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Janice Craddock Owen is a published author who suffers from Bi-Polar, in the past she was an inmate of a Hospital in New Sussex. While in hospital she met and made some interesting friends and as now written some 'Character Sketches' about them, here is one called ' Pauline' Please note all names are fictional.

Pauline

Lying on my bed in the hospital, enclosed by curtains, four beds to a 'ward', the peace was broken by a woman's voice screaming 'fuck off'. It was a clipped, middle class, educated voice, and it continued screaming other obscenities aimed at various people. Then I heard another woman's voice say, “That's no way for a lady to talk.”

“I don't feel like a lady. I feel like a fucking Palestinian Guerrilla,” I heard the original voice scream back.

Then came a long, shrill scream as the nurses threatened to put her into seclusion, then the scampering of her feet upstairs into seclusion. So I first heard, rather than saw Pauline.

Seclusion was a locked white room at the top of the stairs, where you were put if the nurses couldn't handle you; if you were psychotic or merely a nuisance. It had bars on the window and a mattress on the floor. No sharp edges or instruments. When she quietened down and was released, I saw her.

She was in her mid-forties, then, with dark, scraped back hair, and large, dark expressive eyes. Eyes, which as I got to know her, could vividly, flash anger, fear, interest, even love. She first darted me a frightened glance. She was dressed in a blue denim outfit, covered in studs, which looked really stylish. I was also drawn by the book she was carrying, 'Bits of Paradise' by Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

After my first glimpse of this racketeer, I closed the curtains again and resumed lying on my bed. But the racket soon started up again. 'I'm a paranoid schizophrenic and can be dangerous,' echoed around the hospital. Guy, who was definitely a paranoid schizophrenic, opened the curtains, sat on my bed and laughed. I joined him. I found Pauline, of the stylish clothes, Fitzgerald aficionado fascinating, and when we got to talk to one another, and I was discharged and she was discharged, she invited me back to the bed and breakfast that was her home for the moment. There, as if selling herself to me, she showed me her file. A letter saying she could have got a 2:1 in Philosophy if she'd stayed on anther year at Birkbeck, and the clipping of her journalistic work. She'd written for the 'Times' under her maiden name. She'd kept, treasured, her married name, even though she was now divorced. Her husband, who'd been a psychiatric nurse, had divorced her on the grounds of 'unreasonable behaviour'.

“He was a psychiatric nurse who turned me into a psychiatric patients,” she'd said, in one of her outburst in hospital. She knew this because she'd asked to see her notes. In them she found out, after being labelled alternately ' Schizophrenic' and ' manic depressive', she'd been given a totally new, hitherto unknown label of schizo-manic. She was, at that time, on Lithium for manic- depression and Largactyl for Schizophrenia, so I guess they'd decided that that mixture would suit the label. Her husband had looked after her just like a psychiatric nurse house husband until Pauline had become incapable of looking after herself, so after a short spell in the bed and breakfast she went to Jemima's. Jemima was a Pakistani who seemed to be paying for her whole family to come to England out of the money she got from the NHS, for her 'guest'.

Pauline had a room with a large bed, a washbasin and dressing table and TV. Meals for the psychiatrics were small and on the dot. For each guest Jemima received, then, about £160 each week. Although Jemima did things like clean Pauline's hairbrush, the toilet paper, like the meals, was rationed. Pauline and her husband had made a lot of money in the eighties, up in London, out of antiques. And so Martin, out of the money habit sent Pauline what he now could afford each week. This money, for the 'pocket money' from the state she received was ludicrously small, Pauline spent on taxis and the pictures. She eventually got a small flat, however, and it was with immense relief that she moved out of Jemima's. The move, for someone who had been unused to doing things for themselves, was too much for her however, and within two days she ended up in hospital again, totally paranoid.

I went to see her and she screamed 'fuck off' at me. She said, later, that she'd thought I was out to kill her. That being blonde, and wearing a black leather jacket, she's thought I was a nazi. Paula was Jewish. She's also thought that the gasworks which loomed large from her tiny, high up flat, was the Kremlin and that there was a sophisticated plot 'out to get her'. After she was released I spent many a happy hour over at the flat, getting high on the Temazepam we were prescribed to sleep on. Though we shouldn't have got high on it. It was a sleeping pill. If we took them late in the evening we would both find our moods lifting as the night wore on, looking out over at the gasworks and musing upon English Literature including amongst other topics dear old Scoot Fitzgerald. 'Temazepam parties' as her psychiatrist called them. The flat contained leftovers from Pauline's life in London, some pretty and elegant antiques, and what she valued more that anything, her books, which she'd had stored. Leftovers from her life generally. And, what was new, and old-fashioned, a red telephone.

For a long time Pauline didn't have a 'breakdown', nearly two years in fact. Her psychiatrist referred to her as a 'success', and a 'text book case of manic depression'. But suddenly she had another, after a year another, and after that followed a nearly yearly pattern. Nearly always occurring before Christmas, the anniversary of her Mother's death. Her mother, who at the end of her life, thought she was the Pope and had gone around blessing people. So perhaps it's genetic.

Pauline cost me a fortune when she 'breaks down', taxi fares to hospital, cigarettes, magazines. All because I was lured by the studded denim, the fabulous Fitzgeralds. But she is worth it, in a way. She has little to look forward to expect another breakdown; she is a revolving door case. She is still literate, creative, and full of interest in her fellow human beings. And she as courage. Courage for some mental patients means sometimes just being able to put one foot in front of the other. I should know.

Postscript March 2002
She has just come out of hospital again and is giving a cocktail party for her Birthday, Such aplomb! To come out of psychiatric hospital and give a cocktail party….

Captions

“Her husband, who'd been a psychiatric nurse, had divorced her on the grounds of 'unreasonable behaviour'.

“He was a psychiatric nurse who turned me into a psychiatric patients,” she'd said,”

“After she was released I spent many a happy hour over at the flat, getting high on the Temazepam we were prescribed to sleep on.”

“Her mother, who at the end of her life, thought she was the Pope and had gone around blessing people. So perhaps it's genetic.

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