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THREE WAYS THAT EXCLUSION OPERATES ON THE INDIVIDUAL PART 1

DROP is working towards disabled people being respected in society, and having equal rights to choice, control and independence in their lives. We have members and trustees who are all disabled people, these include people who have been traditionally see as living with a mental health 'problem'. In these interlocking stories we invite you, the reader to pick out how exclusion works on three basic levels; that of attitude, space and efciency.

Closure

Trapped in the dark spaces of the ward were faces that echoed the emotional dissonance that spoke to them but no one else could hear. I tried to speak to my friend about her family, about things that would root her to the real, but it was of little use. Her mind was on her baby and New Zealand, her soul confiscated. Somehow a tear had appeared in her psyche, the canvas or picture constructed throughout her life now interrupted. Beyond this memory of self lay something foreboding and awful which she could not confront or deny. Perhaps those attending could make a scaffold of understanding that could explain or illuminate the unacceptable side of human experience and free those where the asylum was now their indefinite abode.

It was summer 1989, a political wall was to be taken down and perhaps the optimism was reflected in my attempt at a smile. The warmth that I wanted to give, was not well received. I remember her demeanour and reaction, something that would stay with me, well past the five years it would take for this edifice of malady to be finally closed and later still, taken down. For that season she had stepped out of the accepted and through a threshold that bore down on her. The inscription carved in stone said Bear ye one another's burdens. Had she transgressed some hidden law, a law of normalcy? Was it her reaction to her family, and by extension, a society unable to accept her plight, her behaviour, her baby?

! ! An opening up and a stepping out !

Swimming close to the bank I found to my consternation Id left my belongings including passport, chain with cruciform and dark blue jumper at the side Id desperately dived away from. The reasoning behind such an adventure was to cleanse my body and soul, but I was met with muddied, algae infected waters. I had been told not to retrace my steps as the memory stood for someone else. It was my day off from a nine-to-five job in 1995, or should I say, people had thought it best I take rest from working on a design which involved a rational grid with lines, curves and dots on an expensive computer at a multi-national organisation. I had figured out the depths as a child but the water was much clearer and stiller then, in my adolescence translucent, my working life met with an opaque danger, danger to talk, to open up, to confess.

My questions became many. Why such a grave, panicked stare from a colleague? Where were my designs and why such a heavy set of keys to a space where desks were no longer in place? Off the wide long hall were individual rooms and where once I'd expect work-like communal spaces I found two uncomfortable sofas and an episode speaking to me through a mounted television. Such spirited conversation arose from the floor above and the threat of a needle seemed beyond what I perceived to be my daily work routine. I was on section, in the intensive care unit (ICU) and for a period of time defined by the duration of my psychotic state I would remain in this place with no, as a fellow inpatient would say "way out...., man!".

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I had stepped out of the real, for the very first time and into a much smaller edifice, controlled by nurses and psychiatrists who had one foot in the concept of 'care in the community' and the other dwelled in a past of almost permanent subjugation. I quickly learnt that (and I would repeat this to myself constantly) "act normal" for it was the only part of the play people would understand and if acted long enough, would afford me getting off section. My life then had been inverted, made unreal by the very people charged with making it real again!

! ! ! Treatment !

Keeping my gaze on O'Connell street and my head in the design project I'd fashioned out of six months of toil, I found a sharp pain in my right hand and a mix of seemingly cool chemicals finding the back of my head. Next thing I was staring blankly down a mug of half drank tea. I became accustomed to these electro-convulsive-treatment sessions, laughter on the ward and visiting hours. I remained there for seven months on this occasion and by the time I had left it was the summer of 2000. An extremely cold flat on the top floor of a block of flats in a busy part of the city gave me a sense of dread and isolation that is difficult to write about. The experiences of being 'on the outside' were more frightening than on the ward itself, of regulation and 'normality' and best not mentioned. What I can say is that my sense of community had been stolen, obliterated in fact, where once people would say hello, now they had no time for me. An ex-work colleague caught my gaze and I was devastated that he did an about-turn. I had put on five stone by then. The only person who seemed to be, to me authentically real was my soon-to-be wife. We have carved out an existence with little or no support only to be met by the mental health services at times of crisis.

! ! ! Days of stone !

The closest way to explain my 'unreality bubbles' is to say that when I'd venture down the street people ahead would appear as two-dimensional cardboard cutouts as if they were unreal, shells of matter or were hypothetical facades of information that I could almost reach out and peel away like stickers on a background of reality based on my making.The zenith of distress came as someone very close to me, found her own internal dialogue so petrifying that she became just that; petrified. I use the word 'petrified' to mean 'set in stone' analogous to the catatonic state she presented and has done through a decade-and-a-half of admissions. The only room for movement were the breaking down of doors by Police officers and the hastened sectioning at home without warning. The most recent admission to the local psychiatric ward was in 2013.