Veiled In Grey

Jump to Comments

My voice was quivering and my eyes were rapidly moving around, hysterically checking out my surroundings. However to look at me you would have seen an old lady abandoned in a care home watching paint dry. I was giving off an appearance of someone who was dead inside and coupled with the smudged makeup around my face it wouldn’t take a genius to realise something was really wrong, but most people who are A&E are there because something has gone wrong.

Joyce was standing outside the room but I couldn’t make out what she was saying on the phone. I knew she was talking to Walter the on duty CAMHS psychiatrist who I had met once before, and I knew she was Joyce the lead CAMHS social worker as I had met her before but no one had explained to me what was happening. I knew the doctors were waiting for blood test results and I knew Joyce was assessing me, but I knew that because that’s what always happens not because they had told me. I was guessing and turning my guesses into fact.

I could here her telling him that I was in a bad way, and I knew she would tell him about the absence of my parents and how odd it was and that their phones were off. I knew that things were really serious because they wouldn’t leave me unattended; I knew that I probably wouldn’t be allowed home anytime soon. She kept on turning around and looking at me, and then she would say something. I knew she was telling him about the few things I had told her and about how well planned everything had been and how, how awful I looked, and how my sentences were scattered with thoughts flying from everywhere and how quiet I was. I knew it all and I didn’t. I knew that they were deciding if to admit me to the psychiatric unit and I didn’t know, I was guessing at it all. I could hear a baby crying and people rushing around the department but somehow none of it was connected to me. I was in a different place, a totally different world encased in my veil of grey.

I knew the day had gone wrong, it had gone wrong in every way possible but I didn’t know it. Nothing was connecting; all these facts or guesses at facts were not linking to create the one fact. I knew that I had my parents phones in my bag turned off so no-one could call them, I knew that I was feeling really ill and that the actions of the doctors were also showing that I was really ill, I knew I had been crying so my make up was smudged down my face, I knew there was hospital security in the same room as me as I had tried to leave before Joyce had arrived and I knew it was Friday morning and I didn’t know. I didn’t know how it was Friday as Thursday evening had gone from my head, I didn’t know why my parents hadn’t rushed to be with me, I didn’t know why there was this tap like thing in my arm, I didn’t know why everyone was so worried. I had simply done the only thing I knew that would make things better. I had made a positive out of all the negative. I had simply taken the pills and waited, waited for the nothingness to come. There was one fact I did know, and I knew it for sure; the nothingness wasn’t going to come today.

Joyce had finished on the phone and was filling in a piece of paper. I couldn’t make out her decision. Either she was making a recommendation for me to be admitted, or she was making a recommendation for a referral to the home treatment team. Either way was the wrong way, it wouldn’t change anything, it wouldn’t fix anything. It wouldn’t make the nothingness come that day, that Friday morning.

Last Line… And if you were questioning the title was taken from the Mystery Jets latest album, and you know you’ve lost all creativity when you find yourself scrolling through iTunes to find a suitable title.

11 Comments

Filed under Health

Tags: bipolar, CAMHS, death, depression, Health, hospital, mental health, pills, suicide