused to be clouded over by her mental illness that encouraged her to accept the offer. It was that bit that told her my demands where well within her capability’s but there was a monster in there too and it didn’t want my understanding or anyone else’s, it wanted to leave so it could cut and stab and slice. It was used to getting it’s own way as well. Over months or maybe years it had slowly consumed most of Pollyanna. There was just a spark left and that was the bit we had to kindle.

“I know that it is hard and that there are a million things going on inside your head that are telling you to do different things but I really want you to try and do what I am asking. I can promise you while you are here I will only ask you to do things that are in your best interests.” My words seemed to hit and for one the well side of her won over and got to her feet unsteadily. It was easy to see that even a simple movement like getting to her feet was obscenely hard for her struggling body. It was a simple act that we all learnt in are first two years of life but the brain quickly forgot when it wasn’t being fed, what was worse was on her current section I knew that I could not force and NG tube on her or make her stay on bed rest. It could be a week before a section 3 was approved and she was a time bomb, she may have only had hours. I would say for certain with her lack of coordination she had no more than a fortnight if her calories stayed at their current restrictions.

“This is hard,” Pollyanna moaned at me rocking backwards and forwards on the balls of her feet as I attempted to lead her in the right direction.

“How about you hold my hand? Would that help?”  I offered holding it out to her.

“Yes, but it’s strange, the other patients will think I’m mental if they catch me.”

“They are all in bed right now as far as I know and even if they weren’t I can guarantee you that nobody here at the moment would think anything against you for holding my hand for some support, because most of them have done it as well. The thing is about this place Pollyanna is it may be full of teenagers but it really is nothing like high school. There is no fight for popularity of social groups. Everyone has their own separate reasons for being here and there own daemons to fight, but they all have a reason and they all have demons so everyone is in the same boat.”

“Thank you Esmee, it’s strange but you sort of helped.”

“It’s my absolute pleasure honey.”