Perspective isn’t all that

People overestimate the value of perspective.

Tough love

I hang the laundry in her room and the reality of her absence hits like a gut-punch. She’s gone and she won’t be coming back.

Isolation

Alone by Behzad No is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

There are the ones who’ve been there from the beginning. The ones who check in every week and walk the night by you. The ones who accept the blow-by-blow account of your daily hell without shrinking. The ones who promise little and over deliver.

And then there are the others.

Restrained, injected… happy birthday

It’s week three and Rosie struggled to take her medication yesterday. The hospital gives no chances. Spit out your meds and you get injected for five subsequent days. No exceptions. So, having made it through 10 days of being restrained and injected, Rosie was given the chance to take her meds orally. She did it on Monday, but spat them on Tuesday. We thought her consultant would give her one last chance. She’s made incredible progress since starting this medication. But as she herself said, ‘No one cares.’

Sectioned

“Section”: noun 1. any of the more or less distinct parts into which something is or may be divided or from which it is made up. 2. a distinct group within a larger body of people or things. verb 1. divide into sections. 2. commit (someone) compulsorily to a psychiatric hospital in accordance with a section of a mental health act.

I’ve lost track of how many times Rosie’s been sectioned.

Swings and roundabouts

It’s been six years, but I’m back. No, Ben isn’t drinking again. And no, I’m not drinking either. I haven’t had alcohol since Rosie was – what? – four? Five? But these days, I briefly fantasise about gin and tonic, and the promise it holds for me of sleep, respite, forgetting.

Rosie is in hospital.

Lost and found

So it’s true, then.

Time really does accelerate as you enter the latter decades of your life. Standing here, on the other side of grief and trauma, I’m sucked deeper and faster into the mundane: a relentless flush down a very slick s-bend.

The addict in the hoodie

source: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/oct/09/teenage-boys-survey Photo: Lorna Roach

The addict in the hoodie wanders up and down the dual carriageway I used to live on. His hoodie is black, his skin almost transparent. 

Alcohol will kill you … eventually

Eventually, alcohol will kill you. Drink enough, for long enough, and you’ll die. It’s as simple as that. 

Sometimes I feel like sticking my foot in front of a car, just to feel the crush of its tyres against my bones

(c) George Hodan

I stand at the intersection, waiting for the light to change. A car comes towards me. I hesitate. For a split-second I want to step forward. I imagine myself doing this: putting my foot out as if to trip the oncoming car.