Am I Still Ill?

Let me tell you about my delusional manic state when I was convinced I was dead and had moved to the afterlife.

I guess (see previous post) all the suicidal ideation leading up to that episode made me consider death as a blessed state.

I had very little in the way of fluctuating or painful emotions. And the way I saw people was quite strikingly different. How can I explain this? I considered them as all aspects of me. I saw myself as their spiritual mother. That in some way I had given birth to all of them. And I really saw the unity of all of us. That each of us was just one aspect of the godhead…hmm, maybe it was me, or maybe not. That people are not truly individuals, that we are only moved and only beautiful due to the light of the Spirit moving within us.

I was incarcerated in the local mental ward for six weeks in this state. Some of it was a blast! Some of it boring and deeply frustrating. But my manic delusions such as this one largely kept me quiescent and even happy. I felt like the ‘top dog’ in there and cultivated this role by ‘looking after’ everyone there with gifts, affection or a listening ear.

It was far from sunshine and roses all the time. At first I kicked off in a big way, partly due to my fear of being locked up. But seldom was I hostile or aggressive to any of the patients. I always regard them as my fellow-sufferers in that situation and we tend to support each other a great deal as people who are thrown together in adverse circumstances often will.

There was one particular East European woman that I bonded with. She was absolutely hilarious. She would come to my room, she called me her ‘crazy little sister’, I would make her roll ups as she didn’t have the cigarettes that she so enjoyed a lot of the time. She didn’t find the roll ups an adequate replacement but they were better than nothing.

She appeared to have been brought in for an altercation she had with an Asian assistant in a supermarket (Lidl to be precise). She had a somewhat racist/paranoid obsession with what she called ‘crazy little Pakis’ which she was always prepared to expand on to anyone who would listen. Most of her tirades ended with some kind of reference to crazy little Pakis. They were clearly her own personal scapegoat. She didn’t have problems with any other culture or ethnic identity. In fact at one point she fell in love with the Afro Caribbean Ward Manager.

Honestly she was such a hoot and kept many of us laughing and cheerful in there with her massive and outgoing personality.

I’m sorry to say I started kind of ignoring her when she seemed zombified by the meds she was given (or possibly by her own developing depression, can’t be sure). I regret this now. I should have tried to find out what was wrong, instead I kind of ostracized her. Like a kid in a school playground might snub a kid who had previously been their friend.

I know she lives near me and hope I will bump into her again one day as we didn’t swop numbers or anything. I would love to know how she is doing now.