My lips had grown dry...I licked them; soothing the cracks which once words had seeped from. my nails were painted red that day as I was angry ,they stood out against the milk of my fingers. In my hands were the tulips I'd been ceremonially given on my way to sacrifice and In my closed fingers i stroked crushed petals that had went beyond repair and they wept.They Wept.
I held my suitcase to my chest trying to restart my fidgety heart.
"Huntercombe.we're here!" The taxi driver opened the people carrier's sliding door to allow me the dignity to face my inevitable fate on my lonesome.I think that door was the door that closed everything off.
I'm still on the peebles outside that hospital even now.
The way to describe huntercombe the psychatric hospital for youths is quite easy..
It was like hogwarts on a budget with a bunch of adolscents who believed they were wizards....
I had recited to myself the fact that things would not seem as bad once I had faced them dead on.
I was bloody wrong.
we were lead to my bedroom minus the room.
my parents had been ever present all my life til then.I could'nt bear to look at them.I was too guilty.
I watched my dad cry for the first time infront of me.
My mother had to take him away like a little boy in her large loving arms.
All else I remember of this moment was I noticed the birds outside.The squaked and moaned as much as the birds in Hamilton.
I had wondered if these flying beautiful pests had accents.
During being signed in my mother & I had sat on the bed together in each other company.
We looked like edith piaf on a bad day when Annie strolled in to see the new flesh idly.
Annie was rough.
she was also beautiful and had walked into to welcome herself with a huge mohawk atop her head.
I shook her hand and routined the words I'd learnt which NT's called small talk.
I could feel the uncertainty of chance.
I decided then and there to take a chance , leaving my self behind on the hospital duvet and strolling in a daze to dinner..
My name was Jessica.
I'd traveled from scotland all the way down to london as I was too crazy even for scotland.....That takes a lot of crazy.
I was born a female with XY chromosome but something went wrong.The ingredients were off.
The soufflé had collapsed & I was born with autism.
I got out my frustration by eating pastries constantly.It made me as dull as the sponge of the damn things.
When I turned thirteen though, something was crystalised in the pain of puberty......and I lost control.
I became a fairground mirror to people.They saw this altered totally weird reflection when I was still just jess deep down in my heart.
I started doing something I could never finish & as breath streemed back into my tired veins I would feel defeated & weak.
An occurance in my squlor of a school had sealed my future.I always did hate our school tie.
That afternoon as I left the place ,that pleasent calm of a day finally over reached me.
I saw a ned from my year that had harassed me as welcome for our 1st two years ofhigh school.
His taunts instead of being greeted with a finger were harboured into a self esteem which even now is practically non existant.
grimacing at the flatulent pain in the arse I sauntered off and as I got on my bus home I grinned at the note I'd managed to stick on his back.
"the tick tick clock betty says watch the clock its coming!"
I walked into the dining room and tried to stand upright.there was something wrong with the balance in my ears and I could feel myself almost slip into some nearby patients just finishing their dinner.
Annie beckoned over to me with a grin like a cheshire cat stamped over her face.
"Hey...Jess is it?"
I nodded backwords and forwards while hiding my nerves in my dinner.I chewed meekly as everyone was introduced to me.
I was in the drug abuse part of the hospital....I'd never even touched coffee at all in my life.
"this is emma.."
A punk girl with scalped hair,a cheeky personality and long sleeves shook my hand.
"This is vhari"
a sporty girl who seemed out of the surrondings slowly moved her head toward me to show she noticed my presense.
"...and this is Kaamil." The first boy I loved....
---------------------------------------
The ward at night was like a chesty lung that breathed with difficulty.a lung belonging to a patient that never slept.
I could only just take gulps that night like a lopsided fish as on the first two nights a patient was watched 24/7.....
It was hard to stop myself from laughing or to cease my head at 4 in the morning hitting a radiator in fatique and falling into clumsy sleep.I was even too anxious to end up doing something as stupid and jessica as that.
kaamil was fated to leave one sole week after I had stumbled into purgatory alongside him.He'd overdosed which is what he was in for.Instead of conversations about the football or shopping everyone would consort like convicts and curse the time they'd been forced to endure.living in a hospital was comatosed you after a while.Things seemed too good and still but there was always that dreaded sound of an alarm ringing out in the night and the empty bed it equaled the next morning... Vhari left that week and her departure scraped a wound in the trio of she shared with Annie and Emma. One evening as I listened to music as sad as the situation I found myself in I suddenly belonged for the first and last time ever.
That night I sat out with Annie and Emma and smoked for the first time.We sat in the dark not questioning anything really and Just exhaling and inhaling.Dying,living,dying.Emma looked as if everything she'd been through was nothing compared to vhari leaving.They'd been in love.In a place like this though normality and happiness never lasted long.we snuggled into each other and just watched the smoke ring out in the night.Emma let out a large sob which mingled with the birds calls above and the airplanes in the nearby distance.
On my second day I had to visit the doctors to have blood took.I have a problem which amounts to me haivng the veins and blood of an old age pentioner.After six stabs into my arm and then wrist I collapsed onto the doctors shoulders trying to stop myself from fainting.The hospital came in different parts...Ours was fairly open and more independant depending on how you behaved.Across the lawn in the larger manor like building was the ED ward and to our side behind a fence lay the place we all silently feared going to or in some cases returning to.The closed ward was but hell on earth.
That thrursday evening we had collected the trees acornic dandruff from the grass and had found some pots of paint to fool around with.We chatted eagirly about the future and drew faces and personality onto baby evergreens.
Through the heart of the building a sudden beat and rhthmic sound squealed out.
With a little tree and life in my palms we walked through the building in a procession to the room that called out.
One of the other girls in the ward sat looking defeated and broken on her bed surronded by staff who were in a relaxed panic.Kaamil & I walked in the complaints from adults.We grasped lucy's hands in ours and gave her the little piece of hope left growing in the room.The room was empty by dawn and On an easyjet plane there was someone who shook the place to the core.
rebbecca was a fellow scot.Thats about where our similarities ended.
"I'm Becca" she stared deep into my eyes with an angry currosity in mind, "This place is f****n' shite.."
she would have done better if she'd been at bloody home...
In the morning we would all wake to find our deodrants,money and my ipod had went missing.I had no voice and somewhere in her room bowie and joy division were stuck amongst solvents she'd just sniffed without even considering where it would lead her.
On kaamil's last day we went on an outing into town.I had writen him a goodbye card and came to the living room searching for the suitcases which meant he was getting ready to leave.Nothing.
Emma strode in with a bowl of frosties in her hand and milk in the other.She was mixing them together in her mouth like orange tarmac.
"Where's Kaamil?" I asked a crease of worry spreading through me.
"He's leaving....now."
I'm not the kind of person who uses their energy in steady bursts...I errupted into a fall of steps pacing towards the one person I'd felt true love for.I was trapped in my body but for a few seconds I escaped it.I reached the gates as a car was starting to take speed.I screamed out his name and ran crying out like a mother robin...The windows were practically sound proof and kaamil heard nothing....behind him a mime acted out a silent film with no piano.
The same day Becca was shipped into the ward that we never really spoke about.She'd grasped Emma by the arm and went into a rage that pulsed through the building.I never ever found out what it was all about,but in the eyes of Becca was a hate that could'nt be mistaken & a problem the doctors and nurses could'nt control with soothing words and shoulders to cry on.
Sunday evening was one of the highlights of my stay.We would all trek to the nearby sainsbury like famished warriors seeking refuge.Once we entered the flourescent lights of the supermarket we went beserk like someone with a sweet tooth after the war finished.
As CSI:Miami came into view on the telly I sat down next to emma and we shared some pop corn as a murder took place on screen.Emma suddenly fell into me and grabbed at the radiator.she let out a muffled screech and kicked out.Her hand was burning and she was turning purple.She collpsed onto the floor moving in jerks ,still grasping at the radiator.she was having a fit.I did'nt know what to do.nurses flew in and I left feeling like the worst friend in the world.The desperation I'd saw filled my body with even more than 80% water and all of it left in tears so thick they pulled me into myself as I fell into sleepless dreams on my duvet.
"welcome. Jessica is it?"
I bent almost in a bow and sat down clasping my arms to my knees and letting out a weezy sigh.
"Aspergers syndrome?"The psychologist squinted his eyes at his notes and looked up at my pathetic husk of a body.
"You don't look or seem autistic at all.You speak to people..."
Thats when things fell into place and became apparant.I was in a hospital run by ducks.
My mother traveled down the next day and saw a shaddow of what I was even just before the hospital.
The nurses had left me to myself.A person with dysraxia who could'nt kick a ball nevermind wash her own clothes or cook her own food without setting the outfits on fire and putting soap on her pasta.
"Your last night eh?"
Annie grinned a sad grin at me.
That night the three of us sat in the hallway drinking til we could'nt think about thinking straight.
I showed some lyrics I'd wrote during my stay.
"They're wicked..." Annie breathed.
We talked about the pains in our lifes and Annie told us about her father.We all hugged and talked more truth than a parrot who had stumbled into a C.I.A convention.
"The baby of the house" Emma laughed.We put on some smiths and went out for one last smoke,hiding the marlboro in our nighties and socks.
On the bainster that we often lay poisioning ourselves with toxic sticks, I took out a marker pen and among many more scribbled people I joined the three of us to the party.
"I wonder who's happy now....Who's listening to music....who's married and who's now gone"
"It does'nt matter.They're there and will be remembered no matter what by more generations of youths interupted.They're hope..."
On the airplane I nuzzled into my mums warm hug and grasped the signed ciggerette packet I had in my pocket.
when midnight came to us all above I looked out my side window to earth.Nine thousand feet from anyone.I kinda felt like david bowie in this old film called "the man who fell to earth".
An alien falls to earth ,succumbing to human vices and losing what touch of his identity was left.He loves human life so much but can never experiance it himself...
In the end he gets trapped in his human guise ,forever made to see through the wrong eyes and becomes a drunk. I put my head in my hands and tried to keep myself up.I looked like the marble roman mourner on the cover of "closer".An air hostess stooped down to my height and I looked up at her from under my eyelashes,
"I think perhaps Jessica has had enough, don't you? "
" I think... perhaps... you're right..."
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