Chapter 1

You tell me that I seem fine, but I am not fine, for I now strongly and wholly believe in God.  Or more accurately Gods, but  I do believe there is one true big boss and maybe even warring factions.  You see I am not okay, I spent most of my life being comfortably agnostic.  Thinking that it is most likely that there is not a God, but not being arrogant enough to say definitely wasn’t and never getting out of the habit every night, just in case.  For some reason verbalising what I wanted always scared the bejesus out of me.  During puberty I was desperate not to develop breasts, my own mother’s breast repulsing me and the idea of having my own horrifying me.  I prayed and begged that I would not, and I prayed for the health of my family and that people wouldn’t succeed in bringing dinosaurs back to life.  Jurassic park and more so the accompanying news articles into actual DNA research causing me unreasonable anguish.  I would never vocalise these wants though, simple instead saying “Lord, your name is very holy, Amen” and quickly hiding myself beneath my cover.  

As I grew older I used to laugh at myself that I still prayed, but whenever I was scared or anxious, I would clasp my hands together and utter words to the ether.

A care coordinator once told me that “the ramblings of schizophrenics never make sense”.  Well I say, they do to other schizophrenics.  My name is Poppy Radcliffe, my real name is Robyn Elizabeth Penfold (born Crerar) and I do not have a schizophrenia diagnosis, though how I have avoided this, I do not know.  What I do have are autism, ADHD and bi-polar diagnosis.  What I am not, or at least never was, is bi-polar.

So they say that the ramblings of schizophrenics never make sense, let’s see if I can help with that as I try to articulate some of the things I have seen and experienced over the last 8 years of having been a patient of the British mental health services.

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