This story takes part in the old Edinburgh town in 1971.
Hello reader! I hope I have your attention because I am going to tell you the story of a girl I knew. Her story is not like any other,but is one of the most inspiring tale of strength.
This girl was very bright, she made everyone smile and was the most admirable girl anyone knew. She always did her best for other people and put them first before herself . This is why this story never made sense to me. She was what could be considered a "normal" teenaged girl.
One day everything about her changed. She walked into school, her head down, not raising her eyes to meet anybody. Eye contact was not something she did not want to do anymore. She twitched, almost convulsing. She tripped over her dragging feet as she walked, what felt like miles, through the never ending corridors. Her greasy unwashed hair was covered with a hat, it was evident that something was seriously wrong. She seemed dull, the light that she brought to a room now extinguished. The happiness faded and the dark had taken over. The sleeves of her unkempt clothes now appear longer than her arms, her face drained of colour. The constant stream of tears, poured from her swollen eyes, rolling down her cheeks and splashing onto the floor in what seemed to be ever growing puddles of sheer grief. She was broken.
She would go home and sit in a corner bruised and beaten, the blood seeping through her sleeves, her eyes all puffy and red. The only words coming from her cracked lips were "they hurt me." She mumbles the same sentence over and over in the hope somebody would finally listen and help. The listener of these repeated sentences hearts almost shatters at the young girls pain and anguish. She looks up at the sky and whimpers "I can hear you" she gets up screaming in pain, she fears deeply that this is what her life has become and what it will be forever more.
After numerous consultations of being poked, prodded, measured and evaluated she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. In 1971 it was a taboo illness, mental health was not understood, compassion not given and a caring hand never extended. Institutionalisation was the initial treatment plan, but what followed made every hair on her body stand on end - the bruises marked into her skin, she did not do herself. She could not prevent the inevitable from happening.
Her clinically diagnosed illness characterised by her not knowing the difference between what was real and what was not, her perception of reality completely skewed. The vivid, horrifying hallucinations grew stronger as her paranoid thoughts lead to her self harming but is also harming others. She became the "typical" psychiatric patient who was classed in the 1970s as being feeble minded. She was seen and treated only by her illness not by the girl she was deep inside.
A treatment day had gone by; she had bruises now swollen and throbbing. Her wounds, both external and internal, were unfixable. The bruises the size of golf balls, as she covered up her scars once again she is now sobbing. Her sobbing turned to silence. Nobody listened when she screamed and nobody comforted her when she sobbed so retreating further into herself was the only option left. She could rely on nobody. She then started looking around, anyone could see the pure terror in her eyes, right round the sockets were purple blue and red and the well of her eyes now spilling over. She looks up at her mother, who sat day after day and night after night, watching as she lost her daughter retreat further into the realms of her own mind.
"Can't you hear them whispering?" the girl was clearly tormented. She manoeuvred herself into the fetal position and began screeching at the top of her lungs "stop, please leave me alone!" She repeated this several times with her hands clamped tightly against her temples and her eyes firmly closed in the vain hope these "people" would leave her alone. Her mother could only sit and watch in despair while her child clawed at her face and spoke to beings only she could communicate with.
Another treatment day included; grabbing her tightly by the arms and forcing her into a chair, The tight grip of the doctor holding her down in the chair as he strapped her hands and legs to it would leave marks as bold as pen on paper. The men in white coats were always like this with her. A leather strap inserted into her mouth, prised open by two nurses, so she doesn't hurt herself when the seizures start. Then, they hook her up to a machine. Jelly applied to her temples and they all stand back and watch. Little electrodes were placed on the jelly, "450" the doctor says. She screams in pain as the electricity runs through her body, her hands trembling and her body shaking. The convulsions last for ten minutes in a bid to rid her of the demons who plague her mind. Her head numb and her thoughts all drained, she felt pain but not the pain she had been wishing to leave behind. Every day of every week she is prescribed electro convulsive therapy until she is stable. It takes a long time and doesn't remove every threatening thought in her mind.
One day she spoke up about her story, she would tell the stories of her treatment and the pain she felt. Although a lot of thoughts still ran through her head she was getting better. Maybe the pain, forced treatment and unsympathetic nature of the mental health system worked after all.
A quote i can vaguely remember her saying is "a little smile can hide so much pain and trauma." People who go through trauma never really get better, this only happens to the best of people and more so the girl I am telling you about. That girl was me.
