Diary from the ninth circle Part 2- Copyright Robert Fullarton 2010

Diary from the ninth circle Part 2-
Copyright Robert Fullarton 2010

                                                                          

                                                                            I

Sand down a human being through suffering, and you have the innermost being, unmasked, with the façade worn away, there the person’s true nature is seen and it cannot be mistaken anymore! After you have gone through several seasons in hell, you start to care less about your pot-marked weaknesses with society and instead seek spiritual answers, and have deeper questions to ask. Too many view society as the tour de force, the answer and the impetus to all that goes on, it is akin to the Roman society and its “public pantheon of gods”, the God of the universe is ironically and really the God who in private and yet in power speaks to our conscience as the drama of our lives unfold. In fact the modern man or post-modern person experiences and views the social unit or society as a religious experience, being the very thing to aspire to, infamy is the nexus to power, and self adulation is the kernel, but there is a cyclical fear of what others believe and think of us, going on and round, as a poor substitute to the real thing, this desire for love in social acceptance and fame, is an artificial love that cannot replace what the ancients sought in the divine. 
Too many have bought into the apparatus of a powerful media, that moulds the generations and often too many come forth like dolls upon the conveyor belt, implanted with the thoughts of the espirit de corps of the secular order, and often avoiding the deep experiential dramas essential to our progress as human beings. As a Christian I can say for certain that it has not been a picnic and I walk along the rocky road, sometimes, I have to crawl, or dangle over the treacherous precipices of my insecurities and all I lack on the path ahead. But I desire one day to fly above these present troubles, and even to the non-believer I state that a goal orientated, aspired mind, must have such hope and endure for such a hope become a reality in time!

Existence is not dull, we may think it dull at times and it seems unfair, but there is this drama of twists and turns, of plots being unearthed, of pain being so real at times that equates to strength, and when one loves sacrificially one discovers the greatest love, that which replicates the act of divine sacrifice.

  

                                                                                  II

The psychiatric ward in my eyes was Dante’s iconic inferno, the place where sufferers and condemned individuals, rot and burn in pain, they are confined to their own designated area, their turf and their reality of hardship. I met, psychotics, schizophrenics, people with bi-polar, hysterics, drug addicts, alcoholics and post-traumatic sufferers.

I had to try and comfort several people who were having emotional breakdowns and yet also I met many remarkable people, who told me their unique story, have educated me on the many different personality types, the fragilities and the sensitivities that are often ignored and overlooked within any examination of the human species as a whole. The youth of today lack that element and that essential gratitude that our society lacks, the community spirit, the charity and the patience to see the purely subjective horrors of what one human being can feel are misunderstood. Perhaps indeed community lectures should be given in schools and colleges more often, speeches on the promotion of well being, individual speakers on the stigma and the hardship of former psychiatric ward patients. The young of today should remember that there is a rising trend in the number of suicides, a growth in the number of people being diagnosed, treated and even hospitalised for the rising numbers of mental health patients and suffers alike. This proportionate increase is reflected in the rise of street drug abuse, peer pressure, depression over social conditions and domestic issues. Any person can fall victim to the circumstances of the current times and can go from being a happy and healthy human being to a person inflicted with a debilitating illness.

Everything changes, our perspective is reaffirmed and retuned into place, we seek survival, the love of loved one’s is a bout of madness and sorrow when absent, memories bulge out like razor sharp pains, fear grows until you cannot even face the local shopkeeper or the neighbour up the road. Severe fear of judgment, often a misguided sense of shame and a general prostration comes upon us. The outgoing man will retreat inward and seek comfort in solitude and in turn will make things worse for himself, this cyclic return to depression will reiterate once this man realises that he is lonely, but hardly ever does he realise that he choose often to cut himself off from perhaps a single voice that offered to listen and to care for him. Our world is plunged into darkness and we often forget our passions, the reasons for our striving to live and the motives for rebuilding, and reconstructing the old dreams of childhood. If one woman wanted to be an artist, then she should reaffirm this old desire and pursue it, if one man wanted to be an architect then likewise, he should remember the reasons as to why he aspired to these notions in the first place

I often capitulate myself to negativity and even to immense depression, I have had to learn and still have to remind myself of the possibilities of positive thinking and the fact that my pessimism offers me nothing but a personal spiritual defeat.

One to one private care, counselling and support is needed and I honestly commend the work of occupational therapists in general for the specific needs that often are met at least with one to one coaching. But I believe that a more intimate, truly personal, and more far reaching method and prognosis should be developed for the greater good and dignity of these human "souls in bondage."

My psychiatrist was lousy, in the sense that he would regularly fail to turn up when he was supposed to turn up, his absences were common, and his inability to understand his own patience’s was so obvious that he was a comical figure to several of his own patients. His ineptitude, his apathy and failing methods were the signs that self-reliance was required on my part; otherwise neither recovery nor rehabilitation of any kind would surface at all. I have known the disenfranchised people of our society, so little effort is made by psychiatrists to understand the sense of what their patients actually feel inside. While I was in hospital I met an older woman with whom I instantly connected. We formed a bond an a friendship, we talked, we walked together and I discussed my writing, my philosophy –which I now began to write in aphoristic verse- and of course I found a woman whom I believe I could have loved if their were no age difference what so ever. I loved her sense of humour, her receptivity, her story of heartbreak from a former long-term lover. We connected and became close friends, their were no elements of attraction nor any traits of romance, but a connection of personalities and interests. Time passed soon enough and before I knew where I was, she had been discharged and I never got to say goodbye to her.

Of course such areas are covered in the psychiatric hospitals around the country and no doubt the world at large, but I simply advocate a more impassioned response to individual patients. The cool distance of the psychiatrists given to their patients, the rigid protocol and the health care system itself, running on the necessities of health insurance have bore us another school like atmosphere, where ineptly tuned lectures are given, where quacks come and go, where the patients are the children doting on the psychiatrist and his team who are the parents and the supposed salvation of the children themselves

I knew too many cases that were neglected and often left the hospital felling much worse than upon awhile I did enjoy the occupational therapy, for that was the more essential one on one basis that any patient their arrival. The rush to fill beds, to keep up with the regularity –or irregularity- of protocol, the general sloppiness of the psychiatrists and the money had to flow continually. All dead water had to remain stagnant while the patients continued to drink from foul waters.

I had a lot to learn. I had to know that rehabilitation and recovery are continual; they never cease while we seek a constant change for renewal. Often we can only rely on ourselves but if we find a mutual friend then we should count our blessings and be exposed to the kindness of others and new people who have come into our lives.

A silent transformation into the unknown is required and that is what happened, slowly but surely, a refinement of old perspectives and a eclipsing of old dilemmas.