They say not to touch you ‘they are dangerous’ and I think, ‘I’d be violent to if noone ever held me, loved me, talked to me, respected me, if noone ever looked me in the eye’.
It breaks my heart the lack of love in this ward, we are like wardens, we wear duress alarms, carry the keys, control the food and cigarettes, and have an aggression response team on call 24/7. They practice 5 point holds and sedation.
Some of you won’t leave this place, some of you have been bounced in here from gaols, or by police, and now you are left at the mercy of the staff, social workers, nurses, psychiatrists, they have an order on you, the mental health act, you are confined, condemned, concealed from the public.
I wonder how it feels for you because I know that I am relieved to leave.
I am breezing into your life for two weeks, yet another peering student in a long line of sightsee’ers, achieving set objectives, psychopathologising you as you speak, do you know? you still talk to me, still allow me to listen to your tales, (those of you who still speak) You boast or mumble or grunt, some of you from a reality quite different from mine, but one I am willing to contemplate, and to discuss. I feel like a traitor listening to you and chatting and then going off to pathologise the things you tell me with such pride.
My heart hurts when I see you smile, when we can laugh at something, when you seem ok.
My heart hurts because I cannot hug you and yet I will run off to my friends to debrief and be held.
I hurt because I don’t know if I could be a nurse here, because I don’t know if I’d still feel this in five years.
