So we are coming to the end of our show, this next poem, I first recited in front of horrified staff and patients on the 7th and hopefully last time I was sectioned. 7 seems a good number, a lucky number.  This time I was not angry at being in a ward as I desperately needed to be there, I had even tried to get myself committed a few days prior by calling 999 on myself three times only to be treated as a problem caller.  I had been conversing with angels in human form, cute ones too, our God is kinky, but that’s a story for next time.  I was furious however about being sectioned because there was no need, I was going VERY voluntarily.  The difference between being respected to know your own mental health and being deemed incapable of keeping yourself safe, maybe being the difference between life and death, as the struggle to be understood sometimes feels insurmountable and that the only way to be heard is to do something drastic.  So..

Do they want a suicide note?

Because I’ve got one 300 pages long.

No I don’t want to die.

I want to cruise the Caribbean

Have lovers around the world

I want to write, sing, dance and push my career to its limits.

But if they stop me

If they say I can’t have the life I had

If they say I can’t kick back and relax

If they say I can’t laugh at myself, at them, at life

I may  stab myself in the head

Carve “Slut” into my arm

And slit my throat in front of them.

But then I’d just be another statistic and I feel the better option is to feed back.  I took this show to Edinburgh last year and from it came opportunities to talk to mental health professionals about my experiences.  It has not all been plain sailing, but the last 18 months have been a revolutionary turn around and the last ward visit the first time I found the time a help rather than a hindrance.  I have still never had a professional discuss my weird experiences with me and I have a concerning belief in the supernatural these days, but for the little girl that blew and blew, that fought and screamed from that first terrible decision to repeated instances where I felt detainment was not necessary, I have come a long way and the more connections and understanding that I achieve, the better that story gets.  This is a show for the people who are still in the wards with the hope to be part of the narrative for their improvement.

In a forest far away 

A little girl began to blow 

She blew so hard she moved the trees 

And brought them crashing to their knees. 

She did not mean to, but she did 

And what was done was not undid 

She blew so hard she puffed with fright 

And ran off screaming to the night 

  

In the darkness she could not see 

The scary quest of destiny 

She hid among the shadow beasts 

And gorged with plenty at their feasts 

Her heart was clear, her head divine 

But something tingled in her spine 

  

She knew this way she could not stay 

And sometime soon she’d face the day 

The sun would rise and cast anew 

A carnage that she knew she blew 

She ran and hid and closed her eyes 

But nature saw beneath the lies 

  

Nature saw deep within her soul 

All ripped and torn – a gaping hole 

A hole that could not fill itself 

A hole too large for just one elf 

She stumbled and she dared to move 

One foot then two she faced the blue 

  

She saw the pain around her go 

And started some new seeds to sow 

What once was waste began to bloom 

But days were short and night too soon 

If only night could become day 

The world could live another way 

  

Then out of darkness sprang the light 

A communal zone of such delight 

A sanctuary to call her own 

With others who had blown and blown 

And flowers came and friends appeared 

And one by one they calmed her fears 

  

The faceless few became a mass 

And darkness ran and hid and gasped 

The sun shone down upon her face 

All tainted red with her disgrace 

But not alone she had new strength 

A world that now would not be drenched.