The Countdown of People at New Years

As I sit at my desk by the window, I feel the cool August breeze gently run its fingers around my hair, and I decide to revisit my past. I am acutely reminded I am in a psychiatric hospital from the distant beeps of the doors unlocking and locking, alarms going off from different wards, and people dipping their head in to check I am ok.

I am ok. and I will be.

Although tears are coming, they will stop. Life is like that. I am listening to an instrumental version of David Bowie’s space oddity, and I wonder if he was an alien himself. I wonder if I was as incredible as he was would I be thinking this about myself too?

My past…whenever anyone says ‘my past’ you think there’s going to be a lot of horrendous stuff including murder, drugs, gangs. On the outside maybe mine wasn’t that bad, I didn’t arrive at school with scrapes and bruises from last nights beatings. But as they say, not all wounds are visible.

The tears won’t stop coming. but I feel happy.

It was hard cutting my Mother out this new years. Like her, my values always lied in watching Big Ben 12 o’ clock December 31st. It was always important to her, therefore I learnt that behaviour. But 2019/2020, I was a passenger in a car on the A1M when the countdown began because of her. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and click the indicator to change lane. Me and my husband were in one of the only cars on the motorway. Looking at the fireworks in the distance, knowing people were drunkedly celebrating possible new beginnings, new chances, and fresh starts. But I was counting down the members of my family I’d gotten rid of. 5, uncle, 4, aunt, 3, big brother, 2, younger brother, 1….my birth giver. The reason I am in this world, even though I didn’t decide to be. But here I am. I was the one that brought me up.

Maybe I don’t feel happy, but I don’t feel sad.

I couldn’t keep the very people in my life that were hurting me and had hurt me most of the duration of it. I wait in anticipation and anxiety about my countdown this year to 2021. Will I start counting people down from 6 this year, 7? 8? The big numbers on the sides of buildings won’t be numbers at all, just names, mere faces, of people I thought I loved but I don’t, and nobody could understand why I loved them if they knew what happened.

How can you love someone that uses your young body sexually, or feels it right to hurt you and bruise your bones and skin, or for years torture and terrorise your psyche so that at the age of 27 you still think you’re stupid, ugly, men only want you for one thing, you’re laughable, what you say is stupid, being passionate is embarrassing, following the rules is embarrassing. I can still hear her cackling at me. But you still love them and do everything to please them, at least when you’re young and don’t know better. They know this.

Not only counting down the people that I have chosen to get rid of, but I lost two dear loved ones last year. maybe that makes my count 7. Number 7, My Dear Grandad. Who I love with my soul. My hero. Who I know will be waiting for my Grandma, to ‘do the dirty’ as he called it! Number 6, a beloved incredibly brave cocker spaniel, Sonny. Who I know is laying in the grass somewhere up there in the sun, rolling about, no issues seeing. They deserve better than to be on a new years countdown of people I have discarded.

As the years go on I am getting more anxious that I’m closer to 10 now. Am I going to be counting down many more people? Instead of the last 10 seconds of the year, what about the last 60 seconds? I already lost a childhood best friend this year, the bridesmaid of my wedding, apparently I’m a bad person, so I got dumped. Also a seemingly perfect therapist dumped me for no reason. This takes me to 9. Wow. One more to a full house. I nearly lost another friend and I reached out to him via letter after he blocked me and we are in touch again.

You see, I get accused of being a horrible person a lot. All I have are thoughts asking myself, how can I make sure this comes across as nice? Am I sounding nice? Is this what being a good person is? Apparently this isn’t being a good person.

Then again, I’m reminded I’m in a psychiatric hospital. Maybe I am here because I have learnt to be horrible, that is all I know.

It’s getting dark and late now, and flies and bugs are trying to get into the light, much like most of us in here, we are just trying to get to the light side of life. But like these bugs, we are seen as a burden. Much of us try and shoo them away when they are found in our living room. They are just screaming for help. Some die on the way, some find the light but keep hitting it as if to say ‘is this it? there MUST be more’ It’s like: you get the happiness, but it’s not enough? and you chase it, you keep going for it. It’s the reason a lot of us are addicts, we try to chase that high again and again, and it sometimes ends in death. Just like the dead moths, flies, daddy longlegs and mosquitos. Which one am I? I think, as my tea starts to cool down and I hear people shuffling about to take their night-time meds.

It’s time to take my mood stabilisers now, and turn in for another day. It’s nearly midnight. In fact, 10, 9, 8…..

This will all start again tomorrow.

I am ok, and I will be.