Having so much time on my hands it’s imperative to steer clear of anything too dismal or distressing on which to focus given the past few months or year has produced such a smorgasbord of hellish events. And I feel truly embarrassed as well when I recall certain specific events.

Not so much for what actually eventuated or was divulged during certain manic manifestations of my febrile mind but rather because the caring powers that be will always maintain nothing about what I felt as a distorted report of a reality that may have been intangible to the various psych teams but made crucial sense to me at a level that they simply may not have had access to, for various reasons was anything more  than manic behaviour.

I don’t take issue with the sober realisation that a number of psychotic episodes did if fact take place. It’s a coping or surviving stratagem employed by the mind under incredible pressure; after all, something’s got to give when not only one cannot see any light at the end of the tunnel but when turning back there also appears nothing but darkness and utter dreary bleakness.

Inevitably, light will break down the walls of the soul’s desperate solitary confinement. And, while these light-bringers are all angels; some are nicer to spend time with than others…

I remember Truth was very important to me during this whole nightmare and I think it was this that inspired my boundless fearlessness. Two fellow inmates tried or at least threatened to kill me, a senior nurse – embarrassed by my having exposed his efforts to cover up a glaring oversight related to patient care – once tried to kill me and on another occasion felt the need to outdo the security staff in fighting me to the ground.

And still I knew no fear. i was in a hell of a lot of pain but fear? It was so interesting to see some of the security staff’s approach to me during a number of ‘Code Black’ incidents. Some were terrified, others quick to pick up on my super-fast thought processes and matching me in the hyper-communication stakes.

In the end, of course, ‘you can’t fight city hall’ and the only recourse is to find somewhere relatively safe to lick one’s wounds.