The Ward

As it's World Mental Health Day, I'll share this raw piece I wrote last night. I'm battling depression and am having a short period as a hospital inpatient. This is a confronting place and time for me

The carpet has been worn down by countless pacing feet; ancient, unidentifiable stains overlap across its institutional pattern.

The built-in desk is covered in chipped and mismatched veneer.
 
The door has no lock.

The air conditioner whistles and roars ceaselessly through a tiny vent, high off the floor.

Fluorescent lights give the custard yellow walls a pustulent sheen.
 
No sound from the outside world reaches this sad little chamber.

An occasional scream of anguish penetrates from down the corridor.

This cold, institutional space is strangely free of echoes, as if sound waves lose the will to propagate through the filtered and conditioned air.

Card readers beep, electronic locks clack, doors slam and footsteps pass by my door

These sounds are all accompanied by the ever-present hissing shriek from the vent high in the wall.

My eyes are stinging and heavy from crying.

My ears crave silence.

My mind screams for peace.

My heart yearns for a warm embrace.

What's left of my soul is reeling and bewildered.

My thoughts flit and dart through snippets of memory like a Willy Wagtail chasing insects through shadowed branches.

A momentary distraction as my evening cocktail of pills is delivered in the finest of disposable plastic cups.

Alone again with my perfidious thoughts.

Was I born this way?

Did I miss a step in the recipe, a crucial ingredient?

Did I stir when I should have folded?

Did I whip when I should have beaten?

Beaten...beaten

Yes, I am.

Beaten by the system, by bullies careless, ruthless and clueless.

Beaten by myself, by expectation, by the need to succeed, to exceed, to live up, to live right...to just live.

Looking back on my life through s**t coloured glasses. 

Was happiness real or imagined?

How did I get so far along the path of this life without realising that I'm doing it wrong?

Has everybody been nudging their neighbour and pointing at the idiot holding the book upside down, looking through the camera with the lens cap on, with his pants on inside out?

Have they smiled and humoured this idiot in their midst?

How is it so easy for them?

How is it they can go to work, swing a wrecking ball through somebody's psyche, win a promotion and a pat on the back, slash another colleague down at the knees, all while booking their next holiday in the Greek Islands?

How did I end up here, in this sad little room that is  haunted by the ghosts of anguish past and present?

Fighting a pitched battle against my own mind, winner take all, to lose is to die.

I listen carefully, but there are no answers in the air conditioner's white noise.

The Rorschach Test of stains in the carpet have revealed no meaning.

The screamer has started again, but I can discern no great wisdom within the tormented shrieking.

So, I sit.

Alone in this room that has witnessed a thousand little deaths, and wait for sleep.