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The following poem was commissioned by the local NHS Trust to express the concerns of long-term sufferers of mental illness, and read in the Service held in Exeter Cathedral to mark 50 years of the NHS in Devon.

I came here when I was nineteen, to get well
from a kind of flash-flood of down, from a tyrant rule
of spiders over the thin moon of me. Safe from harm
here, they said. The film'll run slowly. Under control.
No-one will have to know. No-one will notice.
They didn't say I'd come out with a label.

Mind you, it was a kind of comfort, the label,
at first. People could see I'd fallen down a well
that was real. It made them take notice.
Then we lost our insurance. It's a rule,
the girl on the phone said. So I lost control
and broke the phone. My friend left. Only then the self-harm

and the Seclusion Room. What's the harm,
I said, if I cut myself? Is that the wrong label?
They tried things out till I was under control:
Thirty milligrams the spiders. Seventy milligrams, well,
Numbness, like living yesterday over. Fifty mgs rule
O.K. Not disruptive enough to notice.

I watch the trees a lot. I stand by the notice
That says all visitors must sign in and out. Harm-
less words. I tell another patient it's a good rule.
He tells me I'm a police spy. I like that label.
Whoever made my loneliness made it well.
But who was it? And is he still in control?

Sometimes I stand and think - this is a sick plan to control
A special person who's been fighting stuff a long time. 'Notice
the difference, when you treat me right!' I shout. Does no harm.
It is better here, than years ago. Same label -
but they ask about the colour of the bricks in your well.
Sometimes they help you choose to go ahead and keep a rule.

Maybe it has to be that certain drugs rule
your life, that without them there's just no control
over the downs. But staff do talk to you, go past the label,
if you get the right one, with some time to notice
you. To see you're choosing between living and no more harm
ever again. I read once that all shall be well -

tell me then: if I knew every rule, and could get people to notice
me, and was under control with the drugs, and was no harm
to anyone, and lost my label, would I be called well?

This poem is Copyright Christopher Southgate 1998- for information about reproduction in any form, send a detailed request to copyright@hospitalchaplain.com


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