The Search For Silence Continues

Sometimes I'm quite amazed at how sensitive hearing can be on the spectrum. Years ago I was convinced I was going crazy. Now I know that I'm highly-tuned. But this doesn't make coping much different.

The day has been fine. In the afternoon myself and workmates went to an external meeting. After the noise and chatter settled and it became one speaker in a large, high-ceiling room, I quickly felt sick. I winced and covered my ears, trying not to look too...aspie. 

The sound of the lights, some twenty feet above me, sounded like hair clippers held directly beside my ears. It turned my stomach, made my palms sweat and wanted to vomit. I began to panic as I could no longer focus on the meeting. More frightening is that looking around, no one else appeared bothered. I began to rock gently on my chair.

Come the break, I legged it out the door for a cigarette. When I had to come back inside the buzzing room, I felt my eyes get hot and wet and I feared a meltdown was coming. I slipped over to my manager and asked to be excused. She laughed and said, 'You're not in school. You can just go.' I tried not to cry, grabbed my bag and ran out even as I heard someone call my name.

I didn't recognise town and just turned right and walked straight until I found myself back at my workplace. 30mg of diazepam took 30 minutes to kick in and I didn't want to go foetal in the street. 

Ironically, I went to see the psychologist after work. The rooms are thin-walled and I flinched for fifty minutes at cleaners dragging tables around in other rooms. When I left the room, I gagged and covered my nose at the smell of bleach.

My sensitivity is already high, but I feel like my tolerance is getting worse. I don't know exactly why. I don't think sensory issues can be progressive so perhaps it's stress-related. 

I get home and try and relax. I smell toast cooking through the terraced, but very solid walls of my neighbours' house. I know I'm not going insane. But this feels like a very mad way to be trying to live. 

Could Everything Be Less Noisy/Less Smelly/Less Itchy, Please?

I met for a 1-1 with my ASC worker recently who is referring me to the newly-qualified psychologist on the team (so new, I'm sure I can hear braces on her teeth) to help my 'well-being' and to help with social skills and sensory difficulties.

Social Skills is going to be a very hard one to work on because I've gotten very good at 'passing', however I know that what I'm saying is completely without feeling and is invariably copied from TV or the radio. In fact, the things people laugh at are just quotes from films or sitcoms. When I get really, really comfortable with people I will 'pass' less i.e. I will feel able to be more like me. Unfortunately, where I feel most like me, most comfortable is around the emotional age of 14. It's like my cognitive reasoning kept maturing, but my emotions didn't. So, when I'm happy around people, I will run around, blow raspberries, swear, wear silly t-shirts, giggle and then eventually make what I'm told are inappropriate comments such as, 'Are you limping because you fucked last night?'

The plan is for me to either work on passing (which I very much hate doing) and understand that sometimes you can't tell people how many times you've had sex this week or that you think some people are completely irredeemable thundercunts, without getting into trouble. I don't think that's an honest way to live, but apparently it's correct. 

Or I just say that I really don't care what other people think of me. Maybe that's worth a go.

The other issue is sensory difficulties. Reportedly of all the people that have been assessed, under Sensory Difficulties I've come in as one of the lowest scorers (1-2 (most people are coming in at a minimum of 5)) and have been the topic in supervision, mostly because I explained how I can hear electricity or bubbles popping in a glass of Coke from 14 foot away. 

For years, psychiatrists thought I was hallucinating. I thought I was hallucinating. But it appears I'm very in tune with sound, smell and light/colour. For example, my 1-1 was in a different room. I was about 4 foot away from a small wooden coffee table. It stunk. It smelt like untreated wood and that it had been stored in a musty second hand shop and previously owned by smokers. I asked my worker if she could smell it. She couldn't, but dutifully put her nose on the table and only then could she smell what I described. I could smell it freely in the air from a distance of at least 4 feet. 

It's no surprise then that I'm constantly jumping around my house and workplace trying to work out noises that are deafening to me or smells that seem to be taking over, but don't bother anyone else. That's a lot of energy spent chasing intangibles. 

Maybe just watch this video from NAS about a kid in a shopping centre and imagine that that level of noise is normal and makes you feel like the world is about to explode, you will implode and everything will cease to make sense unless you scream your noise over the top of it and move your body to shut out other people's noise and pointless information.

Crossover: Colossal Fun or Rat's Nest?

In my ongoing little quest, whereby I have lost many a dinky shoe in quicksand, to write something that can hold my attention longer than 20,000 words (without resorting to fluffing from there on) I am abandoning all the ridiculous notions I've picked up over the years of what 'good writing' looks like, what 'worthwhile writing' looks like and what 'sellable writing' looks like. I'm going rogue.

Of course, it would be more than delightful to be a published novelist, to have my stories looked upon with an air of validity. But, by thinking so highly of those things I have managed to squidge out the fun of the actual thing: writing. Since studying Creative Writing, all I have done is worry about the final 'thing' when the 'thing' is not even written.

Stupid. Incorrect. Whoops. Where did I ever pick up such bollocks? Answers on postcards to my tutors and careers guidance at school.

Now I'm throwing out all earlier efforts of what I thought fiction to be, where I thought I MUST be literary, where I thought I had to have a dazzling message burning into the retinas of Dear Reader. Instead I am going to have fun. Even if this new project is never published, is never even sent out to publishers, I am going to write it and enjoy it. I will take all the things I love, the strange things I have seen, the noise of places I've been and some seriously messed-up ideas of entertainment and grab it around the throat. What could possibly be more satisfying?

Back to the basics of writing for love, for the ride, for the thrill. Not with those dirty words 'editing', 'plotting', 'motifs' or 'marketability' sending copious amounts of nose blood onto the keyboard. The only dirty things here will be a special counter for the amount of times the word 'fuck' appears in the text.

Locate all previous 'manuscripts' [emits dark chuckle]. Ctrl + A. Del. Ctrl + N.

A new thing, now. Something that takes me back to my first loves: horror and comedy. The things that had my poor parents dragged into school because of Wednesday Adams attitude and chainsaw-heavy stories. Something that indulges my childish humour, my love of the shock and allows obsessional interests research to be fully indulged.

Basically, if Stephen King angrily rammed his car into Jasper Fforde's head and then they both went out and got drunk on Absinthe, ate too much cheese and headed out to save the world with quips and knives from hoards of deluded Londoners. That sort of thing.

Will it sell? Doubtful. Will I enjoy it? Oh, God, yes. This is something I am going to LOVE writing. 

Organ pawning, Rippology, bounty hunters, tattoos, lollipop ladies, kebabs and strangely cold steel cupboards, this is going to be something that will make me laugh. 

And then consult a psychiatrist as to if I should be laughing.

Let's Get Cracking

Recently two short stories have fallen into publication, which has been nice. Three more are now under consideration by magazines and I have another one to write for a particular submission call. 

All are horror-speculative fiction. Interestingly, I was very into horror until I was 15. So interested that my primary school staged an intervention due to the frightening stories I was writing at 8:30am. I blame Christopher Pike and the Point Horror series.

Now I'm turning modern-day mental health and mental health care into something that perhaps others can relate to. Something that makes people nod in recognition, makes them recoil in horror, hopefully makes them laugh and then suddenly cry (or vomit). 

Is this a soapbox novel? Am I screaming for change in the guise of fiction? No. I'm turning my misplaced decade into something that reflects horror, humour, fear, and surrealism. And I am sad that it is grounded in reality.

I've tried hard to explain what it means to be locked up on a psychiatric ward to many people. How the place of safety for the most acutely unwell has an invisible set of rules, consequences and punishments. How, if you are autistic and don't know, this is definitely not the best place unless you are a severe danger to yourself or others. Was I? Well, clearly I was deemed so, but on reflection, the multiple misdiagnoses are what kept me locked up and what kept me rotating back to the wards. A discreet red flag on my file that indicated that if this person is unreasonable, just order a Section. 

I once said it was like prison. I know people who've been in prison. It's not like prison. It is a separate set-up. I said to staff once that I felt I was in prison. They laughed and said, 'Free food, laundry, TV. It's not prison.' I stated that you have that in prison and we all have locks on the doors.

But the distinction is pecking order. In prison there is a strong hierarchy of earning respect. Groups, gangs, organisations. On wards, some people are so snapped off from this reality, that they aren't interested in what is going on. The people you do speak to, you have to watch. Some people lie and manipulate as per their condition, some people are here and are from complete poverty and will steal your cigarettes, money, socks, soap (no lockable areas in the curtained off bedspaces). Some may become temporary friends. But there is no strong hierarchy because some people can barely take care of themselves. On the ward, you need to watch your back for violence or stealing because you can't be sure the staff will be there to watch your back. Friendships on wards, made in extremis, rarely survive on the outside. But in prison, where you aren't encouraged to get too friendly with the guards, here we were all playing the staff. Showing them our good sides so that we could get leave, not be checked when we brought in contraband.

Why did we do this? Probably rebelling. Most of us were on Sections. Staff could take our phones, our belts, our lighters if they deemed it in our interests. If someone died in front of us, we were not counselled or debriefed. If we found someone cutting patterns into their arms and we called for a nurse, we got no support. When we witnessed a late night seizure and the night nurse didn't know who the person was, but you were punished for dragging the nurse by the sleeve to the right bedspace. If there were no beds and we slept on mattresses on consulting room floors, that was thought to be okay. To be discharged after three months with no warning when you crave routine and planning...no, this did not sit well.

We hated the medications that made us wet the bed, lactate from our nipples and make us cry, wondering if we had breast cancer. We hated the predatory agency workers who seemed more interested in sex than our care. We kept trying to escape because that is the natural instinct when locked up. We hated that eight versus one, use of headlocks and locks that we warned would break our arms if we struggled, were considered okay. In the mornings, we would count our bruises and name them after the nurse who gave them to us.

A type of prison, then. Even down to the kangaroo courts of a MHA Tribunal. Reminiscent of Josef K's ordeal.

Now, I sometimes go to wards in a professional capacity to see my clients. I feel my stomach crunch when I go down the corridors, when I see people drifting around dayrooms, bored and angry. 

These are the practical things of being on a ward. The physical stuff. It doesn't even cover the reasons that brought you there or what is inside people's head, struggling to come out. All you see are people walking around naked or putting spoons in their knickers and you do mental gymnastics to work out how this person got to this point. Why they have been left in the same clothes for three months.

So, now I am untangling it, flattening out crumpled mental notes into a story that will not show the healing side of mental health care, but the bare reality of what it is. No bias, truly, just factual research blended into a modern-day horror story. 

Angry? Of course. Hung-up? No. It happened and it's fantastic story fodder.

Abandoned

The other Saturday, The Boyfriend suggested that we cross the border to an abandoned hospital that we could explore. It would be an hour's drive and with several hours of exploring we might not get back until very late. We love sleep, worship the duvet, bow down to fluffy socks and pillows. But we thought, fuck it. With energy drinks and cameras, we drove off. 

We found ourself at Lluesty Hospital, shut down in 2007, half of which is a Grade II Listed Building - looks very unsafe in an Amityville sort of way. We explored the more modern side that we believed may have had psychiatric wards. I felt uneasy as the person we were meant to be there said they'd broken down and couldn't make it. But The Boyfriend and friend were brave so I went in.

Surprisingly, no security. Not even a token gate or sign that says No Trespassing or Security Services Patrol This Area. We crawled through a broken window, dodged a nest of mattresses and open needle wrappers and explored a smashed and dripping facility. 

Bizarrely we found ourself with a ghost-hunting party who had a spirit box and reckoned they were picking up energy that was being transferred into a digital voice selecting words from a database of 10,000. DISASTER, COLD, QUIET. You get the drift. We heard footsteps down the corridor, clearly slow footsteps that stopped after five. 

We felt fine until we went upstairs and found what had once been a locked ward. There we all felt strangely uncomfortable. A warmth / restriction in our chest. Hard to explain for sceptics as us, but undeniable proof to the ghosthunters that spirits were here. Perhaps we had just absorbed their own anxiety. They wanted spirits. We wanted research, photos of abandoned buildings. With no light, it was a question of point and hope the flash would help us focus in time. In future, we'll get better.

We finally crawled home at 3:30am after having needed to pee for seven hours. I felt uncomfortable taking a piss in the hospital. What if I had pissed on a ghost?

Just one interesting thing: as soon as went inside, both The Boyfriend and my cameras' brand new SD memory cards flashed up as corrupted...

 

Robbed of Sleep: Issue 4

Another story has found its way into an anthology. 'Damaged' is in Robbed of Sleep: Issue 4 - An Anthology of the Horribly Strange and Strangely Horrible.

Our editor, Troy Blackford, @TBlackford3, describes the contents as:

Twenty-four fresh tales of the exotic, the fearful, and the downright nonsensical from some of the best and brightest voices emerging in horror and speculative fiction today.

Ain't that nice? It's doing very nicely in the Horror Anthology chart and last I heard was holding steady against contributions from Stephen King and Neil Gaiman.

So it's available now in paperback and on Kindle. Click away...

Monkey Think Monkey Do

My two lifted up days on Prozac turned back into just...a day. Feel low, fretting about health (Is that arthritis? Gout? Chillblains? Let's go with chillblains) and swooping to worry about work. My note expires on 14th. 

I'd decided to stay off until then to give my mood to become stronger - my job requires a lot of mental resilience, which I didn't have a problem with when I started. Now I'm scared of being off that whole week. Scared to tell them I've become depressed/anxious when in my interview they asked how I handled stress. 

Not a lot can prepare you for the stress of this job unless you've done it before. And even then it's a battle.

So today I got the bus into the city (a nerve-wracking feat in itself) only to find the city was red and busy with Chinese New Year. Year of the Monkey. 

I've wanted to see it for years. But no emotional reaction. I had some Chicken McNuggets (I could live off these). No emotional reaction. I even reverted to an old compulsion that pops up when I feel really shitty and want to manufacture euphoria or excitement. 

I got another tattoo. 

Not impulsively. Compulsively. I've wanted this for awhile and have others planned and booked, but I felt I had to get this small one today to try to negate that crawling under my skin. A negation behaviour. That fear of the world. A safety behaviour. To me as natural as checking locks three times or being on NHS Choices daily. To check my bag when I get on the bus, during a journey and when I get off to make sure keys, purse, phone and bus pass have not been lost.

I can't stop doing these things. 

I know I'm obsessed with tattoos. And I do enjoy getting them, looking at them and laughing at the silly ones. I'm old. I don't believe every tattoo needs a deep, mystical meaning. A smile will do.

The blokes in the shop seemed as blank as I felt when I showed them the design. They wandered in and out whilst I had my ankle inked, talking about hangovers, Windows 10 and nipples. 

I barely felt the needle. I felt no excitement. That compulsive behaviour failed me today. But maybe the tattoo will make me laugh when I feel shitty.

Or I'll be on Tattoo Fixers next year.

Buzz Lightyear photo bombing like a boss