Mental Health: My Favourite Gift
by Anna Quon
I haven’t been an in-patient at a mental hospital for almost 5 years now. Still, when I drive by the hospital the stone face of the Purdy Building (which houses what’s left of the hospital’s acute care units) stares back at me grimly. As if to say: you belonged here once, and will again.
I never wanted to be a mental patient, but I guess that goes without saying. After all, being in a hospital – any hospital – is something most people would like to avoid. But I was completely demoralized when I was admitted to the Nova Scotia Hospital for the first time, at the age of 22, following a half-hearted suicide attempt. I thought I was weak, a failure, for not having the courage to die and for taking refuge among people who were so incapacitated and bizarre.
Outside, beyond the wire mesh that protected the hospital windows, Spring was in full swing, and the harbour sparkled brilliantly under a new washed sky. But I was trapped inside the darkness of my own mind. Depression is a prison that needs no locks, guards, or chains. Still, I thought I was different from the people around me – the old woman who shuffled between her bed and the smoking room, where the air was so thick you could barely see the people inside. The thin, silent man with glowering eyes, who swaggered like John Wayne as he paced the halls. The good-looking young man, about my age, whose rambling conversation I could not follow.
Though they were ill, they showed me kindness and tried to help me where they could. John Wayne turned out to be not so scary after all – he cautioned me, whether rightly or wrongly, that a male patient who had shown an interest in me was a rapist, and that I should be careful. And when I heard the voice of the Devil in my head, after being put on the wrong medication, the handsome young man who I thought was God calmed me down. He told me with a reassuring laugh that there was no such thing as the Devil, but still gave me his phone number to recite over and over to keep Satan at bay.
The hospital was a place where I could abandon my inhibitions and act as weirdly as necessary to relieve the darkness. I had strange delusions, such as that I was becoming immortal and could heal other patients through telepathic communication. And that the rays from my brain would hurt the unborn child of the resident who looked after my case. These delusions usually fell apart when my doctor questioned me about them, but by some feat of the imagination I was able both to believe in them and at the same time recognize them as false.
I thought I was so much more “normal” than the patients around me, for many of whom the hospital had a revolving door. But it turned out I needed antipsychotics too, and that even the most ill among the other patients could see the change in me when I took them. On the drug Flupenthixol, I started to feel stronger, and more like myself each day that the light inside me grew brighter. The old lady, the smoker, whom I had never heard speak before, chuckled as I walked past her, saying, “You’ll be alright dear.” That stopped me in my tracks. I felt humbled and ashamed that I had so underestimated the other patients. They had shown me compassion, which to me was a mark of their health and humanity.
When it was time to leave the hospital, I was ready to go, leaving behind some of society’s least wanted. I would revisit those halls several times over the next decade, and would see some patients over and over again. I would again try to set myself apart from them, to mark myself as a different breed, someone who was capable of functioning in a society where the others were considered outcasts. But when it came down to it, they were much like me – struggling with their own demons, trying to establish some sense of themselves in the face of their illnesses, showing small kindnesses wherever they could.
I still want to be “normal”. I don’t want to drown in that vast sea of suffering, where some people seem to spend their whole lives. I want to work, to get married, to be a contributing member of my community. I don’t want my illness to define me, either in my own eyes or those of others. It’s easy to look at a person who is too ill to hold a job, who is shuffling on the margins of society, whose life is as much in the hospital as out of it, and dismiss that person. I’ve done it, and sometimes, to my dismay, still do. But most of the time, I know that I only drew a lucky hand, and that I could easily be in that other person’s shoes. And may still be yet – because we never know what life has in store for us. I still think of the Nova Scotia Hospital as my home away from home, but can only hope I’ve moved out for the last time.
*This piece was originally published in Halifax, Nova Scotia’s The Chronicle Herald.
In 1995, Anna Quon began volunteering at the home office of Spencer Bevan-John, publisher of the now defunct Ability Network magazine. This life-changing event marked the beginning of Anna’s involvement with a number of disability-related non-profit organizations, as well as the world of freelance writing.
Since 1998, Anna has written feature and news articles on a wide range of subjects for dozens of local, regional and national publications. Her favourite stories are those of people with disabilities, entrepreneurs, socially and environmentally conscious folk, and women.
As well as freelance writing, Anna has coordinated media campaigns and designed newsletters and brochures for several Canadian organizations.
She has also taught English as a Foreign Language in Slovakia, and tutored immigrants and foreign students in conversational English and high-school subjects.
Also still, she has published a book of poetry. It’s called Half Empty, and it’s available for sale here.
Today, Anna Quon is a freelance writer living and working in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Though she graduated from Dalhousie University in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature, she considers her real education to be her experience of mental illness.
She can be found on the web at http://www.annaquon.ca.
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