On the 4th of June 2016, I was sectioned for the 1st time. An experience that wrecked havoc with my life and permanently altered my psyche.

I was sectioned for nothing more than a row with my parents. You may say that that isn’t possible, that i must have done something. You would be wrong.

From the moment I was sectioned, I have looked to receive some form of apology for what happened to me through both the internal complaints system and the legal system. However, it is not currently possible to sue against a decision to be sectioned, only your treatment while in care. This is wrong. I was let out after three nights, with no medication and no diagnosis and no apology. Work would not let me return for 7 months and I spiralled.

This sectioning occurred after I called the police to try to get me away from my parents. I have always been afraid of my family to some extent, they are much bigger personalities than me and for most of my life, I’d dealt with it by just living my life and never telling them any details. My sister had been very difficult growing up until my mother marched her to a doctor and anti-depressants at the age of 23. Whilst she has blossomed on medication and credits them with transforming her life, it had long been my view that our parent’s overbearing ways were the reason for her youthful distress. I felt, rightly or wrongly, that with more freedom of self-expression, they may not have been necessary and subsequently held a deep routed fear that one day they would attempt to medicate me.

That day was 4/6/2016

On the 3/6/2016, two days after I had been arrested for drunk and disorderly and screamed my grief to the walls of a cell, 2.5 months after I had left my husband, I went back to my parents for an evenings respite on the express promise that the next day, they would drive me home for 1pm (they live in the countryside, I was unable to drive at the time) so I was there in time to meet my friend and have a rocking day at IKEA. I wanted to go to IKEA with a friend because historically life stuff had always been done with my family and with a malleable mind, I tended to cave to their opinion. I was after some floating shelves for my spare room/office room and I knew if I went with my mother, I would end up with the shelves she liked rather than necessarily the ones to my taste. Plus, it had been an eventful few days and I really needed time with a friend who cared about me and believed in me.

They broke their promise, they allowed me to oversleep and then refused to get on the road. When I begged them that we needed to get going, they called a doctor on me. I called the police. Below are my section notes and my side of the story which was dismissed as delusional at the time.

My parents live in the middle of nowhere and at the time, I did not drive.  It was therefore not possible to leave without their assistance.  They were being controlling and keeping me locked in their house.

Prior to calling the police, I had attempted to both start the 7 mile walk to town and had also attempted to hitch a lift.  Both of these attempts were thwarted by my parents.  I grant that a taxi may have been a better next step than the police, but at the time I was concerned that a taxi would just be turned away by them.  I had have a very positive previous experience with the police during my arrest and thought that they may be able to assist, all I was asking for was to be removed from that situation.

This is true although the nuances are not there.  My husband and I had an open, swinging marriage.  The lady in question was half of a couple that we had frequent intimate relationships with.  She was my friend and confident and the woman that I spoke to about how much I loved my husband, how I felt he was pulling away from me and how I didn’t know what to do about it.  She was having a hard time in her relationship so we would often offer her shelter at our house, a kindness she exploited to steal my husband, a man she still lives with and whom I had loved since I was 4 years old.

I had stayed for as long as I could and left only when I was so dejected by the relationship that suicide was starting to seem an appealing option. I had already cut myself for the first time in three years the day prior and the day I left, I was walking around the flat in a trance looking for a rope. Two days prior, I had woken up in the middle of the night to find my bed empty, confused I had searched the flat and found my husband curled up in bed in the spare room with this woman.

We were due to exchange on a house, a mortgage that had been agreed on our joint salary, but my husband’s drinking had cost him his job so we were fraudulently proceeding on just mine. I’d run the numbers and work out we had £34 a day between us after bills, not a lot but enough if we were careful, but he was spending more than that on booze and weed a day and I couldn’t see any future other than defaulting on the mortgage within months.

I had loved my husband my whole life, but the man I married was not the child I adored. Leaving was not traumatic, it was a release and it may not have been forever. I saw a meme once that said “If someone tells you they are getting divorced, don’t say I’m sorry, no good marriage ever ended in divorce” and this was how it was for me.

I left my husband while he was out in the middle of the night with nothing but a poorly packed suitcase. I packed all my nicest clothes not knowing if I would see anything else again and completely neglected socks or t-shirts.

I spent a month crashing with friends and family before finding a flat for myself. I did not know many people in Stevenage but was starting to make friends in the local pub and it was indeed close to work. I previously lived in Hitchin which was genuinely a very nice town, but it was not big enough for both of us, so I had had to move.

Oh me oh my; what a shocker!  I was a 35 year old, recently separated woman.  My husband had had little physical contact with me for a year so, so yes, with my new found freedom I was enjoying some causal sexual contact and I was using dating sites because it was 2016 and that was the norm.

I felt no shame in my sexuality, I had swung for 6 years with my estranged husband, a life style I adored and I did not expect to be judged for this sexuality by professionals.

It was four days and it is perfectly acceptable for a grown professional woman to not talk to her parents for four days. I had been in contact with friends.

This is a very poor summary of a complex time that I did my best to explain. 

I did go to Cambridge, but not with friends, I was with friends in London, good friends, ones for which the names would mean nothing to you. It had been a nice day, my friend K was doing this Soapbox Science thing, where you publicly discuss science on the South Bank and we had gone to the pub afterwards to celebrate her success. There were a few of us there. Whilst outside chatting to my friend S, she said “You know Robyn, what we both have is BDP (borderline personality disorder), but it’s not a disorder it is just drive and intelligence.” I don’t know what happened, I had never experienced anything like it before, it rang so true that the effect on my mind was like dropping four pills at once (something I have never done, 1 is normally too much for me).

3 days later, S found herself in a hospital bed with a chipped tooth, a day after that, I ended up in a police cell. As far as I can remember, this is what happened.

Everyone left and I got the last train back to Stevenage, but I unfortunately fell asleep before my stop and ended up in Cambridge.  It happens, people do it all the time and for me especially this was not a new occurrence.  Normally I would get a taxi home but as it was only 4 hours until the first train back so I thought I would save money and pass the time in Cambridge.  I spoke to a few revellers to try and locate somewhere that was open and eventually found my way to a small club which was very enjoyable.  This closed at 3 and I made my way to McDonalds to kill the last hour before my train, which is where these gentlemen, who had been in the club, found me and refused to leave me alone. One of them was really sweet and interested in my work as an aerospace engineer, his friend was loud and obnoxious and kept interrupting, trying to get my attention even though it was his friend that I was interested in.

They were not exhibiting any behaviour that indicated threat but I was tried and not in the mood to engage so yes, I did get agitated when my polite requests to be left in peace were ignored, nothing beyond the ordinary.

I made it home but could not sleep. From there, I travelled to Ashford, to meet A MAN singular, who I had previously had a very successful first date with. On route I stopped at the O’Neals opposite Kings Cross for a spot of lunch as I had not found time to eat. While attempting to eat my lunch a coked up CEO who had been kicked out by his girlfriend took a liking to me and tried plying me with drinks and cigarettes. This was an interesting and distressing time, in my whole life of frequenting pubs alone, I had never experienced hassle before, but then I had never been this wired in public before either. I was horrified by a sudden realisation that predatory people could sense instability in women and prey on it. In order to protect myself, I left the pub without completing my dinner.

I made it to Ashford, tired and bedraggled and hoping for a bath and some comfort with the man I had come to visit. I was prepared to give him anything he wanted but was stood up with the reasoning that I had not shaved my legs – yes really. I had even brought a razor with me, all I needed was time for a bath and I would have been respectable again.

Dejected I headed to the pub to cheer myself up. The first one I went to was quiet and I got thrown out for being a distressed bummer. After that I found one with a pool table and the loveliest bunch of guys who helped put a smile on my face, and yes, I did openly talk about sex, I never saw any shame in it, it makes people laugh and I truly feel society would be better if we acted more like Bonobos than Chimpanzees. One of the lads was purported to be a 33 year old virgin and as I left I wrote him a note that simply said “I specialise in virgins <phone number>, call me. He never did

After that I somehow ended on a train back to London because I was aware of the time, went to the train station, bought a ticket, and made my way home.

Still unable to sleep and now both sad and sexually fustrated, I headed to my local for a quiet pint. I’d completely forgotten that I’d organised a date with someone I knew nothing about except that he was an author. I had an idea for a book and had been excited to talk to someone with experience. Sitting in the pub, my phone went saying he was at the agreed meeting place. I should have stayed where I was, I was safe in my local, but I have a problem with breaking plans, so I moved to meet him and oh my days was he a creep. Instead of calming my frazzled state, he exacerbated it. At one point he offered to drive me home to put me to sleep, an offer I accepted but as I went to get into the car he just drove off.

Alone, drunk, confuse and upset, the police were called and I was taken to the cells to cool off. If they had called the mental health services on my that day, it would have made sense, but they didn’t a night in a cell was enough to clear my mind.

“Elements of truth”?  “Elements of truth”? 

This was a proposal that I had been working on getting people to listen to me for for 2.5 years. When written like this it does seem overly dramatic, but I was a gifted student and this was a hundreds of thousands a year proposal.

I do wonder if had I been a man, that my career belief would have been believed.

The database was a proposal that I had identified the need for and had the skills to execute.  I had been working on convincing upper management to listen to me for that full duration and it had finally paid off.  A proposal meeting had been set up for Thursday the 9^th of June.  A large sticking point for a long time was how I would incorporate the development work into my existing day job, but with the help of a colleague, I had worked out this kink and after considerable effort I had convinced upper management to consider my proposal.

A major problem that the company was facing was data conformity. Data was stored in multiple spreadsheets that were hard to maintain with conflicts often arising. These resulted in, sometimes serious, increases to schedule and budget. A database was needed to hold this information with no duplicates and proper data validation rules and this was what I was proposing to create and knew I was capable of creating as I had done it before in a previous position.

This project was also my chance to prove that I could lead, I had always been a very shy person and that had always hindered my career progression. leaving my husband had given me a new found determination. Now was my time.

Because I didn’t do any drugs

Out of character was good. For the first time in my adult life the little voice in my head telling me “You’re not good enough”, “You’re weird”, “You can’t do this” was gone. For my whole life I had been, shy, insecure and moderately depressed with a moderate alcohol problem. The arrest was not my finest moment I grant you, but a couple of months after a separation, I think I’m allowed one slip up.

I was nervous the whole time I was at home. My parents, despite eventful youths themselves, are very conservative and an arrest was far away from acceptable family behaviour.

To this day I am unsure how spending evenings with your family can be considered, out of control.

I dabbled occasionally, but my drug use back then was few and far between. My ex husband had been a daily weed smoker, so I often toked in the evenings but had not had any since I left him. Class A were just for occasional parties and sex meets. My parents are VERY anti drugs so of course they were not aware of this.

Well this is not the true story of what happened. Yes, I did get annoyed when they ask me if I wanted tea, because we were late and we needed to leave.

The one, the only thing I had made my parent’s promise when I agreed to go to their house was that I would be back at mine by 1pm.

I had struggled to sleep the night before after an awkward evening with my mother and the next morning found that rather than waking me, they had allowed me to sleep in until our required departure time. 

I do not like being late and I do not like inconveniencing people. I was flustered and telling them we had to go, my friend was driving 200 miles to come and see me and they kept fussing about breakfast and tea.  I told them we could have lunch when we got to mine, I told them they could come to IKEA with us, but we had to go because we were late. 

And? I have friends, shock horror and when my day was spiralling into something I had never experienced before, I spoke to them for advice.

I slept at their house, I slept at my sister’s the day before.  The row started because they didn’t wake me up in time to leave, for them to say I hadn’t slept in 6 days is a bare faced lie.

I had lost weight yes, funnily weight changes are not uncommon at times of stress or change, and I was not unhealthily thin. The change from my normal weight had probably been less than half a stone.

Why were they trying to contain me at home?  I was a 35 year old aerospace engineer and model.  I had never given them any cause to worry about me. Who did they think was going to take advantage of me?  What did they think was going to happen?  I wanted to go to IKEA and then go back to work.

I brought up that I had been on antidepressants in the past as a way to highlight that I have always been careful with my mental health and have referred myself for medication when I have felt I had been struggling. I had referred myself for counselling and CBT I think three times in my life, the CBT I had found especially helpful.

Is shy really something a parent should want their child to be? How is one instance out of control?

“Overfamiliar”??  “Overfamiliar”? I was in a psychological assessment and what had happened was my sex drive had gone a little loopy.  I wasn’t talking to Grandpa down the pub?  How is it possible to be overfamiliar in an assessment? 

If you ask a complicated question and expect an answer, you wait until the person has finished answering. It is rude to interrupt people.

I am autistic, I have also always had a loud voice. Also “too loud when agitated”, isn’t that normal? People tend to get loud when agitated.

As to the next section, yes this was exactly how I felt. I had not been given a scale to pick my feelings off. Years later, I was shown the bi-polar scale and it turns out you’re aiming for a nice, sensible 5. I didn’t know this though, I just assumed that 10 was good.

If they had let me go, as well as being able to achieve my goals, it would have gone a long way to solve some latent issues with my family relationships. My mother is a worrier, she always has been. She is the type of woman that cries if you have a differing opinion on whether a top is nice or not. Had they let me go, had they said to my parents “Your daughter seems like a very competent woman, what are you worried about?” maybe I would finally have been given the freedom of expression, I so desperately yearned for. Maybe they would finally have realised that I was an adult, and a brilliant one at that, because I was brilliant.

I could have gone back to work and been on track to double my salary within 5 years.

As well as saying that it was 10 if I was let out and 0 if I stayed in, it is omitted in these notes that I offered to come to any future assessments of appointments that felt necessary.

Everybody did like me.  I wasn’t popular in the traditional sense, I was not one of the cool kids, I didn’t get invited out all the time or indeed that often, but everybody did like me. 

I had done a good job of becoming incredibly inoffensive. I had self diagnosed as autistic when I was 24 and had put way more effort into my social skills than academic attainment since then, to the point where I had become good at it. Growing up poor and going to a very expensive secondary school (scholarship), I had had access to the whole range of classes and people and I could fit in anywhere. Take me to a pub with a pool table and I would light up the room, something I had asked my parents to let me demonstrate rather than take my word for.

And I did have great ideas, I’ve always been an ideas person, but for the first time in my life I had ideas that could actually be executed. The database was only a part of it, the main plan was a book. Think Brigid Jones meets 50 shades of grey done respectfully, for that book is nothing but metal abuse dressed up as eroticism. It was to be my power to the masses book, a book to showcase the wonder of nerds and how to have a healthy and fulfilling sex life without emotional damage to other people.

But yes, everybody DID like me. No-one likes me now.

My parents are controlling. They’ve been like it my whole life, I have always been told what I like and do not like, what I should do and not do, even clothes were dictated well into teenage years. They are wonderful people in their own way, but I once got publicly chastised at the tender age of 23 for saying “Nope”, no “No” because it was considered rude.

I did not lack insight into being elated, I actually spoke about it quite clearly. I told them that I knew it was a bit much, but that I knew how to handle it, which currently involved smoking far too many cigarettes and ensuring I always had a book with me, so that when my mind started to wander, I could read words and distract it and I offered to come to any follow up appointments that they wished to schedule.

The follow on above suggests that wanting to see Alan, my closest friend was somehow a questionable decision. I am unsure how deciding to find refuge with the one person who knew exactly what I was going through because he was going through it too is in anyway questionable.

Once! I got into one venerable situation once and I got myself arrested as much for my own protection as anything else. Once!

By the time I was officially assessed, I had been in hospital for 20 hours. I agreed to go to hospital for what I was told would be a “quick check-up”, that is a direct quote. I arrived at the hospital on the Friday, tired from the emotional turmoil of the altercation with my parents and whilst there was expected to speak to a never ending stream of people preventing my from getting any rest.

On the Friday night at approximately 10pm, I was told that I was going to be allowed to leave. Everything had been arranged, the police had even spoken to Alan who was going to pick me up from the train in London and report back when I had arrived safely.

Prior to release I “Just had to talk to one more person who would be here in 5 minutes”

An hour and a half later, after the last train had left and I knew I would be stuck at the hospital overnight someone finally turned up to talk to me.

He started asking me questions such as “who is the Prime Minister?”, “What day is it?:”, “What date is it?” and I will admit I snapped at him replying “Are you checking whether I am insane or an idiot?”. I am not proud of this, but it was near midnight and I was promised release.

I slept poorly over-night on the thin hospital bed. When I awoke, I was initially told that I would be being assessed at 7am. 7am came and went, “they would be here within the hour” was the response when questioned. 8am came, 9am, 10am. The time clicked by slowly and the appointment kept slipping.

It was 2pm by the time a team of three people descended on me in a small room, which was in itself very intimidating. Up until now I had been speaking to people on a one on one basis. After a brief chat with me, they asked if they could speak to my parents. I said “Yes”, though to this day I wish I had said “Only with me present”, oh how different the outcome could have been.

The two male doctors disappeared to talk to my parents and were gone a long time, far longer than they spent talking to me. They left the female doctor with me and I begged and pleaded with her to get them back from my parents to give me another attempt at explaining for I knew I had done a poor job the first time. She just stood, looking at me, with tears in her eyes as I begged with her for help. It inspired these words.

She just stood there crying

While I was begging and dying

She just stood there crying

While my inner soul was torn

She just stood there crying

While I was begging and dying

She just stood there crying

A voyeur of pain.

My relationship with my parents has never recovered from this incident, to the point that it is now, virtually, non-existant.