Confessions of a Mental Health Patient

Part 4: My First Night

That night, I decided to go to bed early. Bedtime on the ward is 9:30pm, but I just want to be alone, so I head to bed at around 8pm. I take a shower, get in my pyjamas and curl up into my bed. It’s not as uncomfortable as I thought it would be, seeing as though it is a hospital bed, but I still miss the warmth of my own bed back home. I switch of my light next to my bed and begin to think. This is where I do most my thinking, alone at night with no one to bother the thoughts that play out in my mind.

I bury my head into the pillow and start to cry. What am I doing with my life? I’m stuck in a mental ward while most sixteen year olds are getting drunk at parties. I crave normality. I crave the drunken laughter and one-night stands, the sneaking out at night and the nightclubs. I wish I could be sixteen, not this kind of sixteen, that type of sixteen. The type of sixteen where I sleep with guys instead of demons, where I listen to indie rock instead of listening to the voices in my head and where I have too many feelings instead of not enough feelings.

I slowly drift to sleep, allowing the darkness to consume my thoughts.

I’m drowning, I’ve sunken to the bottom of the ocean, this is it, and I’m dying.

‘Kyra, Kyra wake up! It’s just a dream!’

I can’t breathe, I feel the water fill my lungs, like an overflowing glass.

‘Kyra!’ I finally shake myself from the clasps of my dreams. I wake up, not quite alive, but just breathing.

‘Sorry,’ I say, to the stranger who woke me up,

‘No dear, it’s fine. I’m Ray by the way, another nurse. Wren and Jenifer have gone home, I’m one of the other nurses on night shift.’

‘Okay.’ I try to see this stranger in the dark, I can just make out it’s a smallish woman, with blonde curly hair.

‘Are you going to be okay?’ she asks, ‘yes’ I reply.

She gets up and leaves my room, slightly closing the door behind her. I stare at the ceiling, imagining all the other people who have laid on the same bed, staring at the same ceiling, feeling the same way.

I slowly drift back to sleep; back to the place that’s better than being awake, at least my dreams can’t hurt me.